The Texas Two-Step.

The man seen by many as Enemy No. 1 of the environment has built a showplace of ecological sensitivity. Why can't we all live in a place like that?

The Bush ranch house in Crawford, Texas, balances beauty with state-of-the-art energy efficiency. Designed by Austin environmental architect David Heymann, and built by members of a religious community from nearby Elm Mott, George W. and Laura Bush's dream home is built of a BTU-efficient, honey-toned native limestone quarried from the nearby Edwards Limestone Formation.

The passive-solar house is positioned to absorb winter sunlight, warming the interior walkways and walls. Underground water, which remains a constant 55 degrees year-round, is piped through a heat exchange system that keeps the interior warm in winter and cool in summer. A graywater reclamation system treats and reuses waste water. Rain gutters feed a cistern hooked to a sprinkler system for watering the fruit orchard and grass. Clearly, Bush goes home from the White House to a green house.

Yet the Bush administration's 63-member energy advisory team has 62 members with ties to oil, nuclear, or coal interests. His national energy policy places nuclear power, increased oil and natural gas drilling, and "clean coal" as its cornerstone. The Bush budget takes a definitive step away from developing renewable energy resources. According to the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of Americans distrust Bush's "muscular energy" environmental agenda. In May, 22 religious leaders were arrested at the Department of Energy protesting Bush's plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Bush ranch is the kind of place we'd all like to live. Too bad his environmental policies are moving the rest of the country in exactly the opposite direction.

CLEAN WATER. Bush has put on hold
Clinton regulations that would have lowered
arsenic in drinking water from 50
parts per billion to 10 ppb. The bush budget
eliminates the National Water Quality
Assessment program and drastically cuts
funds for hydrology research.

CARBON DIOXIDE. On the campaign
trail, Bush vowed to establish mandatory
reductions on carbon and sulfur dioxide,
nitrogen oxide, and mercury emissions
from power plants, thus reducing smog,
acid rain, and global warming. After taking
office, he reneged on this promise.

AIR QUALITY The Bush budget
cuts $20 million from the
National Ambient Air Quality
Standards project, $3 million
from programs to reduce air toxics
and acid rain, and $3.3 million
from clean air research projects.

GLOBAL WARMING. The Bush
administration has rejected the Kyoto
environmental agreements, which would
have 38 industrialized countries cut
greenhouse gas emissions. The United
States produces 25 percent of the
destructive gases.)

SOLAR POWER.
Bush's budget cut
the Department of
Energy's solar
research funding
by 54 percent.

ENERGY POLICY: The Bush administration's
energy policy rejects conservation
as a national value and guts renewable
energy programs, and instead promotes
more production of nuclear power, oil,
natural gas, and coal.

FUEL EFFICIENCY. Bush has effectively
frozen the Corporate Average Fuel
Economy (CAFE) standards by sending
them to a National Academy of Sciences
panel for review--nine of the 13 panel
members have publicly criticized the
standards.