11/04/03

"More Trees - Less Bush," was the sign that most pithily summed up the beliefs of the 150 protesters gathered in downtown Birmingham's Linn Park on Monday.

Carrying signs, chanting and wearing slogan T-shirts, activists spoke out against chemical weapons incineration in Anniston, the vice-president's closed-door energy policy, the president's national forests plan, and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

On one theme they agreed: Bush has been the worst president in decades, if not ever, for the environment.

"They use nice words like `clear skies,'" said Larry Fahn, president of the Sierra Club. "We all know this `Clear Skies Initiative' is a polluters' loophole."

The Bush Administration is straying far from the roots of the Republican Party, Fahn said. The nation's cornerstone environmental laws were signed by President Richard M. Nixon, who also created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency without so much as congressional support.

Environmentalists are accustomed to compromising with business to help write laws that can be approved by a mixed Congress and be palatable to most of the United States, Sierra Club leaders said. But they said that under Bush, business and the administration are meeting behind closed doors to subvert or change those laws.

"They've allowed big business to change the laws in secret," Fahn said. "That's why the Sierra Club had to sue Vice President Cheney."

Anniston residents and environmental leaders also called on Bush to shut down the chemical weapons incinerator in Anniston and destroy the weapons through a process of neutralization that has no exhaust into the air of the community.

"This incinerator is 19th century technology," said Sierra Club Alabama chairman Neil S. Milligan "It's basically a burn barrel."

In an interview, Fahn said the rally was part of Sierra Club's plan to follow the president around the country highlighting his environmental record.

"We plan to bird-dog the president as much as we can," Fahn said. "We're going to be there to spread the word."