MEMORANDUM
Date: January 2003
To: Lifetime Members
From: Bruce Hamilton, Conservation Director, Sierra Club
Subject: Conservation Update for the last half of 2002
Historians will look back on the George W. Bush Presidency as a time of squandered opportunities on the environmental front. We knew the problems, we knew the solutions, and the national politicians of the day followed the lead of the White House and chose to take us backwards rather than forwards. We know how to stop global warming, how to stabilize population growth, how to clean our air and water, how to make our communities safe from toxic pollution, and yet a conscious decision has been made to to deny the problems, ignore the solutions, and reduce rather than increase the level of environmental protection for most people. At a time when the Earth needed global environmental leadership from the United States, our country was missing in action.
Since the disappointing November national elections, every week seems to bring a new story about another gift the Bush Administration has given to the polluters.
For two years the Bush Administration weighed the option of letting dirty power plants and refineries off the hook from cleaning up their life-threatening pollution. The Energy Department sided with the polluters, but the White House pollsters and the Environmental Protection Agency argued it would be a grave mistake environmentally and politically. So their game plan was to wait until after the national elections, and then give this huge gift to the polluters. EPA was making progress on cleaning up the dirtiest power plants throughout the Clinton years, but once Bush indicated he was considering rewriting the rules so that cleanup would no longer be required, progress ground to a halt. How they have shown their hand. The New Source Review regulations, which required companies to clean up their pollution if they made a major upgrade to their older plants, are being undermined and abandoned. There are over 10,000 premature deaths each year due to pollution from these unregulated power plants, and the Bush Administration has decided those lives should not be saved, even though we have the technology. We don't lack solutions, we lack willpower and accountability.
The Bush Administration also used the post-election window to reverse the ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. According to Park Service environmental studies, park rangers are wearing gas masks and ear plugs to protect themselves from the noise and pollution, wildlife is stressed during the winter when they are most vulnerable, and the serenity of the park is being destroyed. During the official comment periods the public overwhelmingly supported the ban. But the Bush Administration decided that science and public sentiment should be ignored, and they set new "limits" on the numbers of snowmobiles that are HIGHER than existing usage except during peak holidays. This retreat from environmental protection for even our most revered national parks is becoming all too familiar.
Meanwhile, the chief lobbyist for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil development has told the Bush Administration that the time has never been better for achieving their goal. He his pushing for a vote early in 2003, using the country's preoccupation with Iraq as an excuse for why we have to develop the area now. Public support for fully protecting this great wilderness remains strong, but who cares about the public when there are oil profits to be made. Meanwhile, cars and sport utility vehicles keep getting bigger and we keep becoming more dependent on oil. Once again, there are solutions and the Sierra Club has demonstrated they can work, but the solutions are being ignored. In fact, the Wall Street Journal just revealed that under a hidden provision of last year's national security legislation a hugh tax subsidy for purchasers of expensive SUVs was slipped in, encouraging people to buy vehicles that make our energy-related national security problems worse.
At one time the Bush Administration tried to hide behind public support. They tried to throw out the Clinton Wild Forests Rule – which protected 60 million acres of wild national forests – on the basis that not enough public comment was gathered, even though it was the most extensive and exhaustive public comment process in history. When the second round of comments mirrored the first – with overwhelming public support for protecting all 60 million acres – they retreated and decided public comment didn't matter and would not be considered. Thankfully we achieved a legal victory just as 2002 was closing so that there is an injunction on logging these wild forests while the court case challenging the rule is resolved.
Now the Bush Administration has solicited ideas from polluters about which environmental safeguards should be discarded. What a surprise, the American Farm Bureau Federation thinks that the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf should no longer be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Just as these animals' numbers start picking up after being perilously close to extinction, agribusiness wants to return to the bad old days when these marvelous creatures were officially classified in some states as "varmits," to be shot and poisoned at will. And the Administration has signaled that it will create an open season on our wildlife. How do they think these species got in their precarious situation in the first place? This exercise is indicative of the Bush Administration's approach to the environment. Instead of trying to figure out how to make our communities, forests, waters, air, and wildlife safer, the Administration is trying to find ways to immunize polluters and other wrongdoers from vital health, safety, and environmental protections.
The complete disdain for the American people and our society's common desire for stronger environmental protection is sure to come back and bite the Bush Administration and its allies in Congress. The only question is when, and how much damage is done in the meantime. Poll after poll shows that while the public wants Bush to succeed as Commander in Chief to make our homeland more secure, they do not trust him on the environment and believe he has set the wrong course.
