Conscious Choice: Voting Green in the Presidential (and Illinois) Primaries

March 2000 | News of the Earth

Voting Green in the Presidential (and Illinois) Primaries

by Dave Aftandilian

With the Illinois primaries coming up on March 21, it seems like a good time to take a look at the environmental records of the leading presidential nominees. Much of the information listed below for the Democratic and Republican candidates comes from the League of Conservation Voters’ (LCV) recently released report, "2000 Presidential Profiles," available on the LCV web site at www.lcv.org. LCV will be updating the report periodically throughout the campaign season. Based on extensive research, interviews, and responses to a questionnaire, the report is a treasure trove of information about where each candidate stands on the environment.

It comes as no surprise that both the Democratic presidential candidates run rings around all the Republican candidates, environmentally speaking. According to Deb Callahan, president of the LCV, both "Vice-President Al Gore and former Senator Bill Bradley have been friends of the environment and would promote environmental progress from the White House." At the other end of the scale, the report singles out George W. Bush as having the "weakest record on environmental issues among competitive major party candidates." John McCain gets a mixed review overall, although he turns out to be far and away the most environmentally friendly Republican candidate — and the only Republican to respond to the questionnaire the LCV mailed out to all the candidates.

Starting from the bottom, let’s take a look at George W. Bush’s environmental record as governor of Texas. His most consistent stand has been against federal environmental regulations — he thinks state and local governments should be given the authority to set and enforce their own environmental regulations. "Texans know best how to protect our environment and conserve our own natural resources" and "I say to the federal government,‘Leave us alone. We know what we’re doing.’... We know how to run our own business." These are representative quotes from Bush on this issue.

Fine in an environmentally conscious state, perhaps, but not in Texas, which ranks second to the last among states in the amount of money it invests in state parks. Texas ranks first in the nation in toxic emissions to the environment, including toxic air emissions from industrial facilities; Texas also leads in the number of toxic chemical accidents. In 1999, Texas had the worst air pollution in the U.S.; half of Texas’s population lives in areas that either flunk federal ozone standards or are in danger of doing so. The situation has not been helped by the fact that Bush refused to implement a new vehicle-emissions testing program that the state itself had developed to comply with the 1990 Clean Air Act; Bush called it "onerous and inconvenient." A third of Texas’s rivers and streams probably violate federal water quality standards, although no one knows for sure because the state declines to test them all, according to a report last April in the Dallas Morning News.

Even more disturbing, perhaps, is Bush’s strong support for "takings" legislation that would compensate property owners for complying with environmental regulations — in essence, paying them not to pollute. He also opposes the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions of global warming gases, supports free trade ("I’m not going to allow labor and environmental codicils to scuttle free trade. I’m a free trader"), and has fought against the Endangered Species Act.

Compared to George W. Bush, John McCain looks like a raging Green. He has worked on bipartisan legislation to protect Arizona’s forests and desert wilderness, supported tougher fuel efficiency standards for cars, and voted in favor of a number of bills that would help the National Parks and other public lands. Perhaps alone among the Republicans, McCain isn’t afraid to call himself an environmentalist and mean it; at a campaign stop in Seattle, for instance, he said that "Republicans have to do a lot more than they are doing today for the environment" and that he hopes "it’s possible for a conservative president to be an environmentalist."

On the other hand, McCain has often stepped aside and voted the Republican party line on environmental issues in the Senate, earning only a 20 percent lifetime environmental voting average in the LCV’s National Environmental Scorecard (see below for more information on the scorecard). Like Bush, McCain opposes the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and supports the WTO; he sided with environmentalists on four out of eight Clean Air Act votes in 1990, but has expressed little interest in taking leadership roles on other pollution and public health issues. Also like Bush, McCain is a proponent of private property rights and "takings" legislation.

While McCain is clearly the green choice for Republicans, it’s much harder for Democrats to choose between Al Gore and Bill Bradley on their environmental records; both have excellent green credentials (but for a more skeptical take, see Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair’s article "Scanning the Presidential Playground" in the February 2000 issue of The Progressive). Gore was a leader in the creation of Superfund legislation to clean up toxic waste sites, supported the 1990 amendments to strengthen the Clean Air Act, and has been a proponent of energy conservation measures. He was active in calling for action to curb global warming even before most environmental groups focused on the issue, and played a key part in salvaging the U.S. role in drafting the Kyoto Protocol. The most recent environmental issue that he has taken up is the fight against urban sprawl.

