ENVIROS
EYEBALL
BUSH
Green campaign
to focus on
Bush’s anti-
environmental
record.
Photo of logged-over Huckleberry land swap by Roy Keene,
courtesy Native Forest Council, www.forestcouncil.org
By Ben Geman
T
he environmental movement
has spent three years playing
defense against a president
they call the most anti-envi-
ronment in history. Now
they want payback, and hope to pull off a
notoriously tough task: making green issues
a big deal in a national race.
Already, the environment has become an
issue in the Democratic contest, though not
always in the way environmentalists would
hope. Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) cam-
paign recently circulated literature that mis-
leadingly claims Howard Dean compiled a
poor environmental record as Vermont gov-
ernor.
But looking beyond the primaries, there
are signs that green issues could play an im-
portant role this year, when the environmen-
tal differences between the eventual nomi-
nee and Bush will be massive compared to
any between the Democrats themselves.
Enviros say their 2004 campaign will be
bigger and, more important, better than past
cycles, and strategists believe the White
House’s dismantling of environmental pro-
tections leaves Bush vulnerable to attack.
At the same time, major candidates are
issuing substantive environment and energy
platforms that contrast starkly with the
Bush record, which keeps getting more con-
troversial. Last month, EPA offered what
environmentalists call a weak plan to curb
power plant mercury emissions that won’t
provide very steep reductions for 15 years
— the latest in what activists call a string of
rollbacks that include easing oil and gas
10 JANUARY 22, 2004
drilling restric-
tions on public
lands, all but ignor-
ing global warming
emissions, and underfunding
toxic waste cleanups, to name a few.
“You have a stark difference and a con-
crete record,” says Aimee Christensen, a
former Clinton administration energy offi-
cial and now executive director of
Environment 2004. The group, which in-
cludes former EPA head Carol Browner and
several other Clinton-era environment offi-
cials, is raising money to publicize green is-
sues in swing states this year. “If we are ef-
fective in communicating our
message, it [the environment] can
make a much bigger difference than it
has in the past,” she says.
But it’s a big “if.” The environment is a
famously second-tier issue in national elec-
tions — voters favor strong protections
when asked about the environment directly,
yet it’s often far down the list when pollsters
ask voters what their top concerns are.
As a result, the environmental move-
ment is linking its message to issues with
more immediacy. Green groups — and, so
far, the major Democratic candidates — are
increasingly connecting the environment to
Keeping an Eye on Bush
A new website was launched in December focusing exclusively on the Bush
administration’s environmental and public health agenda. The site is at
www.BushGreenwatch.org and has daily updates on White House actions, reac-
tions and contradictions.
A recent story on the website documents how the Environmental Protection
Agency is weakening restrictions on mercury pollution at the same time as the
Food & Drug Administration is announcing plans to warm women and children to
limit consumption of canned tuna because of high levels of mercury. The full
text of Al Gore’s speech blasting Bush’s environmental record ran last week on
the site.
The site, supported by MoveOn.org and Environmental Media Services, is search-
able by topic and offers a free five-day-a-week mailing list. — TJT
voters’ core concerns about jobs, health and
security. Environmentalists and candidates
alike point out, for instance, that building a
renewable energy infrastructure will create
scores of good jobs and help wean the coun-
try off foreign oil. “It’s not just getting the
environmental vote, it’s getting the swing
vote. It’s talking about public health and
jobs,” says Christensen.
The idea of linking the environment to
issues that resonate more in presidential
races is not entirely new. But the message
will be more fully realized than in the past,
in part because 2000 was an imperfect vehi-
cle for the green movement and the
Democrats as some enviros backed Ralph
Nader. At the same time, Bush hadn’t yet
compiled the record that activists now be-
lieve is such a good target.
The environment will also surface as
part of a larger critique of the Bush adminis-
tration that goes something like this: The
White House’s cozy relationship with cor-
porate contributors in the energy sector and
elsewhere is placing big industries’ interests
— in health policy, environmental roll-
backs, tax policy and everything else —
ahead of the public’s.
Democratic pollster Michael Bocian
says the environment will be among a set of
issues where Democrats can argue that
“President Bush sides with his corporate
friends instead of regular folks.” Bocian’s
firm, headed by former Clinton pollster
Stan Greenberg, said in a memo last year
that tying Bush green policy to the presi-
dent’s corporate base is effective.