Last week, more than one million Americans called, faxed, and emailed the White House in a "virtual march" against war. A few weeks before, ten million people, marched against pre-emptive war in the US and around the world. But President Bush has made it clear that he will pay no attention to what the people say, no matter how many speak up.

Welcome to the club peaceniks. For the past two years, environmentalists have watched the Bush administration disregard public opinion in most decisions. Let me explain.

Snowmobile Smog

A couple of years ago, the National Park Service set in motion a plan to boot most snowmobiles out of Yellowstone National Park. The machines are noisy and smelly, their riders can harass wildlife, and the pollution they emit was obscuring Old Faithful and other beauty spots and forcing rangers to wear gas masks.

The public was invited to weigh in. Three hundred fifty thousand people did so. Eighty percent supported the ban. Snowmobile manufacturers filed a lawsuit. Just recently the Bush administration made its decision public: the number of belching snowmobiles in the park will increase. The administration spokesman acknowledged that public sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of the ban, but said, in effect, tough potatoes. We'll do what we want to. This despite the public outcry and an internal Park Service study that found banning the machines would be the best alternative for the environment.

George Bush may not like Democrats. Fair enough; that's politics. But now it appears his administration doesn't like certain aspects of democracy itself: His agencies, working hand in glove with the industries they are supposed to regulate, are moving to keep the public from having any influence on a host of decisions to an extent not seen for decades.

Evidence is most apparent with the natural resources agencies.

Forest Policy

One example of dozens is a proposed rewrite of the regulations governing the Forest Service. At present, the agency must prepare an environmental impact statement prior to approving the plans that guide the management of a national forest for fifteen years. The process for producing an EIS includes public hearings and opportunities for comment via mail and email. Congress thought it made sense to allow people to make their views known before a plan is adopted that could lead to the ruin of their favorite hiking areas and trout streams-or threaten their homes with possible landslides. The revisions announced recently could eliminate the EIS currently required and therefore eliminate the public's right to meaningful participation altogether.

Undermining the Environmental Magna Carta

On a broader scale, an administration task force is about to announce suggestions for "modernizing" NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA is the heart and soul of American environmental law. It requires that the environmental impacts of major projects be examined before the projects are authorized, that alternate ways of achieving the same end are considered, and that the public be involved every step of the way.

NEPA has vastly improved environmental decision-making in this country, and helped stave off a hydroelectric project in West Virginia (now a wildlife refuge), a ski resort in California (now part of Sequoia National Park), an oil and gas development in wildlife habitat in Wyoming (now safe in the Gros Ventre Wilderness), and hundreds, maybe thousands, more ill-considered proposals.

Lately, the administration has argued that NEPA should not apply in federal offshore waters, the vast area between three and two hundred miles off our coasts (inconvenient for the Navy) and that it should be suspended for logging allegedly aimed at reducing the risk of fire. We don't know yet the details of the NEPA-review task force will recommend, but it seems certain that it will include a dramatic lessening of public participation, participation that has skyrocketed with the advent of the Internet and electronic mail.

Protecting Democracy?

The Internet has clearly changed the game of public comments on pending proposals. Thousands of websites invite visitors to send a message to their representatives or various agencies with the click of a mouse. It is understandable that recipients of these missives give them less weight than they do an old-fashioned letter.

What seems to be happening, however, is that the Bush administration is using the email revolution as an excuse to ignore the public altogether, and that's a dangerous development that could lead us down a slippery slope toward redefining what it means to be a participatory democracy.

Tom Turner, is senior editor at Earthjustice. www.earthjustice.org

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