Conscious Choice: Vote for the Environment

October 2000 | News of the Earth

Vote for the Environment

by Dave Aftandilian

The cover story from the September/October issue of Sierra magazine poses the question "Why Vote?" With special-interest groups — especially multinational corporations — exerting increasing influence over the electoral process through their financial contributions to political candidates on both sides of the aisle, some good environmentalists may be planning to sit this election out in mute protest. As Carl Pope and Paul Rauber explain in "Why Vote?," this would be a real shame:

"This November, the electoral planets have aligned themselves so as to make major change possible, with all three branches of government in play as they have not been since 1952.... A shift of as few as a dozen seats could rid us of the anti-environmental Republican leadership in the House and Senate. With a new leadership that could work with environmentalists of both parties, Congress could once again pass desperately needed landmark legislation. And with a sympathetic president and Congress, we might finally get some environmental advocates on the Supreme Court."

On the other hand, if Governor George W. Bush is elected president, it would be an unmitigated disaster for the environment. Unless we want to see thirty years of environmental progress reversed in four, we must not let Bush win the White House.

And that’s exactly what we’d be doing if we chose not to vote and support pro-environment candidates in the many close races at the national and state levels — or if we threw our votes to Bush by voting for Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate for president. Out of a fit of anti-corporate pique, Nader has chosen to run in this election, regardless of the fact that he may well hand the election to Bush, so that he can give the Democrats "a cold shower." Pretty petty politics for someone who has fought for consumer and public health protections for more than thirty years. Nader should be ashamed of himself — and so should any environmentalists who vote for him.

Gore Versus Bush

First, let’s get the obvious out of the way: why should you not vote for Bush? Well, let’s start by taking a look at his environmental record in Texas. Texas ranks forty-ninth among all states in per capita spending on public lands, and forty-sixth in water resource protection. Texas can boast a couple of environmental firsts, though — according to the Environmental Defense Fund, Texas ranks first in public health risks from six major air pollutants; first in total emissions of toxic chemicals, as well as release of toxic chemicals into the air (it ranks third in release of toxic materials into water); first in underground injection of toxic chemicals; first in cancer hazard risk from manufacturing facilities; and first in production of animal waste from factory farms. According to the Environmental Working Group, Texas has the worst record in the country at inspecting companies known to be violators of the Clean Water Act.

While it’s not fair to blame all of this on Bush, who inherited many of Texas’s environmental problems when he was first elected governor in 1994, along with a very conservative legislature, he has done next to nothing to solve the problems. His choice of political appointees and preference for voluntary-compliance procedures have almost certainly made things worse. For example, Bush’s appointees to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, the state’s leading environmental agency, have been very telling. They have included Ralph Marquez, formerly with the Texas Chemical Council and Monsanto; Barry McBee, an oil specialist from a Dallas law firm; and Robert Huston, a former environmental consultant to Texas industry. And of course his most high-profile political appointee — his vice-presidential candidate, Dick Cheney — has deep ties to the oil industry. During his years in the Senate, Cheney voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, and more recently served as head of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil field company according to the Reuters news agency, which writes that "the U.S. oil industry may have found its dream team with Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush’s pick of Dick Cheney as his vice-presidential running mate."

Enough about Bush’s past in Texas — what does he have in mind for the environment if he’s elected president this November? Bush has vowed to reverse the Clinton-Gore administration’s proposals to protect roadless areas in the national forests; he also supports increased logging in the national forests. He has said that he might rescind some of the national monuments that President Clinton designated to protect wilderness areas. Like Cheney, Bush advocates drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and opposes the Kyoto Protocol to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Bush also believes the Endangered Species Act unfairly harms the interests of private landowners; under his watch, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has done everything in its power to avoid listing species as endangered. He also opposes campaign finance reform, and supports "takings" legislation that lets landowners sue the government for actions they claim reduce the value of their property (Bush passed a takings bill in Texas in 1995, soon after taking office).

In general, Bush opposes pollution-control legislation; he has said that "the command-and-control structure out of Washington, D.C., won’t work. The idea of suing our way or regulating our way to clean air and clean water is not effective policy." He favors voluntary measures instead, like the Clean Air Responsibility Program he instituted in Texas in 1999 to convince older plants whose dirty emissions had been grandfathered in to volunteer to reduce those emissions. So far the plan has not worked; enrollment has been quite sluggish, and only 15,000 tons of emissions have been stopped, out of hundreds of thousands of tons emitted. And it has also been revealed that the very companies whose grandfathered emissions were treated so leniently in this voluntary bill helped write it, and also gave generously to Bush’s gubernatorial, and now presidential, campaigns (to the tune of $640,000 in the governor’s race and $1.1 million in the presidential, according to Rolling Stone magazine). About the only good news in Bush’s plans for the environment is that he has promised to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which federal, state, and local governments can use to preserve lands for parks and other open space.

Vice-President Al Gore, on the other hand, has consistently shown himself to be a friend of the environment on most issues. According to Time magazine, "thanks to Gore, the Clinton Administration is the most pro-environment in a generation." During his years in Congress, Gore was a leader in creating the Superfund legislation to clean up toxic waste sites. He also supported strengthening the Clean Air Act (both in Congress and during his years in the White House), and has been a proponent of energy-conservation measures. Gore educated himself and his fellow Congressmen about the dangers of global warming even before most environmentalists were focusing on the issue, wrote the best-selling book Earth in the Balance about global warming and other environmental issues, and stuck his political neck out to salvage the U.S. role in the 1997 climate change negotiations at Kyoto.

