Winter 2003 - The Bush Administration

Winter 2003 - The Bush Administration

Green Elephants
by Margo Horner
Photos by Photographer

"The environmental movement in America is alarmingly robust and strong," said George Landrith, president of Frontiers of Freedom. "What they are is they’re anti-capitalist and they don’t like America."

Frontiers of Freedom is a Republican interest group that denounces environmentalists and environmental protection plans.

Not all Republicans share Landrith’s view, said Jim DiPeso, director of Republicans for Environmental Protection, a group that formed in 1995 to combat anti-environmental changes within the party.

"The conservationist roots in the Republican Party actually go very deep," DiPeso said. "Theodore Roosevelt just compiled an amazingly large record. He realized that conservation was very important for the country. Richard Nixon was an environmental protection leader.

"There’s quite a history to be proud of. That’s why it’s such a shame that the current Republican leaders have forgotten their history."

He said the Bush administration recently initiated legislation that cuts back on environmental protections.

"The party has been taken over by this kind of hard-edged crowd." DiPeso said. "They believe everything should be left to the market. Years ago the environmental issue was much more bipartisan. For a long time the environmental movement was a very mainstream, middle-class movement."

DiPeso said Congress members who refer to themselves as conservatives are actually radicals and that traditional conservatives try to protect the needs of future generations.

"The Republican Party has kind of dug itself into this hole that in order to be a real Republican you have to be anti-environmental," he said. "If the environment is polluted, it’s okay. The free market will save it."

Landrith said he believes the free market will save the environment.

"America’s wealth is one of the reasons we have a clean environment," he said. "It is not true that a capitalist system is inherently in conflict with the environment."

Landrith said he believes capitalism actually encourages environmentalism.

"There are those who view the environment as if businesses are naturally opposed to the environment," he said. "But a logger would go out of business if he didn’t replant."

Americans are solving environmental problems because they have the money to do it. Because Americans want a clean environment, they are willing to spend the money, Landrith said.

He called this type of environmentalism free market environmentalism — use of incentives and free market principles to protect the environment as opposed to regulations.

Landrith said traditional environmentalists use fear tactics to gain public support. They threaten the population with global warming and rely on "junk science."

"If you send a press release out and have a bunch of Ph.D.s sign it, that’s not science," he said.

Environmental protection and junk science must be put aside to allow development and improve the economy, Landrith said.

Washington state House Representative Doug Ericksen, a Republican, said he agrees.

"Republicans are actually trying to solve the problem rather than make a political statement," Ericksen said. "Republicans and some of your environmental groups just don’t speak the same language."

Ericksen said that environmentalists get philosophical and want the world to go back to an earlier time. On the other hand, he said, Republicans look at the world and try to work with what they have.

The new Bush administration policies are good for the environment, despite complaints among environmentalists, Ericksen said. Take for example the Clear Skies Initiative, which amends former clean air legislation, allowing businesses to develop without drastically reducing the pollution they produce.

"On the outside it would appear that you are lowering air quality standards for businesses," he said.

But, previously the standards were so high that businesses didn’t even try to meet them because it would cost too much money, Ericksen said. Government leaders decided to lower the standards to a reasonable level to gain more support.

"They looked at the situation and said ‘How can we have clean air sooner,’" he said. "We in America have the highest environmental protections in the world."

Ericksen said the United States’ wealth allows Americans to be more concerned about the environment.

"Republicans tend to believe that wealth leads to environmental protection," he said.

Ericksen said people try to make the issue environmentalists versus Republicans because they have a political agenda, not an environmental agenda.

"These people are often anti-capitalist and anti-American," he said. "You can scare people very easily with environmental threats. They can’t really back up what they say and they scare people."

DiPeso said, however, that environmentalists’ claims are backed by large bodies of research by world-renowned scientists. He said the massive study of global climate change is a perfect example of this.

"The scientists who have been studying (global warming) for the past 10 years are world-class scientists," he said. "Why would scientists who are concerned about this run around saying, ‘the sky is falling’ without a practical reason to say so?"

Winter 2003 - The Bush Administration

Green Elephants by Margo Horner Photos by Photographer

Green Elephants
by Margo Horner
Photos by Photographer