GOP presidential frontrunner George W. Bush boasts about a law he signed in Texas earlier this year that set voluntary pollution standards for old industrial plants, saying he has done more than any previous Texas governor to clean up industry. But enviros and even federal officials say the new law is far too lax to clean up Texas’s air to federal standards, and campaign records indicate that the companies that helped draft the law have since donated nearly $1 million to Bush’s presidential campaign. Bush said in an interview last month that government ought to “work with local jurisdictions using market-based solutions and not try to sue our way or regulate our way to clean air and clean water,” an approach to environmental problems that is widely praised by business and loudly criticized by environmentalists. Bush has yet to articulate a national environmental strategy, though he has spoken out this year against the Kyoto treaty on climate change and in past years has criticized the Endangered Species Act.
