Notice the words being used:

On Wednesday, the News Hour had a segment about Whitman's resignation from the EPA, and it was followed by a discussion about environmental policies under the Bush administration. We were struck by the language used by one speaker, Lynn Scarlett, the assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget in the U.S. Interior Department. From the transcript:

LYNN SCARLETT: I think we're doing a tremendous job. The president set forth when he calls a vision of a new environmentalism. And by that he meant let us build a vision based on innovation.

And so he's put the largest ever amount of resources towards climate change research, for example. We have his new car investment to try and bring new technologies for cleaner cars. It's a vision based on what Secretary Norton at Interior calls cooperative conservation. We're working with some 27,000 landowners to extend a caring hand across the landscape in partnership. I think the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. We're achieving some tremendous wetlands restoration. We are bringing those forests back to health; they need it. They are overcrowded with thin and spindly trees. We have in southern California where I'm from a terrible insect devastation. We need to get and bring those forests back to health. And that's what we're trying to do.

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Later on in the segment:

GWEN IFILL: And, Lynn Scarlett, the criticism of course that's applied to the administration that you took rollbacks and you dress them up with names like the clear skies initiative which when it's actually according to the environmentalists a rollback in pollution standards. What's your response to that sort of criticism?

Scarlett did not address that question in her response.

posted by Quiddity at 5/22/2003 09:55:00 AM