McCain Turns Back on Grand Canyon

[babylonsister]

McCain Turns Back on Grand Canyon
GOP Hopeful Talks Like Teddy Roosevelt But Doesn't Act Like Him

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona (James Gordon, Flickr)

By John Dougherty 07/22/2008



Grand Canyon National Park, Ariz.—Arizona Sen. John McCain. the presumed GOP nominee, has repeatedly declared himself a disciple of Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican president who first brought an environmental ethic to the nation and, as part of his conservation effort, set aside the Grand Canyon as a national monument 100 years ago.

McCain has regularly prodded his fellow Republicans to embrace Roosevelt’s belief that the nation must leave to posterity a land in better condition than it was found. McCain reiterated his Roosevelt stripes in a recent interview with The New York Times, just as he had loudly declared it during his first bid for the presidency in 2000. “Theodore Roosevelt was my hero and is to this day,“ McCain said during a 2000 GOP presidential debate. “He was responsible for the National Parks system, the crown jewels of America. They are $6-billion under-funded, they’re under enormous strain.”

Nowhere is the "enormous strain" on the national parks greater than here at the nation’s most famous park. Ironically, at a time of the Grand Canyon National Park’s greatest need for a latter-day Roosevelt to ride to the rescue, McCain is nowhere to be found.

There has been a recent dramatic increase in mining claims on uranium-rich federal lands adjacent to the park. And there is now growing concern that radioactive mining waste could contaminate the park and also seep into the Colorado River, which provides drinking water to more than 25 million people. While out on the hustings, McCain has been pushing his plan to build more than 100 nuclear power plants over the next 50 years, as one possible answer to U.S. dependency on foreign oil. So, it appears that, rather than trying to forge a nuclear energy policy that also protects the park and the river, McCain has opted to vanish from the controversy now raging in his home state.

more...

http://washingtonindependent.com/view/mccain-turns-back-on

[snowbear]

1. McDud is a dirtball.

[islandmkl]

2. he liked it better when the river was up at the top of everything....

[Bobbieo]

3. My Congressman, Raul Grijava from Tucson, has Temporarily halted

uranium mining in the Grand Canyon area. Hope it become permanent.