In a private letter to President-elect George W. Bush, Rep. Jim Hansen (R-Utah), the incoming chair of the House Resources Committee, has proposed reversing a wide range of the Clinton’s administration’s environmental initiatives. Hansen has suggested easing a ban on snowmobile use in some national parks, taking away some the national monument designations by Pres. Clinton, blocking regulations limiting hardrock mining, and placing fewer restrictions on air tours over national parks. Meanwhile, the Canadian minister for the environment, David Anderson, said Canada would fight a plan by the Bush administration to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Anderson also predicted that the change of administration in the U.S. would delay progress on international environmental problems like global warming.
