Given that George W. Bush observed Earth Day in the unparalelled beauty of the Adirondaks this year, I'm wondering if the town fathers and other powers that be might consider inviting Nero's Ghost to dedicate the next firehouse up there in northern New York State? The effect would be the same: Nero fiddled while Rome burned to the ground, and George Bush finagles while the Earth's biosphere goes down the tubes! (and drags a good portion of its inhabitants along).
Of course, the difference is that Rome was relatively small and not impossible to rebuild, whereas the biosphere took millennia to create and is pretty much irreplacable. But the present occupant in the Whitehouse has other more pressing issues to consider, like how else to enrich his friends in the oil and energy industry maybe? And, perhaps, other means to curtail the civil liberties of those who might disagree with him and his handler's corporate agenda. It's not hard to see right through Dubya's "Clear Skies" initiative, even in the haze of say, Denver? Reportedly, it's one step forward, two steps back in the dance of the wondrous world of industrial emmissions. The Administration has already demonstrated its concern for air quality when it slammed on the brakes for raising CAFE standards. Maybe higher auto mileage for CO2 and fume spewing gas guzzlers is not an oilman's idea of air pollution? Try parking that thought among all the idling snowmobiles at the gates to Yellowstone where park rangers have to wear respirators.

Frankly, as a born and raised New Yorker, I'm a little surprised more of my former neighbors didn't send the man packing. It's not all that easy to run a scam on folks from the Empire State where the art of deception was pretty much invented. George W. Bush celebrating Earth Day? Get out! It's like Bambi celebrating the first day of hunting season. It's simply doesn't make sense. The man has the worst environmental record of any chief executive since Captain Ahab. But hey, we've never had so much material for copy out here on the enviro beat. It's like the Outrage of the Month Club, only it seems to happen daily! We can hardly wait to see what he has in store for us on May Day.