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CNN Sunday Morning

Environmental Groups Rally Against Bush

Aired April 22, 2001 - 09:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: As the country celebrates Earth Day this weekend, environmental groups are taking aim at President Bush. They're angry over his reversal of suspension or many environmental rules put in place by the Clinton administration.

CNN environmental correspondent Natalie Pawelski has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These are busy times for Green groups. Direct mail appeals for help have presses humming. And on television, ads urge action.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, TV COMMERCIAL)

ANNOUNCER: Send President Bush a message. Let's move forward, not backward, and save our environment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEB CALLAHAN, CONSERVATION VOTERS LEAGUE: This is the worst anti-environmental assault, literally, this country's ever seen from the federal level.

PAWELSKI: The Bush political team knows that message could well resonate with key groups like suburban and college-educated voters. So in the week before Earth Day, the administration has taken some decidedly green environmental stands, like announcing support for an international treaty aimed at curbing toxic chemicals and upholding Clinton administration rules on wetlands and lead reporting.

But environmental groups are not buying it.

WILLIAM MEADOWS, THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY: This is really a theme week for the administration, the theme week of the environment. What we're seeing now are decisions not to cancel things that the past administration did. When this administration starts taking its own initiatives, when it starts acting on the public lands in a way that we feel that they truly care about conservation, then we'll believe them.

PAWELSKI: Environmentalists are smarting from actions taken earlier in the administration, like reneging on a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide pollution from coal-burning power plants and virtually abandoning the Kyoto Treaty aimed at curbing global warming.

There's also continued wavering on protecting unlogged areas of the national forests, and an ongoing push to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I sense a real attack here. It may be good short-term politics, because they're serving the oil industry or they're serving big business. But in the long term, the American people care about the stewardship of this planet.

PAWELSKI (on camera): President Bush's supporters say he's bringing needed balance to environmental policies after an administration, they say, was far too eager to rely on the heavy hand of federal regulation.

FRED SMITH, COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: I think spring's coming, we're having spring cleaning now of the regulatory state.

SEN. CHUCK HAGEL (R), NEBRASKA: Now, that's what's new in town. We've got some mature people in charge, and we've got some grownups in charge, and we're going to approach this on a mature basis, based on what's good overall for this country.

PAWELSKI (voice-over): While Green groups still stand shoulder to shoulder in their criticism of the administration, some admit to an ironic silver lining, an increase in membership and donations. But, they say, these gains have been bought at too high a cost.

Natalie Pawelski, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: To delve further into this, we turn now to Austin, Texas. On the line with us, Kenneth Green, director of the environmental program at the Reason Public Policy Institute.

Dr. Green has written and directed studies on a range of environmental health issues. And John Passacantando, I apologize for that sir, I knew I'd do that, executive director of Greenpeace.

And we'll begin with you, Mr. Passacantando. Can you just give us a sense, give us a report card, if you will, on the Bush administration so far as it relates to environmental issues.

JOHN PASSACANTANDO, GREENPEACE: Sure, Earth Day is a wonderful time to assess President Bush's first 100 days, and he has been the president most hostile to environmental protections, to children's health, in living memory and all that the administration has done that hasn't been hostile to environmental regulations has let three pieces of environmental protections stand that the Clinton administration put in place, that they otherwise might have attacked as well.

So they've been incredibly hostile to environmental regulations. They've done one thing good. The Bush administration is very honest in showing that they are representing the oil, mining, timber and auto industry in a direct payback for their campaign contributions. It is corruption at its most clear, right here in Washington now by the Bush administration.

O'BRIEN: Alright, those are strong words. Mr. Green, how would you respond?

KENNETH GREEN, REASON PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE: Well, you know, some people want to turn Earth Day into a partisan political thing. But really, Earth Day should be a time when we're celebrating the victories we've made cleaning our air, water and soil; giving our children a better life and better health; and nourishing and nurturing our wildlife and our wilderness areas of forest; and towards focusing ourselves on how we can do that best in the future, which is not always the same sort of partisan approach of the past.

There are new approaches to environmentalism that are being taken -- that are being embodied in programs around the country, and we need to do more of that and more focus on flexible and cooperative approaches to getting environmental progress.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Passacantando, essentially Mr. Green is telling you you're looking at things half-empty when he sees it half-full. After all, we have made tremendous progress since the EPA was first instituted, incidentally by President Nixon. Give us a sense, are you being too harsh? There are, it is a mixed bag when you look at what the announcements that the Bush administration has brought forward thus far relating to the environment.

