There’s a common joke among politicians when asked about the environment – they’re in favor of it.

Cleaning up rivers and planting trees is rarely a difficult decision for lawmakers. That is, unless you live in Maine, where the air, the forests, even the fish are controversial, and have sparked some of the most passionate politics in recent memory.

The four candidates for governor all support a clean environment in conjunction with a strong economy, but the ways Democrat John Baldacci, Republican Peter Cianchette, Green Independent Jonathan Carter and independent John Michael propose to achieve that goal span the political spectrum.

Baldacci, a career politician with Bangor roots and Washington experience, is a negotiator. He wants to study Maine’s environmental problems, then craft solutions by consensus – with other states and provinces, with corporations, and with the Washington establishment and its millions in federal grant money.

Cianchette of South Portland has political experience but is, at heart, a businessman. He calls himself a “conservationist” and favors market-based solutions to environmental problems in an effort to preserve Maine’s natural resources while building the state’s economy.

Carter, a Green Independent from New Portland, is the race’s environmental activist. A trained ecologist, Carter has spent much of the past decade advocating for sustainable forestry and building Maine’s Green Independent Party.

And Michael, a seven-term legislator from Auburn, did not respond to requests for an interview, but made strong statements about the dangers of government intervention during an environmental debate held in Portland earlier this fall.

Forestry

Carter’s years of advocating for tighter forestry regulations place him under scrutiny, but he’s confident that as governor he could work with his former adversaries in the timber industry.

“I want the timber industry here, I want to see them thrive, but as good environmental citizens,” he said. “All I’ve ever wanted for Maine’s forest is sustainable harvesting.”

All the candidates applaud sustainable forest certification programs as a step forward.

“I have trust that it brings out the best in companies,” said Cianchette, who prefers voluntary conservation initiatives. “We ought to be encouraging companies to be exceeding environmental standards.”

The candidates also pledge to advocate the diversification of Maine’s forest products industry from raw materials to higher-valued products.

“It’s like we’re the Third World nation. We’ve got the two-by-four that we’re selling for $3, while someone else, somewhere else, is making the skateboard that costs 90 bucks,” Baldacci said.

Baldacci and Carter agree to a ban on liquidation harvesting, the clear-cutting and quick sale of forested land intended for development. Cianchette is wary of saddling industry with an outright ban, and calls for further study of the practice.

“Before we send in a command-and-control approach, we need to understand what’s happening,” he said.

Maine’s forest practices are responsible, candidates said, but can be continually, gradually improved by investing in new technology as it becomes available.

“They [forestry companies] want to learn. They say, ‘Tell me a better way,'” Baldacci said. “That’s why the research is so important.”

Pollution

Cianchette calls waste management Maine’s biggest environmental dilemma.

“Landfills are near capacity,” he said, citing problems with everyday trash, as well as toxic substances, that could be solved with state funding.

Baldacci, too, focuses his pollution goals on closing gaps in Maine’s regulations, such as the disposal of mercury and lead.

Carter warns against becoming too satisfied with the quality of Maine’s air and water. The Green Independent would like the state to support construction of a closed-loop paper mill that does not create environmental pollution.

“While the rivers may look a lot cleaner, there are a thousand chlorinated compounds coming out of these paper mills,” Carter said. “Nobody is even talking about the water.”

Carter also wants to join with other New England governors and Atlantic Canada premiers to file a lawsuit against the Midwest industries whose air pollution drifts to Maine.

“There’s no reason why they should be dumping mercury and acid rain on us,” he said.

Cianchette opposes such an adversarial approach. Market-based techniques such as tax incentives or emissions trading could be effective in improving the quality of Maine’s air and water, he said.

“What’s most important is that we engage everyone in the policies that affect air quality,” Cianchette said. “We need to find the carrot and not the stick.”

Michael, too, fears prescriptive environmental policy.

“We need creative ideas to protect the ecosystem that intrude as little as possible on private property rights,” the independent said.

Land preservation

The No. 1 threat to Maine’s environment is sprawl, according to Carter, whose platform includes a $250 million land preservation bond to double the amount of public land in Maine. He also supports wilderness recovery in the form of a locally managed North Woods park.

