Republicans Attack Obama's Environmental Protection From All Sides (Suzanne Goldenberg)

Created by : Francis Goodwin View profile

Environmental protection in US under attack from extremist Tea Partiers backed by big business

Mar. 4, 2011 (The Guardian/UK) -- It started on a sultry day in Houston when hundreds of protesters, mostly oil company employees, were bussed to a concert hall in their lunch hour to rally against a historic first step by Congress to reduce the pollution that causes climate change.

Republicans are moving to weaken the US's environmental protection controls, including a ban on wolf hunting. (Riccardo Savi/Getty Images)

The event marked the start of a backlash by wealthy industry owners and conservative activists against Barack Obama's green agenda. Now it has snowballed into what green campaigners say is the greatest assault on environmental protection that America has ever seen.

Eighteen months after that Houston rally, the green agenda is under assault on multiple fronts, from cutbacks in recycling in Wisconsin to the loosening of regulations governing coal mining in West Virginia and a challenge to the authority of the White House and federal government to act on climate change.

"This is almost unprecedented in environmental history, in that they are moving in so many directions and in so many ways to effect the same results that even if they are only partly successful, it will still have a serious outcome," said Bill Becker, secretary of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which monitors air pollution.