It is now up to the Sierra Club to arouse the public and stop the Bush Administration before it manages to undermine all of our environmental safeguards. But it won't be sufficient to just play defense. There are too many assaults on too many fronts and the Congress, courts and the White House are controlled by leaders with strong anti-environmental agendas. This battle can't be won in Congress, though we must wage some skirmishes there. This fight won't be won in the courts, though we need to challenge our opponents in the courts time and time again. This fight needs to be won on Main Street – the one forum that the Bush Administration does not control.
Our best hope is to increase the sense of outrage and the demand for environmental protection to a deafening national roar that is so loud that the White House and the Congress don't dare carry out their plans. Nothing short of this will stop them or get their attention.
Our task is complicated by the impending war with Iraq. The Bush Administration used this national preoccupation to full advantange in the 2002 election cycle, so that most folks didn't vote on the environment, or job security, or proper health care, or women's rights – they voted out of fear for the forces representing national security. It is possible that this national preoccupation will continue throughout early 2003, but at some point there will be a moment of broader focus. We need to be there poised and ready to swing the national debate back in the direction of environmental progress and environmental justice.
To do this the Sierra Club is launching the largest, broadest, and most important campaign in our history – the campaign to put our nation back on the course to environmental sustainability, to ensure that the 21st century is one of progress and responsibility, not reaction and irresponsibility. This campaign needs to raise the sights of the American people – beyond today's degraded and cynical Washington dialogue, and back to the common sense, common ground values that bring Americans together.
The air should be fit to breathe – if we have cleaned up coal fired power plants in Florida, New York and California, why not in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania? Children should be able to drink the water and splash on the beach and thrive, not sicken. If people can now swim in the Hudson River, why does the city of Cincinnati routinely dump raw sewage into the Ohio River? If sewage is no longer going into our waterways untreated in San Francisco and Pittsburgh then why do we still have untreated discharge in Cincinnati and Michigan? If we knew enough to clean up 846 Superfund sites, why are we letting the polluter-pays tax that funds the program expire while 1,238 sites remain toxic time bombs loosely enclosed in rusting chain-link fences?
The landscape we leave our children should be more beautiful, ecologically diverse and healthy than the one we inherited. We have shown how to bring back the bald eagle, the brown pelican, and grey whale and the timber wolf. We must now move on and bring back hundreds of other species that we have needlessly put in harm's way.
And over the past thirty years the American people have shown that when we, the public, get involved in protecting our health and our communities, in shaping our future, that marvelous things can happen. When we are excluded by secrecy and inside deals, or when through inattention and poor information we leave our fate in the hands of a few, our values are trampled and our security threatened. We don't just need government for the people – we need government of and by the people – and its the Sierra Club mission to engage Americans in that great effort, to expose the efforts by special interest insiders to exclude us in participating in our own future, and to inform and motivate our friends and neighbors to get involved.
To do this we are promoting solutions to our biggest environmental problems that are being ignored. For example, we will be continuing our corporate accountability campaign aimed at Ford Motor Company demanding that it offer consumers "The Freedom Package" – a set of off the shelf technologies that could be added to every vehicle in its fleet, which would increase fuel economy to over 40 miles per gallon. We will be promoting a "Community Protection Initiative" where, instead of using taxpayer dollars to clearcut ancient forests, the same money will be used to remove highly flammable brush and small diameter trees in close proximity to fire prone rural communities.
Once Americans see the value of these common sense environmental solutions, and the folly of the Bush Administration's alternative policies which make our problems worse, we are confident that they will rise up and demand action by our elected officials and hold them accountable if they refuse to act.
Then, through voter education campaign and our political advocacy leading up to 2004, we will remind the voters about which candidates have been standing for environmental progress and solutions, and which have been favoring the polluters and putting us all at increased risk.
This is our two year plan. I don't mind writing it down and sharing it broadly because our opponents won't change their plans unless we are successful. They are counting on apathy. They are counting on fear. Fear and apathy are our two biggest obstacles to success. If we can overcome them we can win success.
To start with, we will need your continued support. With the economy in a slump times are hard for every nonprofit, including the Sierra Club. But your generosity has kept us going through good and bad times, and we are very grateful. Now the challenge is huge, the threat is enormous, but the cost of not rising to the challenge and letting them get away with their agenda is even bigger.
I look forward to your continued support and involvement and in reporting our progress throughout the next two very difficult years.
Sincerely,
Bruce Hamilton, Conservation Director
Sierra
Club
MEMORANDUM
Date: July 2002
To: Lifetime Members
From: Bruce Hamilton, Conservation Director, Sierra Club
Subject: Conservation Update for the first half of 2002
It is my distinct pleasure to fill you in on what we have been accomplishing during the first half of 2002. In the wake of September 11, 2001 we have had a major struggle to refocus the attention of national decision-makers on environmental issues, but through our determined efforts we have been able to make substantial progress and win some significant victories. None of this would have been possible without the continued support of generous and involved people like you.
