Boycott Bush! - Pres. Bush, environmental policy - Brief Article

If the oil, chemical, nuclear, logging and other eco-crimes industries had sat down to draw up a profile of their ideal President, they could scarcely have come up with anyone better than George `Dubya' Bush. Bush's record in his first 100 days has been a veritable onslaught on the environment.

So far, corporate America's White House puppet has killed off government lawsuits against tobacco companies, scrapped restrictions on the construction of logging roads, dumped rules on environmental clean-up of water supplies and laid the path for oil drilling in Alaska's last wilderness. Killed off as well is America's tiny commitment to limit its greenhouse gas emissions, with Bush's dismissal of the Kyoto Protocol. And in order, we are told, to deal with the very climate change he has doubted, Bush plans to build new nuclear power stations in America for the first time in 25 years. And every single industry let off the hook by these dramatic changes financed Bush's election campaign to the tune of tens of millions of dollars ...

Maddest of all, perhaps, is Dubya's (read: the military-industrial complex's) plan for the vast National Missile Defence system, ostensibly to protect the US from `rogue nations'. But what nation could be more dangerous for global security than one which systematically destroys the climate, ramps up a new arms race, imposes its own destructive economic model on everyone else, and sells off its democracy to the highest corporate bidder? If any country is now a `rogue nation' -- out of control, and threatening the rest of us -- it must surely be the USA.

Several campaign groups are now openly calling for a boycott of American products in protest at this onslaught -- and particularly at Bush's scrapping of Kyoto. Exxon oil company -- which trades as Esso in the UK -- tops the list as Exxon played a key role in persuading Bush to dump Kyoto, but other American companies such as Texaco, Chevron, Pepsi, Coca-Cola & McDonalds, should be made to feel the cold in Europe.

MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Co-ordinated emails to Bush may help -- send him your personal objections at president@whitehouse.gov. Good websites calling for a boycott of US products and full of other ways to express your outrage include: www.BoycottAmerica.org, www.boycott-bush.org www.iiyi.org.uk and www.boycottbush.net from Ethical Consumer which lists the top 20 donors to the Republican Party. Also see the replies to a letter to Bush from Greenpeace's directors on www.greenpeace.org.