An Environmental Fahrenheit 9/11

My overwhelming reaction to Fahrenheit 9/11 was relief. Not that the content of the film isn’t chilling, infuriating, outrageous and tragic. It is, and some of it breaks your heart. But afterward, as I walked away from the theater, I felt an upwelling of hope that finally, FINALLY something was possible that had been missing from America since 9/11—honest, informed, open debate about the merits of U.S. foreign policy.

Public officials, Republican and Democratic alike, have since 9/11 been cowered into postures of patriotic support for a war whose public justification was thoroughly false (the conspiring “Axis of Evil,” the imminent threat of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s involvement in 9/11) and whose execution, was a money trough for Haliburton and a grim tragedy for both America and Iraq. With Americans flocking to the theaters to see what the media and public officials have failed see—or at least failed to acknowledge—it is possible at last to ask critical questions, to think publicly and to get the democratic process rolling again.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is a blistering exposé of how the cynicism, corruption and ineptitude of the Bush administration sparked the tragedies of the Iraq war. But this same cynicism, corruption and ineptitude have sparked other tragedies as well. There is need, I think for a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 that exposes the Bush administration’s stealth war on the environment. There is so much the public does not yet know!

The two wars are, of course, connected. It is hardly a coincidence that Bush chose to attack the country with the second largest oil reserves in the world. (Saudi Arabia, the country with largest oil reserves, was already deeply tied to the oil-rich Bush family, as Fahrenheit 9/11 documents.) Removing Saddam was one objective, but also a convenient excuse. The long-term objective (revealed by U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who resigned in protest from the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia) is permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. And the reason for the bases, of course, is oil.

Imagine Michael Moore telling that story, cutting from the Iraqi oil fields to a meeting of Bush administration energy officials (many with close ties to the oil industry) who are celebrating the fact that an increasing population of Americans is driving more miles each year in lower-mileage vehicles. Let Moore show us an aging coal-fired power plant (maybe a TVA facility) and explain that the Bush administration has exempted it from key provisions of the Clean Air Act. Imagine the shot fading from there to the smoggy air of an American city (say, Knoxville) or a national park (say, the Smokies) and finally to a child coughing her lungs out with asthma.

And, on the subject of coal and oil, picture a clip of George Bush shaking hands with Enron CEO Ken Lay, the man he called “Kenny Boy,” who was one of the top funders of his 2000 campaign, and whose company may well have precipitated (in addition to the largest accounting scandals in history) California’s 2001 energy crisis. Then imagine the obtrusive Michael Moore asking Dick Cheney whether Enron or other energy corporations had undue influence on the administration’s energy policy (Cheney ducks away with a scowl and muttered obscenity). And follow that up with a droll review of the court battles Cheney has been fighting to keep the deliberations of his notorious Energy Task Force secret. “Here we have Cheney,” Moore might say, “invoking executive immunity to hide public policy-making from the American public.”

Let us see Bush abrogating the Kyoto Accord, the historic international agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses and slow the pace of global climate change. And let us hear what administration officials have to say for themselves after censoring EPA reports on global climate change, to make it appear that the damage is less severe than it is.

Show us the deliberations leading to this year’s proposed $600 million shortfall in funding for national parks, along with the administration’s memos to park superintendents instructing them not to call these cuts “cuts.” (They are in the administration’s Orwellian lingo “service level adjustments.")

Show us the intensified logging in national forests, the corporate giveaways, the gridlock on listing of endangered species, the repeated attempts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, the 40 percent drop in ERA enforcement actions, the survey results indicating that more than half of EPA’s employees fear job retaliation for reporting improper activity, the so-called “farm subsidies” to corporations like Cargill and J. G. Boswell, the military’s blanket exemptions from environmental law, the hundreds of administrative efforts circumvent environmental law and evade public scrutiny …

It could be a very long film.

One of the most powerful features of Fahrenheit 9/11 would, however, be difficult to duplicate. Moore was able to portray the pain, grief and agony that now afflict Americans and Iraqis alike. But the losses in Bush’s war on the environment are longer-term. People are being harmed now, but the worst effects will not show up for decades or centuries. The pain, grief and agony will fall mainly on future generations, who, being yet unborn, are difficult to capture on film.