Convocation 2003

Keynote Speaker and Environmental Advocate Protests Bush's Policies

By Leigh DuPuy

Landmark environment protection laws are dangerously diluted by the Bush Administration's public policies, argued Gregory Wetstone, program director for the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), in his keynote address given on the university plaza.

As part of the "Environmental Sciences, Public Policy, and Human Well-Being" convocation event, Wetstone gave a chilling laundry list of current policy changes he believes will undermine our nation's quality of life. "They are sweeping and pervasive," he said. "We are at a crossroads."

Wetstone outlined how an alteration in the definition of pollution by the Environmental Protection Agency has eliminated governance of mining waste. He pointed out that throughout the Bush Administration, more logging has been done in the Redwood Forest than before it acquired monument status. There are threats to preserved wetlands because of a change in its classification; clean water is endangered by a new policy called blending that dilutes sewage before it'ss released; and Yellowstone Park is so polluted by emissions from snowmobiles that park rangers wear gas masks in the winter months.

"There are hundreds of examples just like this," Wetstone said. "And how is it done? Without any public involvement, through sweetheart legal deals, a simple failure to enforce the law."

Wetstone works to right environmental wrongs through the NRDC, a non-profit environmental advocacy organization with more than 550,000 members. He advised the audience to read the papers, watch the news, participate in the process, and get on the NRDC e-mail list, which helps to mobilize volunteers and creates strategies for protesting or blocking changes to environmental policy.

The address was followed by a roundtable featuring UMass Boston faculty and alumnae: Regina McCarthy, chief of operations for the Governor's Office for Commonwealth Development; Pamela DiBona, vice president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts; Robert Bowen and William Robinson of the Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department; and James Ward of the Political Science Department.

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