Activists and Democrats took advantage of Earth Day yesterday to whale on President Bush’s environmental record. Earth Day Founder Gaylord Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin, said, “Tragically, the president doesn’t have any interest at all in the issue.” Rep. David Bonior (Mich.), the House’s second-ranking Democrat, said in the party’s weekly radio address that Bush had sold out to big business, rescinding a rule to reduce arsenic levels in drinking water and going back on his campaign promise to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, diplomats and environmental activists from 40 countries, in New York City to discuss climate change, criticized the U.S. for rejecting the Kyoto treaty. Environment ministers from 53 African nations joined the fun and issued a particularly biting statement about the Kyoto betrayal.
