by Philip Shabecoff

About the author: Philip Shabecoff is the founding editor and publisher of Greenwire, a computer-accessed data bank on environmental studies, legislation, and court decisions. Shabecoff served as the New York Times environmental correspondent from 1977 to 1991 and is the author of A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement.

If Republicans can get away with calling what is happening on Capitol Hill “environmental reform,’’ then the Nazi blitz of London during World War II could have been called urban renewal. As the usually restrained columnist David Broder put it in the Washington Post, “The Republicans, as far as anyone can tell, are preparing to take the country on the greatest leap backward in American history.”

Conservatives’ Lies

Many of the stories that the conservatives in control of...