On March 27, President George W. Bush reluctantly and without fanfare signed the Campaign Reform Act into law. The achievement followed a 240-189 vote in the House to adopt the Shays-Meehan Bill. The act bans the use of unregulated soft money -- huge, unlimited and unreported donations from corporations and wealthy individuals -- by the national political parties. The Republican-controlled House leadership had tried to thwart the will of the people and had refused to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. To counter this we had to get a bipartisan majority of the House to sign a discharge petition. The House leadership then arranged 16 hours of debate and offered 12 "poison pill" amendments designed to kill the bill -- and every one of them was defeated!
This new law was a huge victory for returning government to the people. For too many years the election process has been clogged with polluter's dollars and our elections have turned into auctions. The partnership that the Sierra Club and other public interest groups had with Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold and Representatives Chris Shays and Martin Meehan in this multi-year effort will go a long way in restoring faith in government. Representative Shays credited the Sierra Club with playing a major role in having this bill enacted into law.
Another huge victory for us -- and a stinging defeat for President Bush -- was the April 18 vote in the U.S. Senate when 54 senators voted against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development. This vote capped a 20-year effort by the Sierra Club to keep the oil companies out of the refuge. Ever since the Alaska Lands Act passed in 1980, and the refuge coastal plan was given interim protection until Congress acted on its final disposition, the oil industry has waged a multi-million dollar campaign to turn this wilderness into an oil field. in every Congress we have had to beat back development schemes. Ten years ago, 58 senators voted to allow development in the refuge, but we stopped the bill in the House. In 1995 the Congress passed legislation to open the refuge, but it didn't have the votes to override President Bill Clinton's veto. Given this difficult history, having such a solid bipartisan majority on our side was a huge victory.
Perhaps the greatest tribute came from our lead Congressional opponent, Alaska Senator Frank Murkowski, who stated, "What this really boiled down to was the power and influence of America's environmental community. And they, frankly, didn't budge on this issue."
But despite this sweet victory, it came in the context of a series of votes by the Congress where the majority of our elected officials turned their backs on the American people. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge vote came in the context of a series of votes to adopt a national energy strategy that gives billions in taxpayer subsidies to the nuclear, coal, and oil industry to continue to pursue their polluting ways, while refusing to take the steps necessary to promote energy efficiency, clean renewable energy sources, and reduce global warming.
The Cheney Energy Plan -- named for Vice President Dick Cheney who headed the task force that authored the plan -- was written in the back room away from public view after consulting with Enron and other energy industry representatives. A Sierra Club lawsuit filed under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) seeks to have the dealings of this secret advisory committee of industry executives exposed to the sunshine of public review. If our lawsuit is successful the details of the secret meeetings that Cheney held with the energy industry executives and lobbyists must be made public. Early attempts by the Administration's lawyers to have our suit dismissed have been rejected by the judge.
The biggest disappointment in the energy bill was the refusal of the Congress to require a significant increase in automobile fuel economy as a way to save energy and clean up the air. The Club supported a proposal to require a fuel economy standard of 35 miles per gallon by 2013 -- a level that would save the United States 1 million barrels of oil per day. This modest proposal was soundly defeated after the auto industry spent 3 million dollars convincing senators that the only way this savings could be achieved was if everyone was forced to drive golf carts. It was a shameful display of power politics at its worst.
We now have a difficult situation where the House has already passed a disastrous national energy bill (which even includes authorizing oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and the Senate has passed a very different bill that is almost as bad in many respects. Both houses have appointed conferees to reconcile the enormous differences between the two versions and President Bush eagerly awaits the outcome so he can sign a bill that helps his friends and contributors in the energy industry. The Sierra Club and our allies have not given up hope, and we are lobbying the conferees to hold fast to the few good provisions that are in one bill or the other -- and in the process possibly stall the conference so it can't produce a consensus project
Meanwhile, with the Congress unwilling to take the steps necessary to require the auto industry to make a full range of fuel-efficient cars and trucks, the Sierra Club has decided to take its campaign straight to Detroit and the auto manufacturers. Last month, we unveiled a consumer action corporate accountability plan to encourage the major auto manufacturers, starting with Ford Motor Company, to offer an entire fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles.
