The bias of this book is proenvironment, but National Geographic
writer Devine (Alien Invasion: America's Battle with Non-Native Animals and Plants
) is no impassioned polemicist. Indeed, he opens his pragmatic overview of the current administration's environmental policies by regretting that few presidential appointees—let alone mid-level staffers or even media relations people—responded to interview requests or even to fact-checking questions. Some of his overview is compelling, particularly a firsthand report on the rural poor of Pennsylvania's coal country, whose high incidence of asthma, lupus and renal cancer is related to emissions from the kind of coal-fired plant not required (through Bush's rollback of Clinton's policies) to install pollutant-reducing equipment. Some of his overview is heavy going, particularly a detailed study of the "bean counters" at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who, he says, selectively used statistics to often underplay the adverse impact of weakened environmental protections. And some of his overview, at least for anti-Bush buffs, covers familiar areas of concern and conflict: suppression of data on global warming, controversy over increased logging to prevent forest fires, opening up wilderness areas for snowmobiling, the stealth seeding of an array of scientific advisory panels with proindustry, antiregulatory appointments, etc. Devine believes that a majority of Americans still favor a balanced yet progressive approach to the environment—qualities that he thinks are glaringly absent from what he casts as Bush's unblinking vision of "profit before protection." Agent, Robin Straus.
(June)
