By Terry McCarthy
As she ascends to a 4,500-ft.-high ridgeline
overlooking the Kern River in the California Sierras, Ruby Johnson Jenkins says
she smells trouble. Stretching out before her is a vast panorama of blackened
slopes, a grim legacy of the fire last August that burned more than 150,000
acres of the Sequoia National Forest. But it isn't the charred timber that
makes her wrinkle her nose. The ill odor, she says, is coming from Washington,
specifically from President George W. Bush's controversial plan to increase
logging in national forests in the name of reducing the risk of fires.
"There are two battles for this
forest," says the sprightly Jenkins, 77, who has co-written three books on
hiking the Sierras. "The first was the fire itself. Now there's the battle
to save the trees." Not everything in the forest burned. Clumps of oaks
still show green against the blackened slopes, and the fire stopped short of
the ancient stands of sequoias. But among the Forest Service's restoration
options is a plan to take out as much as 10 million board feet of timber from
Sequoia National Monument. Although some ecologists say it's a necessary
treatment for forests that will wither without resuscitation, from the mouths
of Bush allies, it smells rotten to many environmentalists. "It seems as
if they've been looking for an opportunity to log," says Jenkins,
"and the fires have suddenly handed them a way to get around the usual
restrictions."
If she is right, it is yet another example of how
the Bush Administration has managed to get what it wants on the environment.
For two years, the President has found ways to bypass restrictions on oil and
gas drilling, mining, logging and coal-fired power generation. Within days of
the Republican gains of last November's elections, the Administration stepped
up what critics view as an all-out assault on the environment with a series of
pronouncements: that snowmobiles could operate in Yellowstone National Park,
oil drilling could expand in Padre Island National Seashore in Texas, the
National Marine Fisheries Service would ease salmon protections in the Pacific
Northwest, and Washington would soften rules on logging and energy
conservation. Opponents predict a new wave of even bolder measures in the
coming months that could affect water and air quality and renew efforts to open
Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling. In response to
the critics, White House spokesman Scott McClellan says, "There are a
number of alarmist groups out there that are trying to promote fear in order to
boost their own fund raising."
Bush has paid a low political price for his
aggressive steps, partly because his opponents have been largely ineffectual:
environmental groups ritually accuse the Administration of trying to reverse
three decades of environmental policies, but they are preaching mostly to the
converted. Earlier this month, the attempt by Senators John McCain and Joe
Lieberman to launch a bill to limit greenhouse gases met with stern disapproval
from the White House-and little apparent interest from the public. Although
Americans as a whole are uneasy about the President's environmental
stewardship--a CBS News/New York Times poll taken in November said 46%
of Republicans and 72% of Democrats thought that the Federal Government should
do more to regulate environmental and safety practices in business--there is
scant sign of public outrage on any single issue.
This is partly due, no doubt, to the more
immediate threats preoccupying the nation. Green issues played almost no role
in the midterm elections. "The environment is not going to be the defining
issue in an election when terrorism, war and a limping economy are stacked on
top of it," says Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental
Trust. And it's partly owing, surely, to the fact that conservationists have
been crying wolf for too long: by opposing every tree-cutting and development project
across the West, they have diluted their credibility on the big issues.
But credit Bush for a successful strategy, in
particular for having learned from previous mistakes. When former House Speaker
Newt Gingrich used Republican control of Congress to assault regulations
governing mining, oil drilling and air and water pollution in his 1994 Contract
with America, the measures were quickly derailed in committee or vetoed by
President Bill Clinton. "Gingrich thought he had a mandate to push antienvironmental
measures, and he just put a huge bull's-eye on his back," says Scott
Stoermer, communications director for the League of Conservation Voters.
Bush, by contrast, has learned to stand oblique
to the current of public opinion on the environment, allowing criticism to
slide off his back. His lieutenants in Interior, Agriculture and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have quietly focused on the regulatory
route, using administrative guidance and legal loopholes to achieve what
Gingrich could not obtain in the full glare of the legislative process.
"They are rejecting the full-frontal-assault approach that gets a lot of
media attention in favor of death by a thousand strokes of the pen,"
contends Stoermer. The Republicans are also learning how to spin environmental
issues in their direction. In a confidential document distributed to G.O.P.
Governors and members of Congress just before last November's elections,
Republican pollster Frank Luntz advised party members to refer to themselves as
"conservationists." The document said, "The first (and most
important) step to neutralizing the [Republican environmental] problem and
eventually bringing people around to your point of view on environmental issues
is to convince them of your 'sincerity' and 'concern.'"