The Sierra Club has petitioned Ford to offer a series of off-the-shelf technologies -- what we call The Freedom Option Package -- in whatever car, sport utility vehicle, mini-van or light truck the consumer wants. If manufacturers put the Freedom Option Package in every vehicle possible, America's new vehicle fleet would average 40 miles per gallon and save millions of barrels of oil every day. The Freedom Option Package includes a continuously variable automatic transmission, a variable valve control engine, an integrated starter generator, and some simple fuel-efficient design changes. This package would add less than $1,000 to the average vehicle price and quickly pay for itself in fuel savings. Our next step is to organize consumers to go into Ford dealerships this summer and request the Freedom Package on their next car. (To find out more about this campaign and how you can help, check out our website at www.sierraclub.org/freedom/ or call the Sierra Club at 415-977-5500.) You can also help the campaign by filling out the postcards bound into the July-August 2002 issue of Sierra magazine just after page 44.
Meanwhile, the Club has been successful in addressing auto emissions and efficiency in another forum -- the California State Legislature. Earlier this month, after intense lobbying by the Sierra Club, the Legislature passed a precedent-setting bill that requires the California Air Resources Board to adopt new regulations that will dramatically cut auto and light truck emissions of greenhouse gases. California is the largest market for cars in the United States, and if it requires manufacturers to sell cars that meet tighter emission standards it could well force the Big Three in Detroit, as well as other major manufacturers, to build cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars. This will probably establish a national trend, as the companies would be unlikely to want to produce two lines of cars -- one for California and another for the other 49 states.
The California law requires the Air Board to adopt a plan by 2005 for the "maximum feasible reduction" in emissions, and specifically spells out that it can not be done by imposing mandatory weight reductions on vehicles, imposing taxes on miles traveled, levying taxes on fuels or vehicles, or lowering speed limits. Experts agree that given these parameters, the most likely outcome is that California will require that more efficient vehicles of all class sizes be sold in the state, starting with car model year 2009.
Polls in California show that 81 percent favor this new law, and 77 percent of those who presently drive SUVs also support the measure. We expect the auto industry, which spent millions to fight the bill, will now challenge the law in court. It's a shame that they don't spend the effort and funds retooling to build more efficient cars that consumers want.
Another significant victory last month was the resounding defeat of a bill designed to undermine the law that allows a President to protect threatened natural and historic treasures as national monuments. Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Bill Clinton have used this law to protect such outstanding landscapes as the Grand Canyon, the Grand Tetons, and the Giant Sequoias. But opponents of conservation tried to pass a "National Monument Fairness Act" which would have tied the hands of future presidents to act to protect threatened landscapes.
When word got out across the country that this bill was heading to the House floor for a vote, phones started ringing off the hook in protest. One Congressional office complained that it had "heard from every environmentalist in North America on this issue."
Because of this groundswell of support for parks and monuments, the bill was pulled from consideration. This is clearly not an issue they want to vote on in an election year.
Bush cynically used Earth Day 2002 as a photo opportunity to unveil what he called his Clear Skies Initiative. While he touted his approach as a way to reduce air pollution, when experts looked at the sketchy details he provided, and the other policies he was promoting that would undermine any progress, it was clear that this was all a smokescreen.
Despite his campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions he has openly opposed every effort to accomplish this goal. Most recently his Administration has proposed to weaken the portion of the Clean Air Act that his father signed which would require the clean up of the dirtiest unregulated coal-fired power plants. When Bush's Environmental Protection Agency just released a required report acknowledging the problems of global warming and calling for action to reduce emissions, the President derided the scientific report and reaffirmed his support for voluntary controls by industry. Meanwhile, in the absence of leadership from President Bush, Japan has refused to wait for the United States and has joined the other industrialized countries in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming emissions.
We have a long, hot, dangerous summer ahead. The Energy Bill Conference Committee will be debating how to promote more fossil fuel burning, the new fleet of vehicles produced by Detroit will set a 10 year low in fuel efficiency, polluting power plants are being let off the hook to clean up their emissions, and global warming will manifest itself in record heat waves and droughts in local areas. Never before have we been so in need of national environmental leadership from our elected officials.
We have a chance to change all this, with the crucial upcoming 2002 elections. If we lose a few seats in Congress this fall, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other safeguards will be lost. On the other hand, if we gain a few seats, we can force more bills like Campaign Finance Reform to the President's desk where he will be hard pressed to sign them. This is a make-or-break election, and the Sierra Club plans to play a major role in it in all the contested races where the environment is an issue that separates the candidates. We will be holding elected officials accountable with every major environmental vote between now and election day so that every voter knows where their elected officials stand on the important conservation issues of the day. For more information please visit the Sierra Club website at: www.sierraclub.org/votewatch/.
Your support throughout the year has made our defense of the environment a huge success and your continuing support will help us complete this goal line stand and help us through election day. Thank you again for making our critical work possible.
Bruce
Last updated: 08 Feb 03