NOW with Bill Moyers Friday, September 19, 2003 at 9PM on PBS (Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html) ============================================================= This week on NOW: * Critics say she gutted key environmental protections. What's the real story? Former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman in her own words. CLEARING THE AIR. * After 30 years of working to protect the environment, he only thought he'd seen it all. National Environmental Trust president Philip Clapp sits down with Bill Moyers. * NPR's Deborah Amos talks to author and activist Walter Mosley about fiction, money and politics. * A Bill Moyers Journal. ============================================================= CLEARING THE AIR Christine Todd Whitman arrived in Washington to head up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with commendable credentials as a former governor of New Jersey who supported pro-environmental policies. So why was she criticized for overseeing a period rife with the wholesale gutting of key environmental protections by the Bush Administration? In May, barely two years into the job, she resigned. NOW examines the new priorities at the EPA, where, critics say, environmental protection takes a back seat to politics, and Whitman gives NOW a first-hand account of the controversies that dogged her tenure. ============================================================= PHILIP CLAPP As President of the National Environmental Trust, it's Philip Clapp's job to inform the public about environmental problems and how they affect our health and quality of life. After working on energy and environmental issues in Washington since the 1970s, he's got some tough words about the current U.S. strategy. Clapp talks to Bill Moyers about how our national environmental policy may affect our international relations, his concerns about how ties to the oil and nuclear industries have directed that policy, and the politics behind the new energy bill. "What is really at stake here is 30 years of environmental protection that they're backing up on," says Clapp, "I have never seen an administration so politicize agencies. Muzzle scientists, skew data and, frankly, lie to the American public about critical public health issues." ============================================================= NOW WITH BILL MOYERS continues online at PBS.org (www.pbs.org/now). Log on to the site for information on the Clean Skies initiative; for the history of key environmental legislation; for more from Deb Amos' conversation with Walter Mosley; for a complete bibliography of Walter Mosley's works; for resources to checking local air and water quality; for a primer on World War I; and more. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp