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Earth Day Met With Political `Gridlock on the Environment'

Posted on: Saturday, 22 April 2006, 18:00 CDT

SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Saturday was Earth Day, a time every year when Americans celebrate the environment and debate changes in the way to protect it. Yet on Earth Day, 2006, the real news may have been what hasn't changed.

Despite relentless rhetoric from environmentalists and industry that the Bush administration has shifted the balance from tight regulation toward a more business-friendly approach, in reality, the president and his supporters have been unable to significantly rewrite America's landmark environmental laws, even though Republicans have controlled all branches of government for more than five years.

Neither side plays it up. But environmentalists have blocked the president's most far-reaching efforts in the Senate, in court and with public opinion. They can't get anything passed, but not much has gotten past them, experts say.

"We're at a stalemate. It's like two male rams battling each other," said Sheldon Kamieniecki, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California.

"It's gridlock on the environment."

Bush has succeeded in some areas since taking office in 2001.

He passed a "Healthy Forests" act in 2003 to increase thinning of federal forests to reduce fire danger. His Environmental Protection Agency approved rules to cut soot from new diesel engines by 95 percent over the next decade. He also boosted funding for hydrogen research and farmland preservation; overturned rules from the Clinton administration that banned logging on 58 million acres of roadless areas in national forests, and increased oil and gas drilling on federal lands across the West.

But he has failed in a host of areas that had been higher priorities. Among them:

_Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A key goal since he first ran for president, Bush has seen ANWR drilling fail repeatedly in Congress, most recently in December when two moderate Republican senators _ Lincoln Chafee, R-Rhode Island, and Mike DeWine, R-Ohio _ joined 42 Democrats to filibuster a defense bill that would have included drilling.

_"Clear Skies." Bush's most high-profile air pollution initiative, introduced in 2002, would allow power plants and other facilities to set up a market-based system of trading pollution credits. Environmentalists say current laws are stronger, and that the bill needs to include carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. The measure has languished for four years in Congress.

_Endangered Species Act. When Bush ran in 2000, the Republican platform described the act as "punitive" and "sometimes counter-productive." It called for changes that would offer more incentives to farmers, ranchers and other landowners, including payment when use of their land is curbed to save wildlife. A bill introduced by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Stockton, that would make those sweeping changes passed the House last year but has stalled in the Senate.

_Offshore oil drilling. Bush's Interior Department has tried for five years to renew leases for 37 undrilled ocean areas of Southern California. Environmentalists and California leaders have sued, and courts have blocked the lease renewals.

_Smog equipment. At the behest of the coal industry and other business supporters, the Bush EPA issued a rule in 2002 to allow power plants, refineries and factories to avoid installing costly new pollution controls when they upgraded equipment. The rule, known as "new source review," was overturned last month by a federal appeals court, which concluded it violates the Clean Air Act.

_Water quality. Following public outcry, the Bush EPA dropped a plan last year to allow sewage plants to discharge partially treated sewage into lakes and streams during storms rather than upgrade the plants. A similar backpedaling occurred in 2001, when the EPA temporarily froze _ then unfroze _ Clinton rules to cut the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water.

The White House's environmental point man, James Connaughton, said in an interview Friday that he is proud of the administration's record.

He said Bush's successes, like the "Healthy Forests" measure, hydrogen research money or farmland protection funding, rarely receive much news coverage _ and almost no accolades from environmental groups.

"The story is at best one day long if at all, because there's no conflict," said Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

"Yet if you can find differences, they get amplified way beyond their actual merit."

He attributed the losses in Congress to regional differences, with New Englanders of both parties having different priorities and values than Westerners, for example.

And the failure of Clear Skies and arctic drilling?

"I'm deeply disappointed because they are essential to our environmental quality and our domestic energy security," he said. "But overall, I think we've accomplished 85 percent of our environmental agenda."

For the rest of Bush's term, he will continue to push the stalled initiatives and will add new priorities, including expanding ethanol use, working on voluntary partnerships with China and India to reduce greenhouse gases, relicensing nuclear power plants, and winning approval in Congress to reauthorize federal fisheries laws, Connaughton said.

Some of those are less controversial initiatives that may be easier to pass.

Environmental groups say many of Bush's efforts have stalled because they are unpopular with the public.

"The senators go home and find out if they vote for this stuff then the voters are going to be upset," said Carl Pope, national executive director of the Sierra Club. "Their own voters don't like it.'

For example, Idaho state lawmakers voted 34-1 last month to oppose efforts by the Bush administration to sell off 300,000 acres of national forest lands to fund rural schools. One of the nation's most conservative senators, Larry Craig, R-Idaho, has said he will kill the plan, Pope noted.

"The administration's legislative record on the environment is unbelievably thin," Pope said. "They have passed virtually nothing."

But executive agencies have had success rewriting rules _ to expand logging and oil drilling, overturning a Clinton-era ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, and reducing enforcement on polluters, Pope said.

Many business leaders, particularly in the energy sector, credit the Bush administration because it has worked collaboratively with them. Still, "you always hope you could have had more," said Frank Maisano, chief media strategist and spokesman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council.

Regardless of which party is in power, rewriting major environmental laws is excruciatingly complex.

"People on both sides complain about it," said Mary Nichols, a former top U.S. EPA official who now is director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment.

"You don't redo a major statute more often than once a decade, and maybe not even that frequently," she added. "It takes years to get it through the congressional process _ look at immigration and Social Security."

But ironically, in the absence of major change in policy or law, America's environment continues to improve. The nation's air is dramatically cleaner than on the first Earth Day in 1970, the water is cleaner, cars emit less smog and DDT and leaded gasoline are banned.

"The environmental movement is just psychologically and almost religiously incapable of saying things are getting better," said Gregg Easterbrook, a longtime environmental commentator and author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse."

And industry, which tends to hate government rules?

"On the flip side, conservatives don't talk about environmental improvement because you can't do it without saying three words: `the regulations worked,' " he said. "So everyone pretends that things are getting worse when things are really getting better."

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BUSH ADMINISTRATION WINS AND LOSSES ON THE ENVIRONMENT

Wins

_Diesel rules: EPA cut soot from new truck and bus engines 95 percent by 2007

_`Healthy Forests' law: Increased logging to thin out fire-prone forests

_Energy: Increased oil and gas drilling on public lands in the West

_Snowmobiles: Overturned Clinton rule banning them from Yellowstone park.

_Energy: Energy bill had subsidies for oil, also for hybrid cars, wind and solar.

Losses

_Arctic Wildlife Refuge: Drilling blocked repeatedly by Congress

_`Clear Skies:' Pollution credits trading plan stalled in Senate

_Endangered Species Act: Landowner-friendly rewrite stalled in Senate

_New Source Review: Relaxation of power plant smog rules killed in court

_California Drilling: Plans to extend offshore leases rebuffed by court

Source: San Jose Mercury News research

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(c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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