Greening up

The current issue of Newsweek contains a brief essay on President’s Bush’s performance on environmental issues, this being both the eve of the 31st Earth Day and just a week or so shy of his 100th day in office. The piece is accompanied by one of those computer-aided illustrations, a doctored photo showing the president walking down a path with a beautiful scene of pristine mountain and meadow on one side, a filthy patch of scrub with an oil refinery on the other.

Some of the president’s most staunch – and literal-minded – supporters are complaining that the artwork subtly shows the strolling Mr. Bush leaning slightly toward the refinery. Fact is, according to the record so far and the public’s perception of it, a more accurate depiction would have the president in a full sprint.

As that symbolic 100th day nears, Americans are giving the fairly new president fairly good marks on just about everything – fiscal policy, foreign policy, education, general demeanor and character – everything except the environment. Poll after poll make clear that the public, though never believing they were electing a tree hugger, did not bargain for the assault on the environment they believe they are witnessing. This administration is far too young to be polling in the low 30s on anything.

In some cases, the assault is more illusion than reality. When not handing out pardons, former President Clinton busied himself mightily his last few weeks in office signing into law dozens of tough rules and regulations he knew his successor would have to rescind. One such rule was the drastic, perhaps unsupportable, reduction is arsenic levels in drinking water. Mr. Bush has since recovered somewhat from the ambush by promising a science-based reduction, but not before he managed to portray himself as the president who thinks poisoned water is okay.

Most of the damage, though, has been entirely self-inflicted. The reversal on carbon dioxide reductions – a key environmental promise of his campaign – was an enormous blunder both in policy and in character. Withdrawal from global-warming talks, weakening the Endangered Species Act, expanding roads in wild areas, drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge, cutting funding for alternate energy research – all are bad ideas that the public simply is not buying.

The recent push to establish some green credentials isn’t playing too well either. The pre-Earth Day announcement that the U.S. was signing on to an international treaty to reduce use of the 12 chemicals known as “persistent organic pollutants” failed to mention that most of those chemicals already are virtually extinct here. The media blitz about his eco-friendly ranch, with wastewater recycling and passive solar, had all the real-world impact one would expect from a multimillionaire’s vanity ranch. In some cases, the president simply seems to be getting bad advice – whoever told him to drop the higher-efficiency standards for air conditioners apparently didn’t talk to those in the air-conditioning industry who’ve spent a fortune on research and development of the new product lines.

Fortunately, there are signs the president is now getting better advice. Thanks to the phenomena of the perpetual campaign, Republican strategists now are worrying aloud that then 2002 congressional elections are drawing near and the painful memory is fresh of how gains in 1994 evaporated considerably in 1996 largely due to the anti-environment aspects of the Contract with America. Throughout the country, and especially In the GOP strongholds of suburbia, the public leans more decidedly toward mountain and meadow than toward the refinery and the president would be wise to do the same.