The Air Up There

I got a little incensed this morning when I read an article about the Bush Administration trying to undue Clinton's Clean Air policies, particularly the allowable amount of mercury factories can expel. The other big environmental issues of Dubya haven't bothered me too much. The Alaska drilling for oil idea isn't a good one, but I had a hard time believing W would be able to make it happen. And it didn't seem too crazy to see a politician looking for another source of oil (the crazy thing is that no politician seems to be looking seriously into another fuel source other than oil). The Kyoto business of a few years past didn't get my ire up. I swallowed the spin that Bush and his gang didn't think the document was well-written (or something like that). Hey, not all laws/accords/pacts/treatises/memos/notes passed between diplomats with good intentions are going to do a good job of putting those intentions into action. It's better for the environmentalist cause if all such documents are as well put together as possible than if they aren't. But wanting to do away with the mercury limits doesn't sit well with a someone who has been warned about mercury for six years of research and lab courses. It's not good stuff. As I wander through my thought process on this, I'm thinking about the arsenic business that was all the rage when Dubya first go into office. Or was that Clinton as he went out of office?

At any rate, I'm pissed about this mercury business. The regs passed just fine at least three years ago, if not more. And companies had all sorts of time to start trying to comply. Now the Bush boys' trying to do away with the reg smacks of something vile. It's never a pleasant thing to watch the idiots running the country muck up science.

Enough of my ranting. Again to bring levity to an icky situation, I link to The Onion. As always, enjoy.