Instead of announcing new logging quotas, for
example, Bush traveled to Oregon last August to announce the Healthy Forests
Initiative. Judicious thinning of trees--which the Forest Service calls
"management-caused changes in vegetation"--would prevent the fires
that were raging across the West, he suggested, pointing to ecological
research. It was left to bureaucrats to explain later that the initiative would
provide for the logging of trees as much as 30 in. in diameter and would make
it easier for forest managers to circumvent time-consuming environmental-impact
statements when drawing up logging plans.
But ecologists' views vary widely on the right
ways to manage forests. Wally Covington, a Northern Arizona University
professor, believes the President's forest-restoration project is on the right
track, although he acknowledges the potentially corrupting role of private
logging interests. "Suspicions are not unfounded, based on history, that
when you start [restoring], commercial interests might be the tail that wags
the dog," he says. "None of us in conservation ecology want to see
that happen."
When more intractable environmental disputes
arise, the Administration tends to shunt them toward its allies in Congress.
Bush's recent proposals on amending the Clean Air Act allow older power plants
to avoid installing costly pollution controls that are mandatory for newer
ones. The White House says the plan will encourage old power plants to pollute
less, but environmentalists say it's a free ticket for power generators to keep
polluting. Nine states are suing the government to block the proposal, and it
will also face a strong battle in Congress. The EPA's announcement two weeks
ago that it was considering scaling back protections under the Clean Water Act
was equally controversial. And attempts to open the ANWR to drilling are likely
to set off another fierce struggle. The new chairman of the Senate Energy
Committee, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, said last week that he would try to attach
the ANWR proposal to the budget bill, which would deny Democrats the chance to
filibuster (the budget bill requires a simple majority to pass).
Despite its loyalties to the extractive
industries, the Administration ultimately runs on political expediency, not
ideological conviction. When Bush's decision to drop a Clinton-introduced
standard on arsenic in drinking water caused a public stir in 2001, the
President quickly reversed his position to avoid wasting political capital.
Although several recent court rulings have gone against Bush--blocking attempts
by the Administration to start logging in 58.5 million acres of areas declared
roadless by Clinton, drill off the coast of California and explore for oil and
gas near Utah's Arches and Canyonlands National Parks--the Administration has
tried to find ways to fight back. Many of these efforts are being led by Bush
appointees in Interior and Agriculture who came from the industries they now
regulate. "They were very familiar with the regulations they wanted
changed," says Gloria Flora, a Clinton-era supervisor of the Lewis and
Clark Forest in Montana. "These people were on a mission from the day they
walked in the door."
How far they will get is uncertain, particularly
as the President becomes preoccupied with a possible war in the Middle East and
an election campaign next year. "Every corporate lobbyist is faxing their
legislators' offices, saying, We need to get everything out of 2003, because
2004 is too close to the elections," says Clapp of the National
Environmental Trust.
Ruby Johnson Jenkins, who routinely takes 10-mile
hikes, will keep trying to save the 30-in. trees in the forest she has known
for years. "They'll have meetings, and I'll go, and I'll write
letters," she says. "I have to. I consider this my forest, not
theirs." Unfortunately for Jenkins, the Bush Administration doesn't appear
to agree.
THE BUSH PLAN would decrease sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide
and mercury emissions from power plants via the Clean Air Initiative
CRITICS SAY it makes no mention of carbon dioxide, considered
a major cause of global warming
THE BUSH PLAN would reduce the bodies of water protected by
the EPA, freeing the land for development
CRITICS SAY it could leave 20% of the country's waters
unprotected and agricultural waste insufficiently regulated
THE BUSH PLAN is for the Bureau of Land Management to
facilitate increased oil and gas drilling across the West
CRITICS SAY environmental damage to such sensitive areas as
the Arctic and the Rocky Mountain Front is too high a price to pay
THE BUSH PLAN proposes to reduce the fire danger in forests by
thinning trees as much as 30 in. in diameter
CRITICS SAY that it's actually a veiled attempt to bypass
restrictions and increase commercial logging in the U.S.'s 155 national forests
THE BUSH PLAN overrides a Clinton ban by allowing snowmobiles
to operate in Yellowstone National Park
CRITICS SAY snowmobiles disturb wildlife, create noise and
pollution and are opposed by local park-service officials and 80% of public
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Accessed on 01/22/2004 from SIRS Researcher via SIRS Knowledge
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