President Bush: The Environmentalist

OK, brace yourself to read this. You braced? OK. Here it is:

"President Bush will create the world's largest protected marine area today, designating as a national monument a 1,200-mile-long chain of small Hawaiian islands and surrounding waters and reefs that are home to a spectacular array of sea life, senior administration officials said last night." - The New York Times

REALLY. There doesn't seem to be any strings attached. Like, it's not Bush's "Healthy Forest Restoration Act," which allowed loggers to cut down more trees and build more roads to "protect" forests from "dangerous" forest fires. Or his plans to "protect" our oceans or to "protect" the Alaska wilderness by opening both up for some oil and gas drilling. Or when he pledged to "protect" our drinking water from arsenic.

But this pledge seems to be pretty honest. So I have a few more suggestions for our new "environmental" president.

Join the rest of the world and sign the Kyoto Accord to limit greenhouse gases being emitted by this country into the atmosphere

Pledge to make at least 50 percent of this country's energy come from renewable resources by 2015

Protect our wetlands. Ban any construction or draining of any of this country's wetlands

OK, that's enough for now. Can't ask for too much, right? I mean, he is protecting an unexploitable area of the United States. How dare we ask him to protect areas that his supporters are exploiting on a daily basis? Really.