Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a presidential hopeful, took a swipe at George W. Bush yesterday by blasting the president’s environmental record. “Almost as soon as this administration took office, they invited in the chief lobbyists to rewrite the very laws that were intended to protect our land, our water, and our air,” charged Kerry. He criticized Bush for abandoning the Kyoto treaty on climate change, weakening the Superfund toxic-cleanup program, and trying to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas drilling, among numerous other moves. Kerry was particularly derisive of Bush’s oil-dependent energy policy, proclaiming that we need to build “an America where the use of military might is not clouded by our need for oil.” But in the eyes of some, Kerry himself is not immune to criticism on that front; outside the venue where he gave his speech yesterday, he was met by protestors angry over his conditional support for a war in Iraq.
