Republicans Seek to Change Image on Environment

Citing a tradition of conservation dating back to Theodore Roosevelt, a group of prominent Republicans announced the formation Tuesday of a group aimed at promoting environmentalism among Republicans.

Former EPA administrator William K. Reilly and former Rep. Tom Campbell of Palo Alto will head the California Environmental Forum with the goal of encouraging Republican activism and reducing partisanship in governmental decisions on the environment.

“We hope to make sure the Republican Party moves even more toward an environmental presence,” said Campbell, who lost his bid last year for election to the U.S. Senate. “We’re the conservative party. We care about conserving.”

Standing by San Francisco Bay with the Golden Gate Bridge behind them, Campbell and Reilly were joined by other moderate Republicans who have worked on environmental causes, including state Resources Secretary Douglas Wheeler, a member of Gov. Pete Wilson’s Cabinet.

“We are going to reclaim the environment for a party that sometimes is accused of having forgotten it when the going got rough,” Reilly said at a news conference.

The California Environmental Forum is officially a task force of the California Republican League, a fiscally conservative group that advocates a limited role for government.

Leaders of the new organization said they will seek solutions to environmental problems that involve the active participation of businesses rather than government-imposed restrictions.

“The California Environmental Forum believes environmentalism should ultimately be equated with good economics,” the group said in a statement of its mission. But the organization also acknowledged that “effective conservation sometimes necessitates support for ecological initiatives which may impose short-term economic sacrifice.”

The group criticized environmental extremism at both ends of the political spectrum and sought to separate itself from the conservative Wise Use movement, which seeks to fend off environmental restrictions on the use of public lands in the West.

Campbell, who has returned to Stanford University as a professor of economics at the Law School, said the organization’s goals are more in line with those of mainstream environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters.

The organization’s logo is a sketch of Roosevelt, a conservationist and hunter who as President advocated a National Park Service. As part of the Republicans’ environmental legacy, the group also cites President Abraham Lincoln’s move to set aside Yosemite Valley as a park, Richard Nixon’s establishment of the EPA and the Bush Administration’s “aggressive and unprecedented record of environmental enforcement.”

Based on his experience in Congress, Campbell said some Republican politicians view environmental issues with disdain when they should be making them part of their agenda.

Reactions from some Democrats were encouraging.

Democratic state Sen. Tom Hayden of Los Angeles, who has championed a variety of environmental causes, said he welcomed increased Republican interest in the environment.

“I think that it’s healthy that Republicans take up the environmental challenge, and this mirrors what many executives are trying to do in their own companies,” Hayden said. “Let’s call it a pale greening of the conservatives. Does it go far enough? Of course not.”