December 11, 2000
Enviros, Fears and Dollars
They'd
rather die than admit it, but environmental organizations thrive
on disaster and this fact has enabled them to discern a silver
lining in the likelihood of a Bush administration, in tandem
with a Republican Congress and a Republican Supreme Court.
They remember well enough what
happened when Ronald Reagan installed James Watt as Secretary
of the Interior. Hardly had Watt mounted his elk head on his
office wall before the big green outfits were churning out mailers
painting doomsday scenarios of national parks handed over to
the oil companies, the Rocky Mountains stripped for oil shale,
the national forests clear-cut from end to end.
By the time the incompetent
Watt had been forced to resign, the Sierra Club, the National
Audubon Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Wilderness
Society and the National Wildlife Federation had raised tens
of millions of dollars and recruited hundreds of thousands of
new members. All this money transformed the environmental movement
from a largely grass roots network into an inside-the-beltway
operation powered by lawyers, lobbyists and political operators
in Washington DC's non-profit sector.
But this political juggernaut
ran aground when Clinton and Gore were elected back in 1992.
Since the mainstream green groups had annointed Gore as nature's
savior and because since they had become so politically intertwined
with the Democrats, they had no way to disengage and adopt an
independent critical posture when the inevitable sell-outs began.
Thus it was that the big green
groups let Clinton and Gore off the hook when the new administration
put forward a plan to end "gridlock" and commence orderly
logging in the ancient forests of California and the Pacific
Northwest. Similarly, they held their peace when Gore reneged
on a solemn pledge to shut down the WTI hazardous incinerator
in Ohio. Year after year they stuck to their basic game plan:
don't offend the White House: preserve "access" at
all costs.
One consequence of this greenwashing
of the Clinton administration was a sharp decline in the green
group memberships which had soared during Reagan time. But by
now the big green outfits had grown comfortable on fat salaries,
inflated staffs and plush new offices. One famous example of
the new green hedonism. Jay Hair, CEO of the National Wildlife
Federation, was wont, while lobbying on Capitol Hill, to keep
his limo running to ensure a decently airconditioned micro-climate
when he returned.
To maintain the standard of
living to which they had now become accustomed, the big green
groups sought to offset their dwindling membership revenues by
applying for help from big foundations like Rockefeller, the
Pew Charitable Trusts, and W. Alton Jones. But, so often in life,
charity didn't come without strings. All of the above-mentioned
foundations derive their endowments from oil, and along with
the money they inherited an instinct for manipulation and monopoly.
By the mid-1990s executives
of the Pew Charitable Trusts were openly declaring their ambition
to set the agenda for the environmental movement during Clinton
time, using as leverage their grant-making power. Let a small
green group step out of line and in the next funding cycle that
group would find its grant application rejected not just by Pew
but by most of the other green-oriented foundations which were
operating like the oil cartels of old.
So now, with the shadow of
a Republican administration across the White House, the green
groups see a chance to recoup, using the sort of alarmism that
served them so well in the Reagan-Watt years. Already during
the campaign they had painted George W. Bush as a nature-raper,
and then, only days after the election on November 7, e-mail
alerts began to flicker across the internet, warning that the
incoming Congress will be the "most environmentally hostile
ever".
But how can this be, if we
are to believe the premise of the big green groups, backed by
regular "dirty dozen lists" from the League of Conservation
Voters, that Democrats are by definition kinder to nature than
Republicans? Democrats gained seats in the House of Representatives
and now split the Senate with the Republicans 50/50. By this
measure the big e-mails rushing across the net should be fervid
with optimism instead of presaging doom.
In fact one of the natural
kingdom's greatest enemies in the US Senate, Slade Gordon of
Washington, has gone down to defeat. Another nature-raper, Rep
Don Young of Alaska, is being forced to vacate his chairmanship
of the House Resources Committee, victim of a term-limit agreement
by House Republicans a few years ago.
Good news doesn't raise dollars
or boost membership. So the big green groups will go painting
an unremittingly bleak picture of what lies in store. But the
likelihood is that a Bush administration wouldn't be nearly as
bad as advertised by alarmists.
Indeed there are some causes
for optimism. The model here is Richard Nixon, our greenest president
who oversaw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency
and smiled upon our greatest single piece of environmental legislation,
the Endangered Species Act. Nixon was trying to divide the left
and worked to develop an environmental constituency. Bush, if
he makes it to the White House will be similarly eager to garner
green support.
Bush would also be keen to
undercut attacks on the question of his legimacy as president,
and a kinder, gentler policy on the environment would be one
way to do it. The current betting is that Bush's nominee as Secretary
of the Interior will be the Republican governor of Montana, Mark
Racicot, a Republican version of the present incumbent of the
post, Bruce Babbitt. If the speculation about Racicot is true,
this would be a severe blow to the expectations of the Republican
hardliners, who yearned for Don Young to supervise the dismantling
of whatever frail environmental protections America still enjoys.
Of course there will be savage
environmental struggles over the next four years. Oil leasing
will be one battlefield. Salvage logging will be another. But
if you've received a hysterical mailer from one of the big green
organizations, throw it in the trash and give your support to
one of the small groups that have been fighting doughtily on
the same issues through Clinton time when the big groups were
toeing the party line ad keeping their mouths shut.CP
The Bush Affairs: a whole new meaning
to triangulation
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