A New Day For Earthly Concerns : Environmental Issues Join The Political Mainstream

Some years ago, as President Calvin Coolidge was leaving church on a Sunday morning, he was approached by a re porter. “What was the sermon about?” the reporter asked.

“Sin,” the President replied.

“And what did the preacher have to say about sin?” the reporter persisted.

“He said he was against it,” Coolidge answered.

The consensus on the environment is about as strong as the consensus on sin. Ask Americans how they feel about the environment and they say, “We’re for it.”

That explains two things: why the environmental coalition is so successful, and why those who do not accept environmentalism as a consensual value--business interests, conservatives and environmental radicals--are so frustrated.

Earth Day, for example, has taken on the character of a celebration rather than a protest. Activities are being sponsored by TV networks, public-relations firms, schools, movie stars, local governments, labor unions, rock bands, museums, political parties and even major corporations. In the immortal words of Jimmy Durante, “Everybody wants to get into the act.”

Honolulu will have a Low-Energy Parade (vehicles run on fossil fuels not allowed). Street vendors in New York will sell organic foods (tofu knishes?). On ABC’s “Earth Day Special,” Bette Midler will portray a long-suffering Mother Earth--a sort of ecological Stella Dallas.

Who is the target of all this activity? According to the Earth Day 1990 brochure, “The (environmental) crisis exists precisely because of actions we have taken.” As Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Radical environmentalists see things differently. They insist that the issue involves fundamental social conflict. “Who is destroying the earth? Are we all equally to blame? NO!” proclaims one leaflet. “The polluters would have us believe that we are all just common travelers on ‘Spaceship Earth,’ when in fact a few of them are at the controls and the rest of us are choking on the exhaust.”

This particular point of view is espoused by Wall Street Action, a group that says it will try to disrupt the New York Stock Exchange on Monday. They complain that Earth Day is “a safe event” whose organizers say “nothing about the institutions or the economic system responsible for ecocide.”

The radicals are correct. Earth Day reflects a broad consensus on environmental values. You want a conflict of values? Try the abortion issue.

Three-quarters of the American people call themselves environmentalists. And they mean it. In one recent survey, that is the proportion who feel that “protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost.”

Conservatives like to think environmentalism is an “elitist” issue. As Earth Day Chairman Denis Hayes pointed out, the membership of environmental organizations has for a long time consisted largely of “upper-middle-class, well-educated, politically active, 35- to 60-year-old white folks.” In other words, liberals.

Minorities and working people were not supposed to have environmental concerns. They were too busy trying to make ends meet. The conservative strategy was to build a populist base on the issue of economic growth.

That was a serious error. Conservatives had it backwards: Environmentalism is the populist position. Most people refuse to believe there is any trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth. If forced to choose, the public opts for slower growth and a clean environment. That holds true for rich and poor, young and old, GOP and Democrat.

Business is frustrated by the environmental consensus. To the business community, the environmental movement is a greater threat to free enterprise than communism. The problem is that anti-environmental values have no legitimacy in the public debate. Therefore, businessmen find it hard to defend their interests.

In the congressional debate over the Clean Air Act, for example, the business community has decided not to take its case to the public. Some business leaders want to announce that the measure will raise consumer prices, create energy shortages and ban large automobiles. But they have been persuaded not to go public for one reason: They lack credibility.

After all, back in the 1970s, auto makers claimed tighter emission controls would destroy the auto industry. An executive vice president at Ford warned new pollution limits “could prevent continued production of automobiles” and “do irreparable damage to the American economy.”

Lee A. Iacocca was wrong. Under government pressure, the industry refined the technology of catalytic converters. This enabled them to boost fuel efficiency and exceed federal emission standards. The United States now exports catalytic converters to Europe and Japan.

Politicians, like businessmen, have learned that they have to be on the right side of the environmental issue. Republicans are following the lead of President George Bush. They are proclaiming the environmental cause as their own.

Bush called himself an environmentalist in 1988, and the Democratic candidate, Michael S. Dukakis, never bothered to dispute the claim. In fact, the Republicans ran more campaign ads on the environment than the Democrats.

This is called policy-poaching, and Republicans have gotten good at it. Bush calls himself “the environmental President,” and his commitment to a clean-air bill helped break the legislative deadlock and produce the first new anti-pollution measure in 13 years. GOP candidates for governor of California and Florida are touting their environmental credentials.

This drives Democrats and environmentalists crazy. They think they’re supposed to be the arbiters of who’s politically correct on the environment. “We’ve not moved quickly enough to set a standard,” said Jim Maddy, executive director of the League of Conservation Voters, “so each and every politician decides what it takes to be considered good on the environment.”

Conservatives in the Bush Administration also find themselves on the defensive. Every time they try to weaken Bush’s environmental position, political necessity forces him to strengthen it.

Just last week, Bush created a stir in his opening remarks to a two-day, 17-nation conference on global warming convened by the White House. The President told the delegates that more study was needed on the causes of global warming and that no action could be taken without considering the economic consequences.

Bush was immediately criticized for trying to use the conference as a delaying tactic. So the next day he backtracked and said, “We have never considered research a substitute for action.” The President insisted he was trying to “apply the power of the marketplace in the service of the environment.”

What the Administration was really trying to do was revealed in a paper inadvertently released to the conference. The paper had a list of “talking points” for U.S. delegates. They were told to “raise the many uncertainties that need to be better understood” about global warming.

The paper warned the U.S. representatives that it was “not beneficial to discuss whether there is or is not” a global warming problem. “In the eyes of the public,” the document said, “we will lose this debate.” The Administration is learning. You can’t fight the environmental consensus, so you’d better join it.

As the Earth Day experience demonstrates, everybody is an environmentalist these days. Because the environmental consensus is so broad, it is not likely to have much of an impact on U.S. politics. On the other hand, it is likely to have a big impact on the environment. After all, we’re about to get a new Clean Air Act.