Two main issues prevent Gore from earning a perfect score as an environmental candidate. The first is free trade, which he has ardently supported and continues to tout despite its clearly adverse effects on environmental protections and labor rights. The second are his close ties to the oil industry, especially in the form of his family’s major shareholdings in Occidental Petroleum. The company is quite active in oil exploration in South America and is currently planning exploratory drilling on the traditional lands of the U’wa people of Colombia — which the U’wa vehemently oppose. Though a number of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, have asked him to use his clout as a major shareholder to sway Occidental, Gore has so far declined to do so (for more details on the Gore/Occidental connection, see the Rainforest Action Network’s page at www.ran.org).

Bill Bradley, too, gets high marks on most environmental issues. He cosponsored numerous bills to protect public lands and health in New Jersey while he was a senator, has consistently opposed the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, supported Superfund legislation, supports mass transit and cleaner cars as an antidote to sprawl and air pollution, and supports energy conservation measures and the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. But he shares Gore’s enthusiasm for free trade, calling it the "best means" to promote economic growth at home and abroad. The only other major blot on Bradley’s environmental record comes from some environmentalists in his home state, who feel he seldom took the lead on environmental issues; as Richard Kane of the New Jersey Audubon Society put it, "The problems with Bradley are more a question of inaction, rather than any outright attacks on the environment."

Although the LCV chose not to include information on third party or independent candidates in their report, I want to mention the two candidates I consider the most credible choices for the national Green Party nomination — Ralph Nader and Joel Kovel. By definition, no party is more environmentally conscious that the Greens; check out the guiding principles on one of their main web sites, for instance, at www.greens.org. If you’re sick of having to choose between bad and worse, but instead want to vote for someone, I strongly encourage you to consider the Greens. Obviously the Green candidate for president will have a slim chance of winning. But if the Greens can take 5 percent of the vote nationwide, they would qualify for federal matching funds in 2004 — a goal well worth shooting for.

Ralph Nader, "Public Citizen #1," officially announced his candidacy on February 21. You can visit the web site at www.nader2k.org. The "Joel Kovel for President" site is at www.greens.org/ny/kovel. It’s worth checking out, because Kovel has a lot of good ideas about why we need third party candidates, and how we can reform the current economic system to stop "the plunder by a small metropolitan fraction of the remaining three quarters of the world." You can find more information on all the Green candidates at www.politics1.com/ greens .htm. If you’d like to take part in the Illinois Green Party’s nominations for candidates on March 18-19, contact John-Paul Schmit at 773-324-5201 or jschmit@midway.uchicago.edu.

Other National, State, and Local Races

Although the contest for U.S. president is certainly the biggest race being run this year, it’s by no means the only one. And, in terms of impact on Chicagoland’s local environment, it may not even be the most important one. Unfortunately, at press time, none of the environmental groups I contacted had yet decided on which candidates they were endorsing. By the time you’re reading this, though, they will have; you can contact the Illinois Sierra Club to obtain a list of their endorsements at 312-251-1680 or illinois.chapter@sierraclub.org, and the Chicago Greens at 312-243-5619 or brudner@arcologize.org.

However, Hans Detweiler, acting political chair for the Illinois Sierra Club, did give me some information on two races on which the Sierra Club will be keeping a close eye. The first is for retiring incumbent John Edward Porter’s U.S. House seat in District 10 (the North Shore). Porter was a moderate Republican who often voted pro-environment, and as such will be sorely missed. So far, eleven Republicans, one Democrat, and one Reform Party candidate have declared their candidacy for the nomination. Because the House Democrats need to pick up five seats to regain the majority from the conservative Republicans currently in charge, this race may well draw national attention.

The other is Christine Radogno’s bid for reelection as state senator from the southwest suburb of La Grange. Radogno, a Republican, has proven herself a strong advocate for environmental issues in Illinois; for instance, she was one of the prime movers behind the creation of the $250 million Illinois Clean Energy Trust. Because she originally won election by less than a hundred votes, it’s a safe bet her reelection bid will be a close one too.

