Anyone seeking a measure of how far the nation’s environmental awareness has slipped during the Bush Administration need only consider this: Earlier this month sportsmen and other green folk cheered a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stating dams were not a part of the natural ecosystem. Read it here.

The court was forced to make that ruling because the Bush Administration was actually making the claim that dams had been around so long on the Columbia River, they should be considered part of the natural environment. And because they are part of the natural system, their impacts couldn’t be considered a reason Columbia basin salmon have been pushed toward extinction. And that, of course, meant dams should not be regulated or removed to help salmon.

It didn’t take long for the clearly astonished three-judge panel to give the administration what the Portland Oregonian rightly described as a unanimous slap-down.

In earlier times (say, six years ago) this would sound like material for The Daily Show, a matter of such absurdity that even uttering it would bring ridicule. After all, no one in their right mind – even their far-right mind – would make the claim that a massive wall of concrete across a free-flowing river should be considered part of a natural ecosystem. If allowed to stand, that logic could be used to undo regulations on power plants that cured acid rain because those plants had been around so long their pollution was now just a natural part of the atmosphere.

One might argue, as many have, that dams are more important than fish, or that cheap, clean hydroelectric power is more important than preventing a race of salmon on the Columbia River from becoming extinct. That would be the principled argument used by many opponents against the push by sportsmen and other environmentalists to address the damage to river systems caused by dams. It’s a point of view worthy of due consideration. Problem is, the public has considered those points, and rejected them. By wide margins, Americans want natural systems restored.

This admittedly leaves policy-makers with a challenge, especially since the pressing issue of global warming means we must get more power from clean sources, like dams. But if we can put men on the moon in less than 10 years from a standing start, surely we can find a way to produce the same amount of  clean power without destroying valuable renewable resources.

Yet anyone who has followed this administration is surprised by their recent dams-are-natural gambit. It’s just more of the Alice-in-Wonderland logic it has tried in other environmental issues when the facts put the lie to its desires – which are always to err on the side of industry profits.  

At first we were stunned by this tactic. But six years later we are reduced to claiming “a victory” when a court issues a ruling pointing out that dams are not a natural part of the landscape.

Thanks, Dubya.