Bush Team Is Reversing Environmental Policies
"Environmentalists are angered that in some cases the administration, in the
name of national security, is taking steps that they say promote the interests
of timber, mining, oil, gas and pipeline companies, at the expense of the
environment.
"They've used the smoke screen of the last two months to make key
decisions out of public view," said Philip E. Clapp, president of the National
Environmental Trust"
The New York Times
November 18, 2001
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 — In the
last two months, the Bush
administration has proceeded with several
regulations, legal settlements and legislative
measures intended to reverse Clinton-era environmental policies.
These include moves to allow road- building in national forests, reverse the
phase out of snowmobiles in national parks, make it easier for mining
companies to dig for gold, copper and zinc on public lands, ease
energy-saving standards for air-conditioners, bar the reintroduction of grizzly
bears in the Northwest and, environmentalists say, make it easier for
developers to eliminate wetlands.
Environmentalists are angered that in some cases the administration, in the
name of national security, is taking steps that they say promote the interests
of timber, mining, oil, gas and pipeline companies, at the expense of the
environment.
"They've used the smoke screen of the last two months to make key
decisions out of public view," said Philip E. Clapp, president of the National
Environmental Trust. "The most difficult situation we face is that the attention
of the media is almost exclusively on Afghanistan and anthrax."
Most notable, critics say, is the administration's renewed advocacy of drilling
for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. As President Bush
said last month, "The less dependent we are on foreign sources of crude oil,
the more secure we are at home."
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the administration's
view that oil drilling in Alaska was a matter of national security represented a
"false patriotism."
"I certainly think that the re- emergence of the Arctic drilling is a direct effort
to capitalize on events," Mr. Kerry said. "And it's a misplaced definition of
patriotism to use Sept. 11 as a rationale for doing something that has no
impact on price or dependency or immediate supply."
Administration officials say that while national security is a paramount
concern, it is not their only argument for reversing many policies enacted by
President Bill Clinton. They defend the changes as a way to balance what
they said was an extreme tilt in favor of the environmentalists during the eight
years of the Clinton presidency.
"Many of the things we have done are to put in place common-sense
approaches that we feel are a better balance," Gale A. Norton, the secretary
of the interior, said in an interview on Friday. "They better involve local
people in decision making; they are based on cooperation rather than
conflict. Our push for involving state governments in the decision-making
process, our push for negotiated solutions, our push for tailoring decisions to
particular areas of land are all based on philosophy, not on a wartime
situation."
But both sides in the environmental debates say that the political balance
changed after Sept. 11.
"In the past, you had to make an environmental argument to deflect an
environmental criticism," said Scott Segal, a lawyer and lobbyist in
Washington for several industrial concerns. "Since Sept. 11, it is possible to
articulate an energy-security rationale that can offset environmental criticism.
In comparison to security issues, criticism premised on environmental
protection begins to sound parochial and not selfless."
Before the attacks, environmentalists seemed to have political momentum in
casting President Bush as unfriendly to the environment and his administration
as beholden to the extractive industries. But in the last two months,
environmentalists have been stymied for fear of appearing unpatriotic or even
petty in the face of a national crisis.
For example, the administration has ordered the United States Coast Guard
to fortify its patrol of coastal waters, a duty that makes it less able to enforce
antipoaching rules, leaving species like rockfish, Atlantic salmon and red
snapper vulnerable. Environmentalists have remained silent, though before
Sept. 11 they might have complained loudly.
Administration officials insist they are still protecting the environment. Ms.
Norton said her department was starting a program to help individual
property owners protect endangered species. Mr. Bush's Environmental
Protection Agency is battling his Energy Department's plan to weaken
standards for air-conditioners. And while this administration has been more
responsive to governors of Western States than the Clinton administration
was, it has not always pleased them.
Just this week, Dirk Kempthorne, the Republican governor of Idaho, said at
a public hearing that he was so frustrated over federal cleanup plans on a
toxic Superfund site that he was "on the verge of inviting the E.P.A. to leave
Idaho."
The Bush administration has also decided to adhere to the Clinton
administration proposals for limiting arsenic in drinking water. Some
environmentalists thought the Bush administration should have called for
lower levels, but by setting the same amount as proposed by Mr. Clinton, it
defused the issue.
But the administration has let slide other matters that environmentalists argue
are vital to protecting air and water quality. These include a global pact on
climate change and a plan to reduce power plant emissions.
Senator James M. Jeffords, the Vermont independent who is chairman of the
Environment and Public Works Committee, is advancing his own plan to
require power plants to reduce four major pollutants. The administration
opposes it, in part on national security grounds, saying the changes could
disrupt power supplies because they might force the closing of coal-burning
plants.
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