Bush versus Kerry on the environment

by Michael G. Livingston

How do Bush and Kerry stack up in terms of the environment? Who should environmentalists support? Or should they support neither one?

There is no doubt that Bush is terrible on the environment. Bush has worked hard to be the worst environmental president in the last 100 years. Among Bush’s achievements:

• He has helped his capitalist buddies to plunder the country’s natural resources. As president, Bush has overseen a 70 percent increase in oil and gas leases on public land, promoted massive timber sales from national forests, and tried to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling.

• He has cut funding for environmental programs and environmental law enforcement. As president, Bush has spent only a fraction of what is necessary to maintain our national parks, has virtually destroyed the Endangered Species Act by not funding its provisions, and has made it easy for power plants to pollute by cutting funds need to enforce the Clean Air Act.

• He has shut out the public from participation in environmental decisions. As president, Bush has tried to “streamline” the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA is sometimes called the Magna Charta of the environmental movement. It requires that governments and industries study the environmental consequences of their actions before taking action, and permits substantial public input when projects could cause harm to the environment.

Streamlining entails the reduction or elimination of Environmental Impact Statements, an important part of the NEPA process, and public input.

• He has gutted environmental laws by means of the courts and administrative regulations. The most egregious example of this is the relaxation of the Clean Air Act by redefining what triggers a New Source Review in coal-fired power plants.

Old coal-fired plants, responsible for most of the acid rain and mercury pollution in our air, are required to install new equipment to reduce pollution when the plants are upgraded. By allowing major renovations to be considered routine upkeep, the Bush administration has permitted power companies to continue to operate these heavily polluting but extremely profitable plants.

So Bush is bad, very, very bad. How about Kerry? Kerry has a track record, starting as a lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, of supporting the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, defending ANWR, supporting funding for environmental law enforcement and cleanup, and opposing global warming through, for example, pushing for increased fuel efficiency standards in automobiles.

He has a lifetime environmental report card of 96 percent from the League of Conservation Voters (see www.lcv.org), a mainstream environmental group. This is one of the highest lifetime records in the Senate. It should not go unnoticed, however, that the mainstream environmental organizations have rather low standards for their “friends.” Betsy Loyless, the political director of The League of Conservation Voters, for instance, considers anyone who votes pro-environment 60 percent of the time or more to be solidly pro-environment. According to Ms. Loyless, the average score for senators in 2003 was 41 percent.

An analysis of the 107th Congress, using the League of Conservation Voters data, shows that only about 42 percent of the members in both the Senate and the House of Representatives can be considered pro-environment, even using the low standard of 60 percent support or higher. Is it any wonder the environment crisis deepens everyday?

There are real differences between Bush and Kerry on the environment. But there are also real and substantial similarities. These similarities are telling:

• Both Bush and Kerry supported NAFTA. NAFTA was not just a “trade agreement” but one of the most important pieces of anti-environmental legislation of the last 20 years. NAFTA undermined environmental regulations in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico.

• Both Bush and Kerry supported the invasion of Iraq. Iraq is a classic resource war, a war fought to control resources crucial to the capitalist system. The invasion and occupation, like the first Gulf War, is bringing unimaginable environmental destruction to the Middle East. The U.S. occupies Iraq to insure control over oil reserves, and to maintain the continued petrochemical-based capitalism.

• Both Bush and Kerry support the development of hydrogen fuels made from natural gas. Hydrogen can be an important bridging fuel away from hydrocarbons toward renewable energy sources. For this to work, it should be made from water using excess renewable energy.

Hydrogen made from natural gas, however, is a continued use of fossil fuels and a subsidy to the oil companies, who own most of the natural gas. Producing hydrogen (itself a clean-burning fuel) from natural gas generates pollution and greenhouse gases.

On a number of issues Bush and Kerry differ only slightly. The most important of these issues is global warming. Bush is opposed to doing anything about global warming. Kerry supports meeting with other nations to revise the Kyoto Protocol (itself little more than a drop in the bucket) to make it easier for the U.S. to meet guidelines on greenhouse gas emissions.

Given the differences and similarities, Kerry is the lesser of two evils, a candidate who appears to be great on the environment only in comparison to his rival, who is horrendous. Should anyone who cares about the environment rush out and vote for Kerry as the lesser of the two evils? The Democrats and most environmentalists would say yes. I would argue no. Here’s why:

First, Democrats from districts with weak environmental movements, such as Rep. Dick Gephardt or Sen. Ernest Hollings, have very poor environmental records. Republicans from areas that have strong environmental movements, such as Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both from Maine, tend to have better environmental records.

Second, a politician’s record in Congress is no indication that he or she will keep true to the same policies in the White House—where the pressure from major capitalist interests is much greater and more immediate.

For example, one of the few people who could match Kerry’s environmental record in the Senate was Al Gore. As part of the Clinton-Gore administration, however, he did relatively little for the environment until the final days of the second term, when the Clinton-Gore administration developed a number of regulations that were rapidly overturned by the Bush administration (regulations not codified in actual laws can be changed by administrative fiat).

The environmental movement spent eight years feeling betrayed by Al Gore. They seem to have forgotten that fact, or want us to forget it in the run-up to Nov. 2. Third, the respective environmental records of Bush and Kerry are not the only factors environmentalists need to consider. An equally important, if not more important, factor is what political strategy will advance the environmental movement and save the planet.

In spite of massive popular support, the environmental movement has been losing ground since the mid 1970s. There are a number of reasons for this. As the rate of profit has fallen, corporations have tried to reduce costs by attacking organized labor, outsourcing, and reducing the cost of environmental regulation. In addition, corporations were initially caught off-guard when the environmental movement re-emerged in the 1960s.

But one of the most important reasons for the failure of the environmental movement is their crisis of leadership and strategy: The movement has tied its fate to the Democratic Party and has used lobbying and legal proceedings as its main tactics as opposed to mobilizing masses of people in demonstrations in the streets to win their demands for better living conditions.

The Democrats sometimes give the environmental organizations what they ask for, but not when it interferes with the fundamental well being of capital. A case in point is NAFTA, which was vehemently opposed by most environmentalists and supported by most Democrats, including Kerry.

The environmental movement needs a mass action strategy that includes independent political action—independent, that is, from control by the corporations and financial institutions of the monopoly capitalist system.

It is only when the environmental movement breaks with the Democratic Party—and all parties committed to the capitalist system, the system that places profits before human needs—and organizes masses of people around an effective political program that we will see substantial gains.

Here is one environmentalist who will not be voting for Democrats this Nov. 2.

This article first appeared in the October 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.