Gore has been a staunch supporter of public lands, voting to keep oil drilling out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and even going so far as to persuade Clinton to veto a government funding bill that contained a rider that would have opened ANWR to drilling — even though this was extremely risky, politically speaking, and resulted in the short-term shutdown of many federal government offices. Gore wrote in Earth in the Balance that we must "completely eliminate the internal combustion engine," and he recently reaffirmed his support for this statement. In the meantime, he supports increasing fuel-efficiency standards for all vehicles, as well as increasing funding for public transit.

Gore’s only major flaw, environmentally speaking, is his strong support for free trade legislation. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Gore said that "we must welcome and promote truly free trade. But I say to you: it must be fair trade. We must set standards to end child labor and to prevent the exploitation of workers and the poisoning of the environment." Trouble is, such standards have so far been viewed by the World Trade Organization as "nontariff barriers to trade" that need to be done away with. It remains to be seen whether a President Gore could reverse this trend.

If Gore is elected president, he has promised to protect all roadless areas in the national forests, including the Tongass National Forest in Alaska; support full wilderness protection for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming, without sacrificing jobs; support stricter clean-air standards, including further restrictions on emissions from power plants; enact legislation to reduce pollution from factory farms; use "Better America Bonds" to help communities preserve open space and farmland; support campaign finance reform, including the banning of all soft-money donations to parties. Gore also recently unveiled his plan for an Energy Security and Environmental Trust Fund that would help fund research into renewable-energy technologies and offer American consumers tax breaks and other incentives to purchase energy-efficient vehicles, homes, appliances, and other products.

As the Sierra Club put it in the press release announcing its endorsement of Gore for president, "When it comes to protecting our environment, Al Gore is by far our best shot at a President committed to a sustainable future, tested as a political leader, and qualified to lead America into the next century."

Gore Versus Nader

I hope the case has been made that a Bush presidency would be a nightmare for the environment, and that a Gore presidency would be a significant step forward for environmental protections across the board. In other words, contrary to what some — including Ralph Nader — would have you believe, there are glaring policy differences between the Republican and Democratic parties and their presidential candidates, and the Democratic policies are by far the more environmentally friendly. Now the trickier question: why not vote Nader?

First of all, Nader can’t win. If he gets the 5 percent of the vote nationwide that the Green Party needs to secure $5 million in federal matching funds for the next election cycle, he’ll be very lucky; a number of polls show his support running at 3 percent or less after the Democratic convention, and that number may drop even further by election day.

However, Bush can win, especially if Nader siphons enough votes away from Gore in key states like California. According to pollster John Zogby, two out of three people who vote Nader would have voted for Gore if Nader were not running. Or, put more plainly by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of the Water Keeper Alliance in a recent New York Times op-ed, "a vote for Mr. Nader is a vote for Mr. Bush, and environmentalists who join his personal crusade risk marginalizing the conservation movement."

Here’s another way to look at the Nader issue, courtesy of Hans Detweiler, political chair for the Illinois Sierra Club. The Illinois chapter was one of thirty-nine that urged the national Sierra Club to endorse Gore (only one chapter wanted to endorse Nader). Detweiler told me that "we made the decision that we want to spend the next four years on offense instead of defense. If Bush is elected because environmentalists vote for Nader, we will need to spend the next four years explaining why we shouldn’t drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, why we shouldn’t make compliance with the Clean Air Act voluntary, etc. But if Gore is elected, we can spend time talking about what we should do about global warming, implementing better mass transit, and so on. We see a Nader vote as a wasted vote."

It’s also worth keeping in mind that personality-wise, Nader would make a lousy president. While there is no question of Nader’s character and liberal credentials, his almost complete lack of political acumen and detailed positions on most environmental issues make him a poor choice for the role of president, which requires not just independent leadership but also the ability to compromise and make deals across party lines when necessary. The hardline rhetoric on Nader’s Web site makes it clear that "compromise" is not a word to be found in his vocabulary, and the absence of detailed plans or policy recommendations is disappointing, to say the least.

As the League of Conservation Voters wrote on its Web site, "The Nader factor could easily make the difference between a Gore and Bush presidency.... Please, cast your vote to make a difference, not just a point. Vote for Al Gore. He’s the only choice we have for an environmental president. He’s earned our support."

Sierra Club Endorsements

In addition to supporting Al Gore for president, the national Sierra Club has endorsed the following candidates for the Illinois delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives. All are incumbents, and all scored at least 94 percent on the 1999 Environmental Scorecard from the League of Conservation Voters: Luis Gutierrez (D-04), Rod Blagojevich (D-05), Danny Davis (D-07), Janice D. Schakowsky (D-09), and Lane Evans (D-17). The Illinois Sierra Club has also endorsed all of these candidates for Congress. In addition, they have endorsed Lauren Beth Gash (Ind-10) and Jeff Cooper (D-20).

Some of the most important environmental battles for Illinois voters will be fought in Springfield rather than Washington, D.C., and the Illinois Sierra Club has made a number of endorsements in state senate and representative races. Four of these contests deserve special attention, according to Hans Detweiler, the Illinois Sierra Club’s political chair, because their outcome will play a large role in determining which party controls the Illinois House and Senate, and because they are extremely tight races. The environmental heroes in these races are state senators Christine Radogno (R-24, LaGrange) and Terry Link (D-30, Highwood) and state representatives Jack Franks (D-63, Woodstock) and Susan Garrett (D-59, Lake Forest/Lake Bluff), all of whom are facing tough fights for reelection.

For a complete list of Illinois Sierra Club endorsements, please give them a call at the number below. They also would welcome your volunteer assistance to help these environmentally friendly candidates get elected.

Resources

Bush for President, 512-637-2000

Gore for President, 615-340-2000

Illinois Sierra Club, 312-251-1680

League of Conservation Voters, 202-785-8683

Nader for President, 202-265-0183

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