Bush speaks with reporters, claims his enviromental policy is one of "greasing the apocalypse."
President Bush broke his first campaign promise on Tuesday when he decided not to act on mandatory pollution control for electrical power plants. The move would have curbed carbon dioxide emissions, a so-called greenhouse gas.
The action by Bush delivers a serious blow to the US signed Kyoto Protocal, a 1997 treaty aimed at reducing greenhouse gasses - long suspected to be the cause of global climate change. The US, with just four percent of the world's population, creates a quarter of all carbon dioxide pollution.
Ironically, Bush's move came as scientists found the first direct evidence that the greenhouse effect has become significantly stronger over the past 30 years. Not only causing more turbulant weather patterns through climate change, greenhouse gasses also trap solar radiation that would normally be deflected back into space. Coupled with a still thining ozone layer, which protects life from lethal solar radiation, the future effects of Bush's move look grim.
"Quite frankly the president has put money over the health of the earth's population," said Andy Dwyer, a spokesperson for the Earth Lovers Alliance. "It is a dim possibility that other nations will hold to the Kyoto accord when they see that the United States is not doing so."
President Bush scoffs at critics. "Look, nobody can prove that carbohydrate dioxidus is a dangerous thing. I tried looking it up in a dictionary and it doesn't even exist. So I'm certainly not going to make a coal plant cut a gas that could lead to the destruction of all the peoples. It's not fiscally sound."
Bush also countered cries of indignation over his broken campaign pledge by saying that "anybody worth two bills knows a Republican would never put health or safety over big business. Especially when I'm only making a crappy two-hundred grand a year."
The president did say that he is concerned about pollution, however, pointing to his fine enviromental record as governor of Texas. The Lone Star State has the distinction of having some of the worst pollution in the nation. "That just didn't happen over night," Bush said, "so you can see how well off the peoples will be under my rule."
