Kerry Campaign Speech Blasts Bush Environmental Actions

Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts is slamming President Bush’s environmental record, seeking to exploit what he and other Democratic presidential contenders believe is a weak spot in the incumbent’s political armor.

“Corporate polluters have found that in the Bush administration, the doors of government are wide open,” Kerry charges in a speech he is to give today at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. His campaign released advance copies of his remarks Saturday.

“Almost as soon as this administration took office, they invited in the chief lobbyists to rewrite the very laws that were intended to protect our land, our water and our air,” Kerry’s speech says. “And not surprisingly, the result was the biggest retreat on environmental protections in a generation.”

Although Kerry has attacked Bush on the environment many times before, an aide described this address as the senator’s first campaign speech on the subject since he announced in December that he is formally exploring a run for the White House in 2004.

Other Democrats who, like Kerry, are raising money in hopes of winning the party’s nomination to oppose Bush have voiced similar criticisms. They include Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Carolina, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and political activist Rev. Al Sharpton of New York.

A White House spokesman referred questions about Kerry’s speech to the Republican National Committee. Kevin Sheridan, an RNC spokesman, said that if Kerry were serious about making environmental progress, he would work with Bush.

“He’s looking for ways to score political points and outdo his Democrat competitors,” Sheridan said.

Since taking office two years ago, Bush has taken stands his supporters say balance economic and environmental interests. In his recent State of the Union address, the president announced a $1.2-billion proposal to promote research on hydrogen-powered automobiles, to help reduce smog and U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Administration officials insist that Bush’s initiatives will yield cleaner air and water and better stewardship of public lands than Democratic alternatives.

But in his speech, Kerry says Bush’s environmental policies are all rhetoric and no substance. He ridicules the president’s Clear Skies plan for air quality, saying Bush has broken a 2000 campaign promise to cut carbon emissions from power plants. And he adds that the government should strengthen air quality regulations by cutting allowable mercury, sulfur, nitrogen and carbon pollution.

The Democrat also criticizes Bush for abandoning the international air quality agreement known as the Kyoto Protocol.

He grudgingly applauds the president’s push for hydrogen-powered automobiles as “not a bad idea.” But, he says, the administration has failed to take meaningful steps to make gasoline-powered vehicles more efficient in the near future.

Kerry also says the nation should strengthen Superfund laws to ensure cleanup of contaminated industrial sites, revamp the tax code to reward the development of clean-energy technologies and promote “biofuels” produced from crops, wood and waste.

Some of the expenses underlying Kerry’s proposals would be borne by private industry. However, the speech contains no estimates of what any of his government-funded initiatives would cost.

Kerry reiterates his opposition to Bush administration efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration. And he calls for more stringent fuel-economy standards for sport utility vehicles. “We cannot drill our way to self-sufficiency,” Kerry says, echoing a standard line of attack by all major Democratic presidential hopefuls.