President Bush

With President George W. Bush's final term ending soon, we look back to what he has accomplished for us citizens and for the United States of America. Within what he has done, we can look at laws he passed, what he has done within the iraq war, and what he has done for the environment in America. Depending on who you will ask, you will get a variety of different answers. The articles, " Bush's Seven Deadly Environmental Sins" and " Bush to Protect Three Areas in Pacific" are a perfect example of this. Within these articles they have one common subject, Bush and the environment, but they take opposite approaches on the issue.

In the first article, " Bush's Seven Deadly Environmental Sins," author Katherine Mieszowaski shows the readers seven mistakes made by Bush as well as President Elect Barack Obama's mission to change these mistakes. One of the major mistakes made while Bush was in office was the failure to regulate green house gases in America. The Environment Protect Agency (EPA) refused to regulate the greenhouse gas, Carbon Dioxide, as a pollutant until the Supreme Court ruled that it must be regulated. " The most shameful thing we've done of all is to walk away from the international debate on climate, which has crippled the debate and caused everyone else in the world to think that we're hypocritical and deluded," says Bill McKibben regarding global warming issues.

In the second article, Juliet Eilperin takes the opposite approach. She shows the positive influences George Bush has had on our environment. As of Tuesday, January 6, 2009, Bush will create three new marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean to help preserve sprawling sea and island ecosystems. These areas with total 195,280 square miles of protected land. Many environmentalist say it is too early to judge the impact of the new protections. " It has taken 137 years, since the creation of America's first national park in Yellowstone in 1872, to recognize the unique areas of the world's oceans deserve the same kind of protection as we have afforded similar places on land, " Joshua Reichert said.

By the end of his term, President Bush will have protected more ocean than any other person in history, and will match the record of some of the Nation's most conservation-minded presidents. By far, Bush is not thought of as environment friendly. He has had issues in developing clean energy sources, abandoning endangered species, the craving of oil and gasoline in America and our clean air standards. Seeing both of these articles makes me realize if he is protecting so much ocean in order to draw attention away from the damage he is doing to the rest of the environment. Sure, we will have a lot of protected ocean space, while the atmosphere and land around us is slowly being destroyed. We need to look at all aspects of what he has been doing for our Country. " For a president that's not very green, ironically, this is going to be his largest legacy. (Enric Sala)"