Breach of contract: Congress' stealth campaign is now out in the open - anti-environmental policies - The Sierra Club Bulletin

Sierra, Nov-Dec, 1995 by B.J. Bergman

Congress' War on the Environment, which looked like an irresistible force as 1995 began, encountered an immovable object around mid-year: public opinion.

When they cast their ballots last November, few Americans dreamed that they were voting for dirty air, polluted water, and ravanged wilderness. And few realized, as the House plowed through its Contract With America, that "anti-regulatory" was a euphemism for "anti-environment." But thanks in part to the efforts of Club activists, voters soon started getting the message: their right to a safe, sustainable environment was being traded away in exchange for fistfuls of campaign dollars.

The anti-environmentalists haven't been stopped yet, but they are clearly losing momentum. And politicians are slowly waking up to the perils of trashing a quarter century of hard-won protections for public health and public lands.

"Four out of five Americans say they want environmental protections strengthened, not weakened," says Sierra Club President J. Robert Cox. "And the more they know about what this Congress is up to, the less they like it."

Furthermore, they're giving Congress an earful--quite a change from the first hundred days of this congressional session, when media coverage of the polluters' hidden agenda was virtually nonexistent. The stealth campaign was a short-term success: the three main anti-environmental planks of the Contract--amounting to a "Polluter's Bill of Rights"--passed easily through the House, which rubber-stamped nearly everything Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) proposed. Of the three, however, only a watered-down unfunded-mandates measure actually made it into law. The Senate has not been nearly as eager as the House to pass its own version of so-called takings legislation, which essentially pays polluters to obey environmental laws. And Senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.) had to pull his comprehensive "regulatory reform" measure--the centerpiece of the War on the Environment--after losing three consecutive attempts to send it to the floor for a final vote.

Polluters were dealt a body blow in the days that followed. In a vote that shocked the GOP leadership, 51 Republicans refused to go along with a sweeping effort to keep the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing the laws on wetlands, drinking-water standard, auto emissions, and even food safety. And though the leadership prevailed in a second vote--in large part due to the absence of at least a dozen opponents of the measure--the defections signaled a growing concern of many in Congress. Their constituents, it seems, think the government is supposed to protect their families' health.

Indeed, Dole himself, in a tacit acknowledgment that the House had overreached, said, "I doubt we'll go that far" in shackling the EPA's ability to enforce public-health standards.

Dole's doubts reflect a significant shift in the political landscape. Since just after the November elections, the Sierra Club has been working to alert the environmental movement, the media. and the American people to the pulluters' agenda. In March, along with a dozen other public-interest organizations, the Club launched a drive that gathered a million signatures on the Environmental Bill of Rights, which asserts the right of all Americans to a safe, healthy environment. The petitions, scheduled to be presented to elected officials in November, contain a powerful message to legislators. According to Executive Director Carl Pope, however, the medium is as important as the message: the effort has "provided a way to have conversations with Americans around a common theme."

The petition drive was just one facet of the Club's public-education effort. Through its "Save Our Summer" campaign, for example, activists reached out to enlist the help of recreationists nationwide in protecting the air and water. And when President Clinton caved in to opponents by signing the devastating "logging without laws" measure (see "Ways and Means," page 18), the Club and other organizations responded by staging a scornful "21-chainsaw salute" in front of the White House.

By mid-year, the GOP's stealth campaign was out in the open. Anti-environmental initiatives in Congress were under fire in the media and, more importantly, in America's neighborhoods. GOP strategist Kevin Phillips, explaining why "Americans are disgusted again" with Congress, wrote in August: "What we have seen in the last six months is a spurning of the public's priorities in order to gratify the very different desires of upper-bracket lobbies and special interests."

"As early as January," says Pope, "we knew the way to turn back the War on the Environment was by changing the political climate all across the country.

"We've got a long way to go, but the strategy's working. The days when elected officials could give polluters a free hand to rewrite the nation's environmental laws are over. Americans are beginning to see what the politicians are doing. And we think that spells the beginning of the end for the War on the Environment."