For up-to-date information on these and other national and state races, check out www.politics1.com. Politics 1 is unaffiliated with any party or organization, and represents the no-punches-pulled opinions of its author, Ron Gunzburger. Although it doesn’t have specific information about environmental stands of the candidates, its state page for Illinois lists all the candidates running for office, with links to their web sites as well as the web sites for all the state political parties (if you think it’s just Democrats and Republicans in Illinois, think again — Politics 1 lists no fewer than eleven political parties for Illinois).

Finally, the LCV remains your best all-around source for information on how each member of the U.S. House and Senate has voted on the major environmental issues of the year. The 1999 National Environmental Scorecard should be posted on LCV’s web site by the time you read this; you can use it to check how all the incumbents voted on environmental issues over the past several years (you can also call LCV for a copy at 202-785-8683). LCV also offers an e-mail update that gives you the results of environmental votes in Congress within forty-eight hours of when they’re taken, and a "Congressional Lookup" feature you can use to find out who your congressional representative and senators are, and how to contact them.

Preserving America with National Monuments

"The President of the United States is authorized in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be National Monuments, and may reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected."

So wrote Congress in the Antiquities Act of 1906, empowering the president to grant protective national monument status to federal areas with significant historic, scenic, and/or scientific values. Since then, more than 105 national monuments have been created, protecting millions of acres. Theodore Roosevelt designated the first national monuments, including the Grand Canyon and Pinnacles in 1908. Like the Grand Canyon, Denali, and Joshua Tree, many national monuments later became national parks; in fact, nearly a quarter of all the national parks were national monuments first.

Every president since Roosevelt except Nixon, Reagan, and Bush has protected land under the Antiquities Act. Although some national monuments are as small as one acre, many are quite extensive. Jimmy Carter, for instance, declared 56 million acres spread over fourteen areas in Alaska national monuments during his last year as president. And in 1996, Bill Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, saving 1.7 million acres from development.

Now also in his last year in office, President Clinton seems to want to be remembered for protecting American lands. As a recent op-ed in the New York Times put it, "a land legacy is clearly Mr. Clinton’s best shot at environmental posterity." And naming new national monuments seems to be his method of choice — probably a wise move, considering the partisan bickering that has kept Congress from passing much legislation of substance during Clinton’s second term in office. While Congress does have the power to redraw boundaries of national monuments, or even abolish them outright, it has only de-designated 5,000 acres since 1906. However, several pieces of federal legislation currently under consideration seek to set stricter limits on the Antiquities Act, so Clinton’s moment of opportunity is now.

He has not hesitated to seize it. Acting on recommendations presented by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt (which in turn were based on public comments from meetings held across the country), President Clinton formally declared the creation of three new national monuments, and the expansion of a fourth, this January. The biggest area to be protected is the more than one-million-acre Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument just northwest of the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Home to bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, and California condors, among many others, this colorful landscape of side canyons, plateaus, and gorgeous vistas is also a critical watershed for the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. By setting up this monument, Clinton has effectively doubled the amount of protected land around the Grand Canyon.

The Agua Fria National Monument, also in Arizona, will save more than 70,000 acres of canyon and mesa country, including hundreds of important archeological sites, from pothunters and Phoenix’s urban sprawl. Consisting of thousands of small uninhabited islands, rock outcroppings, and exposed reefs along the California coast, the California Coastal National Monument will preserve habitat and nesting grounds for sea lions, seals, and hundreds of thousands of seabirds. And the 8,000-acre expansion of the Pinnacles National Monument near San Jose will keep Silicon Valley’s boom from decimating soaring rock spires that were once the rim of an ancient volcano, as well as protect mountain caves and desert lands.

As Clinton noted in his speech announcing these new national monuments, "this is not about locking lands up; it is about freeing them up, from the pressures of development and the threat of sprawl, for all Americans for all time." And according to a poll of Arizona voters, local groups in states where the new monuments will be located approve of the president’s efforts — 78 percent of those surveyed supported the creation of the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, and 75 percent supported the Agua Fria National Monument.

The Sierra Club thinks these areas will not be the last that Clinton designates as national monuments, and we can only hope that’s true. One region still in crucial need of protection is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Even though the refuge is estimated to have only enough recoverable oil to supply America’s needs for 200 days, the oil industry continually pressures Congress to open this sensitive area — calving ground for thousands of caribou, and home to dozens of other species — for drilling. Designating the coastal plain of the refuge a National Monument would protect it from the imminent threat of oil development and habitat destruction forever, and would make Clinton’s land legacy truly unforgettable.

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