Gore Attacks GOP Record on Environment

Vice presidential candidate Al Gore launched a furious counterattack Friday against Republican criticisms of the Democratic ticket’s environmental positions, charging that the Bush Administration’s record on the issue “is little more than photo opportunities and empty promises.”

Gore also said: “I’m not sure there’s anyone left in America with the exception of (Vice President) Dan Quayle who can refer to George Bush as the ‘environmental President’ without laughing.”

The Tennessee senator was referring to one of Bush’s pledges during the 1988 campaign.

Gore’s comments came in response to assertions by Quayle earlier in the day that the environmental views espoused by Democratic ticket were “bizarre” and “hysterical.”

As Bush had done earlier in the week, Quayle criticized Gore and the Democratic presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, for supporting a proposal to raise automobile fuel efficiency standards from the current 27.5 miles per gallon to 40 m.p.g. by the turn of the century.

Campaigning in Grand Rapids, Mich., Quayle said the proposal, if enacted, could cost up to 300,000 jobs nationwide. Bush made a similar claim while campaigning in Michigan on Tuesday.

Gore, touring parts of Texas with Clinton on Friday as the pair completed their fourth joint bus trip of the campaign, said Bush and Quayle “pose a false choice between the environment and jobs.”

He accused the Administration of failing to recognize that environmental cleanup can create “millions” of new jobs in what he said is a fast-growing field of technology, especially in Japan and Germany.

He also said that, under a Clinton-Gore Administration, the federal government would forge “a new partnership” with industry to develop technologies to meet the tougher fuel-efficiency standards.

“We are looking for more efficient products in all industries,” he added.

Gore disputed Quayle’s defense of the Administration’s environmental record.

“George Bush and Dan Quayle taking credit for a clean environment is like a weatherman taking credit for a sunny day, then looking for another four-year contract. It’s ludicrous,” Gore said.