The Coming Campaign for the Environmental Vote

Vice President Al Gore has long taken the environmental vote for granted, but that may change now that Texas Gov. George W. Bush has decided global warming is real. After years of endorsing the oil industry’s view that mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions have no effect on climate, the Texas governor told a press conference on May 12, “I believe there is global warming.”

Bush’s statement, which amounts to an about-face on Gore’s signature issue, has been largely overlooked by the nation’s political reporters. But it shows that Bush and his advisors recognize something the media still may not get: The environmental vote matters in presidential politics.

The Bush camp apparently plans to make Gore work for it. The question facing voters is whether either candidate will go beyond tactical posturing and truly confront the grave environmental threats facing civilization.

But forget gloom and doom; the environment can be a winner for any candidate with the wit to link it to the issue that decides most U.S. elections: the economy. Americans tell pollsters they want environmental protection even if it means there will be less economic growth, but the happy truth is, they need not choose between the two. Restoring our planet’s ailing ecosystems could become the biggest economic enterprise of the 21st century, a bountiful source of jobs, profits and competitiveness.

Bush grew up in the oil business, so he cannot have found it easy to admit that global warming must be taken seriously. Yet, the calculus of presidential electioneering left him little choice.

At a time when almost all climate scientists of stature agree that global warming has begun, and even oil giants British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell have stopped denying it, a candidate cannot assert that “the science is still out” on global warming, as Bush did just a few weeks before his May 12 press conference, without sounding anti-environmental. It’s fine for the Rush Limbaughs of the world to ridicule global warming as a liberal hoax, but a presidential candidate who dared such talk would alienate the suburban voters considered crucial to victory in 2000. Think not? Ask Bob Dole. When congressional Republicans tried to gut environmental laws in 1995, they were routed because two-thirds of the American public, including a majority of GOP voters, were opposed to it.

Bush’s conversion on global warming will irritate members of his party’s right wing, for whom global warming is a hot-button issue like missile defense and school prayer. But that only underlines the central point: The environment has become a mom and apple-pie issue, and no one can win the presidency who does not at least sound like an environmentalist.

But is it enough merely to sound like an environmentalist? Gore published a book in 1992 arguing that the rescue of the environment should become “the central organizing principle for civilization.” But what has Gore actually accomplished for the environment these past six years?

Unfortunately, not much. Gore did not, for example, persuade President Bill Clinton to honor his 1992 campaign pledge to increase the fuel efficiency of U.S. vehicles to 45 miles a gallon, the single strongest measure Clinton could have taken against global warming. Gore again stood by the president in 1995, when Clinton signed a bill allowing unlimited clear-cutting of national forests. Now the administration is backing regulatory reform legislation that will allow corporations to delay environmental regulations indefinitely in the name of sound science.

Perhaps Gore has been soft-pedaling his beliefs for fear of alienating business and labor interests he thinks he needs to win. If so, that is an act of miscalculation. Gore knows perfectly well--indeed, he wrote about it at length--that environmental protection and economic prosperity can reinforce one another. Though Gore seems not to notice, the evidence for that proposition is stronger today than when he was writing his book.

In his new book, “Cool Companies,” former Asst. Secretary of Energy Joseph J. Romm documents how such firms as DuPont, 3M, Xerox and Compaq are fattening their bottom lines while dramatically reducing the amount of greenhouse gases their facilities release into the atmosphere. The key is efficiency: not doing without but doing more with less. Some of the best examples are found in California.

Toyota Auto Body Works, a Long Beach facility that manufactures and paints the rear deck of Toyota pickups, was consuming 2.5 million kilowatt hours of electricity in 1991. By 1996, the plant had doubled its production volume while cutting its electricity consumption by one-third, thanks to such efficiency improvements as better motors, lighting and air compressors. Or consider VeriFone, a Hewlett-Packard subsidiary that manufactures credit-card verification machines. When VeriFone was preparing to renovate a 76,000-square-foot facility in Costa Mesa, it chose a natural-light design that made the plant’s workers feel so much better--no more end-of-the-day headaches and drowsiness--that their productivity climbed 5% and the absentee rate dropped an astonishing 45%

With the right kind of presidential leadership, the federal government could encourage companies and individuals throughout the nation to join the efficiency crusade. Many “cool” companies enjoy “a return on investment that can exceed . . . 50% and even 100%,” reports Romm, and there is no reason others cannot do the same.

The government could also get products like solar power and “green” cars off the ground by using federal purchasing power. Americans have personal computers on their desks largely because Washington got the computer industry up and running with a steady stream of purchases by the Pentagon in the 1960s. Those purchases helped companies climb the learning curve and bring down costs to where average consumers could afford to buy their own computers.

Washington could do the same today with cars, the ultimate symbol of the environmental crisis. Every year, the government buys 50,000 vehicles for official use. If Washington told Detroit it would only buy cars powered by hybrid-electric motors or hydrogen fuel cells, Detroit would surely comply, if only to keep the federal money flowing. Given Detroit’s engineering talent, who can doubt that the industry would soon be producing green cars at competitive prices?

Jobs, profits and a cleaner environment--what better platform could a candidate offer voters? True, championing this vision of green prosperity might discomfort determined polluters and right-wing extremists, but it would attract widespread support from the great middle that decides most presidential elections. The question is whether Bush, Gore or any other candidate for president is able to grasp this golden opportunity.*