Arches National Park, Utah -- When the Bush administration moved into the White House, they alleged, falsely, that outgoing Clinton staffers had destroyed the switchboard, painted the walls with obscene graffiti, and otherwise engaged in wholesale vandalism. In fact, all that really happened was that some staffers removed the "w" keycaps from computer keyboards.

As a psychologist might say, the Bush people were actually projecting. On their way out, the Bush administration's political appointees will definitely vandalize property, beginning with our national parks. First there was the announcement that the Bureau of Land Management, without notifying the National Park Service, has done massive leasing of lands right next to Utah's National Parks,  including sites only 1.3 miles from the state's most famous icon, Delicate Arch.

Now, over the formal and informal objections of virtually every regional office, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to weaken rules that protect our national parks from air pollution from new power plants, refineries and other emitters. According to the Washington Post, the Bush administration's

...push to weaken Clean Air Act protections for "Class 1 areas" nationwide has sparked fierce resistance from senior agency officials. All but two of the regional administrators objecting to the proposed rule are political appointees.

The proposal would change the practice of measuring pollution levels near national parks, which is currently done over three-hour and 24-hour increments to capture emission spikes during periods of peak energy demand; instead, the levels would be averaged over a year. Under this system, spikes in pollution would no longer violate the law.

The rules protecting the parks were the first project I worked on when I came to the Club in 1973. A key problem we were trying to solve was that, for 25 percent of the year,  you couldn't see across the Grand Canyon. Under this new Bush proposal, that would be completely acceptable -- though probably not to tourists, who largely visit during the high-smog season.

Congress will have a chance to undo the clean air regulations -- but the land leases will be irrevocable. More vandalism on the way out the door is, I fear, utterly predictable.

Los Angeles -- Today California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is hosting a bi-partisan, international Governor's Climate Summit in Los Angeles, and I have just obtained a copy of the taped remarks that President-elect Obama will deliver. In these remarks, Obama repeats his commitment to an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 and an ambitious $15 billion-per-year investment in clean energy technologies and solutions. Thus Obama strongly signals that the U.S. will rejoin the world, stating that even though he will not be President when the international community meets next month in Poland, he will be there in spirit. "While the United States has only one President at a time, I've asked members of Congress who are attending the conference as observers to report back to me on what they learn there. And once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and will help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change."

Obama goes on to make clear to the governors, business leaders, and international delegates present in Los Angeles today that the era of federal resistance to their leadership on climate and energy is going to end on January 20. "When I am President, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that's willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America."

See the President-elect's remarks here.

Detroit -- As of this morning, it appears that the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress are perfectly prepared to let General Motors go into bankruptcy, and that President-elect Obama and the Democrats in Congress are trying to simultaneously reform and rescue GM. Since the auto industry has been, after Big Oil, the most faithful business handmaiden of the Republican Party, you might find this a mite peculiar. And since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi comes from the metropolitan area with probably the lowest percentage of Detroit-made vehicles of any in the country, it seems stranger still.