Got this the other day from Ed


'Environmental activists fear the Bush Administration "New environmentalism"
philosophy accepts uses for public land that make many conservationists
cringe, including logging, mining and recreation, such as off-road vehicles
in fragile deserts and snowmobiling in national parks.'

Can anyone tell me who's on the enviro-activist target list for public land
exclusion from this articles biased slant on reporting (and has been on the
list for some time)?

Tell me (after reading this opinion piece, that was not on the opinion page)
what is feared more: true local input from the general public, or dilution of
local enviro-activist input (backed up with national enviro-activist lobby
efforts)?

Happy Trails!
Ed A. Stevens
stvns@aol.com


http://latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-030302enviro.story?coll=la%2Dhom

e%2Dtodays%2Dtimes

For Bush, Environment Is Local Policy: The White House would shift authority
out of Washington. But activists fear a raft of self-serving decisions.

By ELIZABETH SHOGREN, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, reversing decades of centralizing
environmental regulations in Washington, is seeking to shift responsibility
for pollution control and public land use to local government and private
interests.

In a series of policies proposed in recent weeks on global warming, power
plant pollution, national forests and conservation, the federal government
plays the role of facilitator rather than dictator.

No longer would stiff federal penalties fall on those who failed to clean
their pollution. Business would be in charge of ensuring clean air and water.

No longer would government control federal land use. Local organizations,
businesses and individuals would make those determinations.

In the end, the administration believes the environment would be
protected--without such frequent recourse to costly court battles--even as
energy production is increased and greater use is made of federal lands.

"The president's philosophy is that not all wisdom lies in Washington, and to
the extent that we can build partnerships with states and corporations and
local communities, we'll get much more accomplished," said Environmental
Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman. "That's something both of
us learned as governors."

Many environmental activists, however, fear that the administration's
principles hide an intention to turn environmental policy over to business.
They cite recent Interior Department steps toward allowing snowmobiles to
roam Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks if they abide by some limits
on noise and gasoline.

"The reason federal environmental laws were cast in the first place was
because the state governments, state legislatures and local governments were
so dominated by local industries that the environment wasn't being
protected," said Philip Clapp, president of National Environmental Trust.

(Many of President Bush's goals--new ways of enforcing clean air standards,
for example, and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge--require legislation. Others do not; snowmobiles are already allowed
in Yellowstone and Grand Teton.)

For climate change policy, Bush's "new environmentalism" means businesses are
asked to come up with ways to limit the increase of greenhouse gases, such as
carbon dioxide, that contribute to global warming. They are not required to
meet any federally mandated targets.

To clean up power plants, a system of tradable "pollution rights" gives
utilities financial incentives to reduce emissions of toxic mercury, sulfur
dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Government leaves it to industry to decide how
to meet nationwide emission caps.

To improve management of national forests, some would be taken over by local
trustees--perhaps loggers, hikers, business executives and scientists who
live nearby. Wildlife and wilderness would be cared for in lands adjacent to
federal property with a new $100-million program that would give money to
states and individuals willing to donate their time or money to conservation
projects.

Bush's environmental team--led by Whitman and Interior Secretary Gale A.
Norton--argues that citizens and the businesses they run should be trusted to
care for their environment. Unwieldy bureaucracies, they say, are not the
answer.

"I believe that most Americans, especially those who depend on the land for
their livelihood, are ready and willing to step up to the challenge," Norton
said in a recent speech.

Evidence may be found in the government's successful acid rain program.
Bush's power plant proposal is modeled on the program, which has cut sulfur
dioxide emissions from power plants faster than required and at 80% less cost
to industry than predicted a decade ago.

The acid rain program sets overall standards for air quality and relies on
market forces to compel utility companies either to pollute less or to pay
other, cleaner utilities for the right to pollute more. The government
tightens air quality standards by reducing the total amount of allowable
pollution, making pollution rights more expensive and the incentives to clean
more compelling.

