Bush to Phase Out Environment by 2009

“President George W. Bush confirmed today that his gutting of the Endangered Species Act is part of a broader plan to phase out the environment entirely by the time he leaves office in January of 2009.”

So says Andy Borowitz, comedian and author of the Borowitz Report, which won the first humor award ever given by the National Press Club.

Sometimes in life you just have to laugh to keep from crying, and Borowitz is a master at taking serious issues to their absurd extremes to make a point—while also delivering a few smiles. He’s done it again with this “news story” about President Bush’s plan to eliminate the environment so gradually that “hardly anyone will notice it’s missing.”

In his satiric criticism of President Bush’s frequently destructive environmental policies, Borowitz pretends to be covering a speech the president never actually gave to “the Association of Indiscriminate Applauders in Washington, D.C.”

As part of the satire, Borowitz reports that Bush said “the EPA would henceforth be renamed the Environmental Prevention Agency.” Borowitz also has Bush calling for “a gradual reduction in air and water” and “the accelerated extinction of all superfluous organisms by the end of fiscal 2008” to ensure the environment will be completely phased out by the first quarter of 2009.

“It is time for all Americans to take sides,” Borowitz reports the president saying. “Are you with us, or are you with the black-tailed prairie dog?”
_{Photo of Andy Borowitz by Steven Henry/Getty Images. Photo of President Bush by Ken Cedeno/Getty Images}

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