“If you sit down with reasonable, intelligent people and discuss the benefits, the park is not as controversial as the extremists would make it,” Carter said. “It’s irresponsible to exclude studying something that could benefit some of the poorest areas of the state.”

In pursuit of wilderness, Carter would limit access points on the Allagash River. Baldacci and Cianchette support the waterway’s current management and would support the controversial canoe launch at John’s Bridge.

Both major-party candidates prefer the traditional system of private land and public access that can be formalized through voluntary conservation easements.

Cianchette has pledged to spend as much as the state can afford on a land conservation bond, given budget constraints.

Baldacci proposes a $100 million Land for Maine’s Future bond, citing the urgency of preserving rural areas, particularly in southern Maine.

“There are areas that if we don’t do something soon, we may lose the opportunity,” he said.

Michael is opposed to all bonding. He would support the creation of public land, but only through the state’s annual budget.

Baldacci and Carter both call for regional land planning groups to manage development so it balances the needs of economy and environment.

Cianchette turns to tax policy to encourage people to live within city centers and reduce suburban sprawl where people believe it is problematic.

“Sprawl means different things in different parts of the state,” Cianchette said. He opposes land management policies that could stand in the way of economic development in rural areas.

Michael, too, fears overly broad land planning. Towns, even neighborhoods, should have the right to veto state land planning initiatives opposed by local people, he said.

“NIMBY [not in my back yard] is actually not such a bad idea,” Michael said.

Fish and wildlife

All the candidates purport to be passionate outdoorsmen with a stake in Maine’s fish and wildlife.

Both Baldacci and Cianchette have promised sportsmen they will support the state’s controversial coyote snaring program until new information is presented that justifies a policy change.

Carter approaches wildlife management in a very different way, calling coyote snaring “cruel and unnecessary.”

“That word ‘management’ implies that we know best, and I think that’s a very arrogant view,” he said. “We need to be humble when we look at nature, and use science as the basis of our public policy.”

The Green Independent would set aside a portion of tax revenue from outdoor equipment sales to protect biological diversity, as well as provide state funding for the Audubon Society’s efforts to map critical wildlife habitat.

Baldacci and Cianchette have pledged to increase funding for wildlife work, but wish to do so by providing general fund money for the state’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and pursuing federal grants for other research, such as the Audubon mapping.

The two major-party candidates are indistinguishable in their views on sportsmen’s issues. Both would oppose bans on bear baiting, and both would support hunting advocates’ plans to offer gun safety courses in public schools. Both men have pledged to support an ongoing effort to double production at Maine’s sport-fish hatcheries.

Under either a Baldacci or Cianchette administration, the boat “milfoil sticker” program created last year to provide money for invasive species control would be opposed.

“The current program is clearly not working,” Baldacci said.

Legacy

All politicians leave an environmental legacy, whether intentional or not, and the policy-makers that gubernatorial candidates admire tell a great deal about how they view the natural world.

Cianchette applauded The Nature Conservancy’s “balanced and reasonable approach” to conservation, preserving hundreds of thousands of acres through consensus, and creative approaches such as land swaps and conservation easements. He would like to be remembered as a similar pragmatist who managed to achieve environmental goals by working with business to find common ground.

Carter cited Percival Baxter, a former resident of the Blaine House and the father of Baxter State Park. Like Carter, Baxter was willing to propose new ideas in the face of opposition and advocate the sort of large-scale change that leaves a major impact on the landscape. The Green Independent candidate also cited Civil War hero Joshua Chamberlain as an idol. Both men had a “deep-felt connection” for the state and acted on their convictions, Carter said.

Baldacci told a story about sitting in his father’s Baltimore Restaurant on the Penobscot River, seeing and smelling the pollution from upstream industry. He is inspired by the work that former Maine Sens. Edmund Muskie and George Mitchell did to ensure clean air and water, and would like to follow in their footsteps, vigilant about protecting the quality of the environment that Mainers encounter in their everyday lives, he said.