PASSACANTANDO: Well, I think we'd be falling into the White House's spin agenda here to say that it's a mixed bag. It's incredibly hostile. One of the greatest threats to the planet, as most people know, is global warming. The Bush administration, one of their first acts was to pull the U.S. support for that. It was an agreement that more than 130 nations have participated in.

O'BRIEN: But isn't that an issue, somewhat, of fairness, in the sense that the U.S. was being asked to do more than other countries, such as China?

PASSACANTANDO: Well, the U.S. pollutes a lot more. The U.S., with one-fifth of the world's population, puts out one-quarter of the global warming pollution.

And then here, at home, the Bush administration wants to tear up beautiful, pristine areas, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, open up our national monuments to a handful of very small, non-job producing oil, timber and mining companies. It's a direct payback for the campaign contributions. It's against the environment, which is supported by Republicans, by hunters, by Americans of all stripes.

And so, what the Bush administration has done here, they've polarized the nation against themselves. They're in a panic now in the White House. They thought they could get away with this and it has really come back to haunt them, and I believe it will haunt them forevermore in this administration unless they truly reverse themselves.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Green, you get the sense of what the Bush administration is dealing with here, now, is a public relations problem as much as anything else. From where you sit, is it just bad PR or is it bad policy?

GREEN: Well, it's mostly bad PR and bad timing. It really, if this was an academic semester, this would be the first week of the semester. It's awfully early to be giving people their final grade this early into the program.

But, it's unfortunate. You hear this level of partisanship. What we really have here is a hyperbole crisis, not an environmental one. The rules that are going forward, as you said, are very balanced in terms of each rule is being considered on it's own merits and the fact of the matter is, there are good and bad ways to achieve environmental goals, and in those areas where the rule that's been proposed seems to be good, it's going through. And in those areas where the rule that's proposed has some drawbacks, it's not going through.

You mentioned Kyoto. Well, you know, the Bush administration may have pronounced Kyoto dead, but it was laying there dead for years and nobody wanted to admit it. Half the countries in the world, even though 130 may have participated, the ones that are going to be putting out the most greenhouse gases were absolutely dead-set on not participating, and that's going to turnaround very, very shortly.

Yes, the United States put some gases out early, but we have such a small population and we got through that phase so quickly, because of our technology, that in the big picture we're going to have a much lower impact on global warming than India and China will, and they just don't want to play and they never did, on Kyoto. So, now that it's finally pronounced dead, maybe we can actually get some positive action on global warming around the world, because people aren't trying to bring a dead thing to life.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Green, you get the sense in this debate there is very little middle ground, it's a very shrill debate. Why do you suppose that is?

GREEN: Well, I don't really know. It's a shame. It's become a sort of religious issue with some people. It's partly religion, I think, and partly partisanship. It really is a shame, because we've made this incredible progress over administrations both right and left, and we have farther to go, and some of these problems are very complicated and are not going to yield to simple dogmatic kind of hyperbole. They're going to take mature people who are compromising, working together, cooperating, seeking new ways to do things and not just falling back onto a let's have the federal government make a new arbitrary rule approach.

And it's just a shame that this partisanship is going to probably retard environmental progress if those who are so extreme don't get on the program and start trying to cooperate and find our way together to solve the problems we still have.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Passacantando, is it, is your part of the world, the groups you represent, are they too extreme and thus perhaps undermining your own efforts in some ways?

PASSACANTANDO: Well, think about it. Today is Earth Day. All across the country there will be children with their parents, picnicking, celebrating Earth Day, doing river cleanups. They'll be Republicans, they'll be Independents, they'll be green voters, they'll be Naderites, people from corporations. So, actually, the only tiny group here that's opposing all these environmental regulations that help our economy grow and help us have cleaner air and water in our cities, is the handful of oil, chemical and coal producers and their flacks.

I mean, and the fact is, every time we have moved with better environmental regulations in the last 30 years, the economy has grown, as the environment has gotten cleaner. So, you hear this at each turn, whether it's folks like Mr. Green or Bush's now-former lobbyist from the oil industry, now running the White House, they always say that this stuff will cost jobs and cost money when in fact these environmental regulations make our world cleaner, greener, make us healthier, provide a healthier world for our children, and they grow jobs.

So, when these guys get in the way of environmental regulations now, what they do is they knock the U.S. behind the Japanese, other Asian countries, the Europeans who are building the super-efficient technologies of tomorrow. The super-efficient automobiles, factories, homes, and they try to stop the world from moving forward with their PR people and their lawyers. And it just costs us jobs in the U.S.

O'BRIEN: John Passacantando, Kenneth Green, thank you very much for both being with us on CNN SUNDAY MORNING. We appreciate it.

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