EARTH DAY President's record on environment is a mixed bag

Environmentalists have managed to block Bush's most far-reaching efforts.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Saturday was Earth Day, a time every year when Americans celebrate the environment and debate changes in the way to protect it. Yet on Earth Day 2006, the real news may have been what hasn't changed.
Despite relentless rhetoric from environmentalists and industry that the Bush administration has shifted the balance from tight regulation toward a more business-friendly approach, in reality, the president and his supporters have been unable to significantly rewrite America's landmark environmental laws, even though Republicans have controlled all branches of government for more than five years.
Neither side plays it up. But environmentalists have blocked the president's most far-reaching efforts in the Senate, in court and with public opinion. They can't get anything passed, but not much has gotten past them, experts say.
"We're at a stalemate. It's like two male rams battling each other," said Sheldon Kamieniecki, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California.
"It's gridlock on the environment."
What he's won
Bush has succeeded in some areas since taking office in 2001.
He passed a "Healthy Forests" act in 2003 to increase thinning of federal forests to reduce fire danger. His Environmental Protection Agency approved rules to cut soot from new diesel engines by 95 percent over the next decade. He also boosted funding for hydrogen research and farmland preservation; overturned rules from the Clinton administration that banned logging on 58 million acres of roadless areas in national forests, and increased oil and gas drilling on federal lands across the West.
But he has failed in a host of areas that had been higher priorities. Among them:
UDrilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A key goal since he first ran for president, Bush has seen ANWR drilling fail repeatedly in Congress, most recently in December when two moderate Republican senators -- Lincoln Chafee, R-Rhode Island, and Mike DeWine, R-Ohio -- joined 42 Democrats to filibuster a defense bill that would have included drilling.
U "Clear Skies." Bush's most high-profile air pollution initiative, introduced in 2002, would allow power plants and other facilities to set up a market-based system of trading pollution credits. Environmentalists say current laws are stronger, and that the bill needs to include carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. The measure has languished for four years in Congress.
UEndangered Species Act. When Bush ran in 2000, the Republican platform described the act as "punitive" and "sometimes counterproductive." It called for changes that would offer more incentives to farmers, ranchers and other landowners, including payment when use of their land is curbed to save wildlife. A bill introduced by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Stockton, that would make those sweeping changes passed the House last year but has stalled in the Senate.
UOffshore oil drilling. Bush's Interior Department has tried for five years to renew leases for 37 undrilled ocean areas of Southern California. Environmentalists and California leaders have sued, and courts have blocked the lease renewals.
USmog equipment. At the behest of the coal industry and other business supporters, the Bush EPA issued a rule in 2002 to allow power plants, refineries and factories to avoid installing costly new pollution controls when they upgraded equipment. The rule, known as "new source review," was overturned last month by a federal appeals court, which concluded it violates the Clean Air Act.