Green Groups Get White House’s Ear

After four months of open warfare between the White House and environmental groups, Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday solicited their leaders’ advice on how to incorporate more green ideas into the administration’s comprehensive energy plan.

No promises were made during the private session between the vice president and other senior White House officials, and representatives of the Sierra Club and three other organizations.

But in Washington, where access is everything, the 1 1/2-hour meeting in the Roosevelt Room appeared to signal a fundamental shift in the White House’s approach to the environmental community.

White House officials said their energy blueprint is a work in progress and could be expanded to include environmental priorities such as tougher fuel economy standards for vehicles and stringent targets for use of renewable energy.

The meeting was held on the same day that a new ABC-Washington Post poll showed that only 37% of the public supports the administration’s energy policy and that negative perceptions of the president’s environmental record are pulling down his overall approval rating.

Environmentalists said it was the first time they felt like they had been invited to take part in the dialogue that will shape Bush administration policy.

“The tone is very different; the rhetoric is very different,” said Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director. “I think they recognize the American people want an energy future based on a diversity of clean energy. They don’t want more coal, more oil and more nukes.”

Environmentalists who participated in Tuesday’s discussion suggested that public opinion polls are only one factor influencing the administration’s new strategy. Another is the change in leadership of the Senate, where Democrats have assumed the majority.

“The change in control of the Senate makes them realize they’re not going to be able to ram through their energy plan the way they did the tax cut,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the participants in the meeting.

It remains to be seen, they said, whether the switch in strategy will translate into tangible policy changes.

“It’s good that we’re having a dialogue, but dialogue means nothing without action,” said Anna Aurilio of U.S. Public Interest Research Group and another meeting participant.

Specifically, environmentalists pressed the administration to add three elements to their energy plan:

* Tougher standards requiring auto makers to produce cars, sport-utility vehicles and light trucks with an average fuel economy of 40 miles per gallon, which they say would save 50 billion barrels of oil over 50 years.

* A nationwide standard requiring electricity suppliers to obtain at least 20% of their power by 2020 from renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power, or from credits purchased on a nationwide trading system.

* New restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, as specified in legislation regulating four key pollutants generated by electrical power plants.

The two sides remained at loggerheads over carbon dioxide, but White House officials said the other two issues were “on the table,” according to participants.

The White House will not announce its policy on fuel efficiency standards until after the National Academy of Sciences issues a report on the subject, due next month, according to a senior White House official.

Tuesday’s meeting was requested by the Sierra Club, which took issue with Cheney for repeatedly stating on television news shows that the Bush energy plan incorporated 11 of the organization’s 12 energy proposals. Cheney participated in the meeting for about 20 minutes.

The meeting followed two visits by President Bush to national parks, Sequoia and the Everglades, in less than a week.