Tree Huggers and Reformers

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 14, 2001 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

While environmentalists feign panic concerning Bush policy decisions and Democrats strain to find ways to attack the president's education agenda, improvements are being made.

When it comes to devilish deeds carried out by dastardly duos, some obvious names come to mind: Bonnie and Clyde; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Siegfried and Roy.

Then there's George Washington and Johnny Appleseed.

Certainly, if the latest hyperventilations by the nation's granola-gnashing, hemp-wearing, Earth-thumpers is any marker, George and Johnny are pure evil. After all, the nation's first president is reported to have had a predilection for fruit trees, and Johnny went about willy-nilly dropping apple seeds -- which, like cherry pits, now are known to be replete with naturally occurring arsenic. An apple a day, indeed!

In their drive for media coverage and contributions to their nonprofits, green groups once again have fallen into looking at the environmental cup as full of such half-truths. In the wake of President George W. Bush's decision in March to withdraw Bill Clinton's last-minute arsenic standards for review, socalled public-interest groups have ranted wildly. When Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christie Todd Whitman announced on April 18 that the National Academy of Sciences had been tasked with conducting her six-month review of the safety of a range of possible arsenic standards, there were no raves.

Grant Cope of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group decried the "further delay" as "unhealthy and unacceptable." But, if we are all being poisoned, why did the inflexible Clinton standard, with its $200 million price tag, not have to be implemented until 2006? And, if this is so urgent, why was it not ordered until the last breath of the administration?

Furthermore, just how many lives would the new standards save? A study by the Joint Center for Regulatory Studies -- a collaboration between the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution -- reports the new rules "probably will result in a net loss of about 10 lives annually." Let's see, that's a cost of $20 million per life.

So what is the state of pollution in the United States? The Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy on April 17 released its Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2001, which annually analyzes key environmental data and trends. According to the report, the decline in air pollution has been consistent for 30 years, and aggregate emissions of the six criteria pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act have fallen by 64 percent since 1970. Concerning toxic releases, the EPA measure shows a 45 percent decline in toxic releases since 1988, and the chemical industry has shown a 56.8 percent decrease since 1988, says the report.

Even with these positive indicators, opinion polls show the public continues to be panicked by environmentalists. An April 3-8 Bloomberg News poll, conducted by Princeton Survey Research, found that 71 percent identified with the notion that "we should protect the environment -- even if that might mean slower growth," while only 24 percent felt economic growth should be "encouraged ... even if that might mean some harm to the environment."

However, the report notes, while Wirthlin polls consistently have found 60 to 80 percent agreement with the statement that "continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost," Wirthlin also has found that at most only 17 percent agree that "economic growth should be sacrificed for environmental quality."

But as the contrived panic has reached breathless levels, the issue has not inched upwards in the minds of most Americans. In the Bloomberg poll, the economy (25 percent) and education (24 percent) were the top responses to what "should be Bush's top priority." The environment? It ranked about even with the demand for Siegfried and Roy tickets.

Which is precisely why Bush headed northward to Connecticut to stump for his education plan, set to be debated on the Senate floor the week of April 23. Addressing a crowd at Central Connecticut State University, Bush drew cheers as he affirmed the progress his program was receiving from Senate leaders. "We're finding agreement that the accountability system has got to have some teeth in it," Bush declared.

Although there is growing consensus on the major issues of accountability, testing and steering funds from failing schools to parents for tutors or alternative schools, the age-old question of spending levels has not been settled. In addition to disagreement about how much (11.7 percent) or how little (5.6 percent) of an increase exists in Bush's education budget, there are deeper philosophical differences. For instance, in criticizing Bush's budget, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said: "This historic legislation deserves historic increases in education."

On April 17, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) released its annual "Report Card on American Education," an analysis of data on public elementary and secondary schools nationwide and in the District of Columbia. According to ALEC, the problem isn't a lack of federal money.