Alarmed by ‘Cycle of Anti-Environmentalism’

The environment has never faced greater political peril in America than it does today, says former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

“History, however, instructs us that the trajectory of environmental protection is moving ever upward over time, even as the trend line occasionally breaks downward,” Babbitt asserts in his new book “Cities in the Wilderness.”

A Democrat, Babbitt ran the Interior Department for eight years under President Clinton, who in Babbitt’s words “protected more acres of land and water than any of his predecessors.” If parts of that legacy are in jeopardy now, as Babbitt says they are, he remains confident that the public, in time, will again demand that the federal government play a stronger role in protecting natural resources.

In his book, he examines the conservation record of the Clinton era. One failure he highlights was his inability to marshal public support for a plan to ease the threat of catastrophic flooding on the lower Mississippi River. The plan would have required removing some levees on the upper Mississippi, allowing the river to overflow its banks in undeveloped areas, thus reducing downstream flows and the potential for disaster in places such as New Orleans.

Among the successes, Babbitt cites his partnership with the Republican administration of former California Gov. Pete Wilson to design a program, dubbed CalFed, to put an end to the political wars that have raged over management of the state’s largest source of fresh water -- the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

But Babbitt now says the future of that program, which tries to balance the water needs of the region’s environment, agriculture and cities, is in jeopardy.

Today, Babbitt describes himself as a “free agent,” dividing his time between the World Wildlife Fund, of which he is a director, and various nonprofit groups working on conservation issues ranging from the Amazon Basin to the Pacific Northwest.

Question: Critics of the Bush administration fear that much of America’s legacy of environmental laws and protections is under assault. Do you agree?

Answer: We are in the worst down cycle of anti-environmentalism in the history of conservation. It’s really quite striking. In this administration, they presented a friendly face of consensus-building beneath which the systematic destruction of the environmental consensus is actually without parallel.

Q. There are efforts in play in Congress to weaken both the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, laws that protect wildlife and open space and give people the right to object to developments that will change their own environments. Are they in jeopardy?

A: It’s hanging in the balance right now. Congress is hell-bent on destroying environmental laws. The administration is egging them on.

Q: In your book, you say the Clinton administration preserved as much land as Teddy Roosevelt. Is that part of the Clinton legacy in jeopardy?

A: The striking thing to me is the degree to which they have been tampering with the national park system. That really is, if you will, an indication -- nothing is sacred to this administration. Typically, national parks have been absolutely inviolable.

The Republicans come to office saying they were going to improve the national parks.

This latest park policy that was put out was simply a broad attempt to commercialize the parks, to alter the basic philosophy of the national parks which has been in effect since 1890.

Q: So far, voters don’t seem to have expressed much outrage. How do you explain that, given that most public opinion polls consistently say people want more, not less, protection?

A: The environmental issues have been swept up in this tide of anti-government rhetoric. The prevailing mood of the electorate is intensely anti-Washington. And that has given the Congress the space, and the administration the space, to do things.

Q: You write that the purpose of your book is to show how we can protect natural and cultural landscapes and watersheds through stronger federal leadership in land-use planning. What are the prospects for that kind of leadership?

A: It’s not going to happen in this Congress. It’s not going to happen in this administration but I’m confident that the time will come. I see these cycles in American history, and I’m convinced that before too long, this sort of nihilistic, destructive set of policies is going to yield to public pressure for a more constructive vision.

Q: One place where the federal government has the opportunity almost to start from scratch with land-use planning is on the Gulf Coast and in southern Louisiana. Is there any evidence that the federal government is leading that effort?

A: No. In my judgment, the lack of leadership here is a national disgrace. Congress is busy using Katrina as a pretext to cut food stamps and Medicaid rather than dealing with the issue. The president says it’s a local issue. It’s not just a local issue. It’s a national issue that involves the management of the Mississippi River, which the federal government has been doing for 50 years, which involves the management of offshore oil and gas, which has undermined the integrity of the wetlands. Now, those issues can’t be dealt with by the mayor of New Orleans. It’s going to have to have national leadership to say, “What are we going to do about the infrastructure issues? What are we going to do about sea level rise?” Louisiana has got 5 million people; 2 1/2 million live less than 3 feet above sea level down in that delta country. And the consensus for sea-level rise is now between 2 and 3 feet. Those are big scare problems, and we’ve had zero national leadership.

Q: No natural resource is more critical to so many Californians as the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. You helped set up a process involving both the state and federal governments to apportion delta water to all of its competing interests. Is that process working?

A: We have to make it work. There is no alternative. Now the fact is that the administration has not kept its half of the bargain. As you know, the state has done a better job than the federal government in the funding of the partnership to make that work, but there’s not much energy on either side now. If that all comes apart, we’re just going to be back in World War III over California water. We’ve got a consensus that is workable, but it’s going to cost money.

Q: What does the administration need to do to hold up its end of the bargain?

A: It needs to do two things. One is to provide some leadership to the federal agencies, that’s the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers. Two is to carry out the terms of the agreement and to enforce the regulations and provide the funding that is necessary. You’ve got to do all of those things and move forward with the feasibility studies for more surface [water] storage. That’s part of the bargain, and we ought to move forward with it. It’s not going fast enough.

Q: What about Sacramento’s role?

A: The funding is slacking off. The funding, in the early years, came from the bond issues. That’s just about exhausted.... Neither the Legislature nor the government has come up with a permanent funding source. Political leadership has to come from political leaders, and it’s lacking on both sides. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has remained a champion in Washington, but she hasn’t gotten much help.

Q. Didn’t it surprise some people a few years ago when you went to work for a law firm representing development interests at the Ahmanson Ranch and the Hearst Ranch in California and the proposed Yucca Mountain storage site for radioactive waste in Nevada?

A: I’ve always been pro-development. We live in a world that is so polarized that there doesn’t seem to be any middle space -- if you’re an environmentalist, you must oppose everything. That doesn’t describe me. It never has. I believe that nuclear power is the lesser [evil] of the only two alternatives that are on the table right now. One is to fry this planet with continuing use and burning of fossil fuels, and the other is to try to make nuclear power work. That’s been my position since 1978, when I served on the Three Mile Island commission. I’ve endured a lot of hassle over it, but that’s my judgment. We’ve got to get away from fossil fuels fast, or this planet, as we know it, is not going to exist.