Public health advocates and environmentalists applaud the program but say it
works best in tandem with other programs that set health-based air quality
standards. The advocates fear that the Bush administration wants to scrap
some of these standards.

"The existing Clean Air Act is a remarkable success story," said Paul
Billings, an assistant vice president of the American Lung Assn. "We've had
significant and consistent progress in cleaning the air. But the battle is
not over. We still do not have clean air."

Whitman said the administration is considering scrapping at least one
provision of the Clean Air Act, which requires power plants to install
state-of-the-art pollution controls during major renovations.

Under Bush's separate proposal for power plants, the federal government would
set nationwide emission caps for utility plants.

"But we don't try to micromanage the utilities' ways of getting there,"
Whitman said. "We give them time to meet the goals and do it in a way that
keeps them economically competitive."

Such programs are only as tough as the caps, and many environmental activists
worry that the Bush administration would not make them tough enough.

"It's our fear that this proposal will mean more pollution than under the
[current] Clean Air Act," Billings said.

The Bush administration says its vision for less Washington in environmental
policy is consistent with its goal of significantly increasing the production
of energy on federal land.

"New environmentalism is about meeting our nation's need for a vibrant
economy and energy security--while at the same time protecting the
environment," Norton said. "Some people say it can't be done. I know it can."

The philosophy accepts uses for public land that make many conservationists
cringe, including logging, mining and recreation, such as off-road vehicles
in fragile deserts and snowmobiling in national parks.

"My goal for national forests is seeing whether we can produce more of
everything--except controversy," said Mark Rey, undersecretary of the
Agriculture Department for natural resources and environment. He specified
that his list includes logging, mineral extraction, recreation and the
safeguarding of wildlife and wilderness.

Environmentalists contend that when the Bush administration must choose
between energy production and local control, energy always wins. For
instance, the politicians and people of California and Florida oppose
offshore oil drilling, but the administration nonetheless has pursued more
oil development off their coasts.

One clear goal of the administration's policy is to diminish the courts' role
in environmental skirmishes among the federal government, environmentalists
and businesses that pollute or earn money on federal lands.

When announcing his power plant proposal last week, Bush said: "It will
replace a confusing, ineffective maze of regulations for power plants that
has created an endless cycle of litigation."

Environmentalists have had great success using the courts to protect
endangered species, limit the size of timber sales in national forests and
uphold tough air and water pollution laws. "What the president has done is
say, 'Let's have a . . . system so nobody can tell any particular company to
clean up,' " Clapp said.

Bush administration officials counter that litigation also has hurt the
environment by slowing the adoption of regulations to protect it.

One of the most creative examples of the administration's philosophy is the
notion of charter forests, which it proposed last month. Modeled in part on
charter schools, charter forests would be partially under the control of
local trustees.

The local boards, while freed of many of the bureaucratic requirements set by
Washington, still would be required to abide by environmental protections.

"We're interested in collaborative approaches that come from the ground up as
opposed to Washington, D.C.-based proposals that come from the top down,"
said Rey, who oversees the 153 national forests.

No longer would competing interests--from bird watchers to timber
companies--each appeal to Washington bureaucrats to decide the fate of the
land. These groups would sit down at one table and negotiate with the power
to make decisions themselves.

Rey dismisses environmentalists' concerns that passing authority to local
groups will result in exploitation of resources belonging to all Americans.

As evidence that charter forests are possible, advocates point to an
accommodation reached in 1993 between environmentalists and farmers over
Henry's Fork Basin in Idaho and Wyoming. The two sides stopped fighting and
agreed to protect fish habitats and let farmers irrigate and livestock graze.

"I believe most Westerners really do have a deep sense of care for landscapes
that surround them, and they also have a deep sense of care for the ways of
life that have grown up on them," said Dan Kemmis, former Democratic mayor of
Missoula, Mont., and director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at
the University of Montana. "Through collaborative efforts they've developed
the capacity to protect both economic and environmental interests."

Times staff writers Nick Anderson and Edmund Sanders contributed to this
report.


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