Heinz Kerry has an ecology agenda
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | May 24, 2004
PITTSBURGH -- Teresa Heinz was in a potentially awkward position when she became an outspoken environmental activist nearly two decades ago. She served as a board member of Environmental Defense at the same time that her husband, Senator John Heinz, was supported by the United Mine Workers. A clash seemed likely when the environmental group began pushing for clean air legislation opposed by many coal workers in Pennsylvania.
But behind the scenes, Teresa Heinz helped persuade her husband to support a clean air provision proposed by Environmental Defense, enabling polluters to trade so-called ''emission credits" with companies that reduced pollutants more than the law required, and her husband became one of the most important Republican votes for passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act. Then, just before John Heinz died in a plane crash in 1991, one of his last conversations with his wife concerned their plan to use part of the family fortune on environmental efforts. Her foundations have since poured nearly $200 million into an array of environmental causes, including large sums to help Pittsburgh become an environmental model for the nation.
Now, with her second husband, Senator John F. Kerry, running for president, Teresa Heinz Kerry again is asserting herself on environmental issues, partly because of her belief that the Bush administration is undoing the clean air law that her first husband -- and the first President Bush -- helped pass. In a series of speeches, including one earlier this month, Heinz Kerry has said it is ''a sin against humankind" that the current Bush administration has rolled back environmental policy on clean air and water.
In a statement to the Globe, Heinz Kerry sought to explain that view by providing a contrast between her work in cooperation with President George H. W. Bush on the Clean Air Act and the Kyoto accord on global warming, and her belief that President George W. Bush is undercutting both efforts. ''A sin against humankind is allowing something that no person or community or even a country can protect itself against by acting alone," said Heinz Kerry, who plans to continue overseeing her charitable foundations if her husband is elected president.
She said George H. W. Bush ''endorsed the need for a community of nations to act in concert to address global environmental issues. But his son did not even bother to engage the Kyoto protocol. . . . Our country has enjoyed a long history of bipartisan support for the environment, but this administration has cynically undercut that, offering proposal after proposal that pretends to protect the environment while actually rolling back safeguards."
Heinz Kerry's criticism also deals with a clean air policy of the Bush administration known as new source review. Critics say the policy allows too many older, polluting power plants to stay in operation, while the Bush administration says the policy helps eliminate court battles and would reduce harmful emissions by 70 percent over the next 15 years.
* League Of Conservation Voters gives Kerry a 96 out of 100 grade and Bush a zero. That's right folks, a zero, an F, the only time anyone in history has gotten such a grade. Amazing huh? On the environment Bush's talk is all phony. He's been busy rolling back environmental protection since Day One. |
