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TODAY Tuesday 10 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Clean Air, Hot Air

Trust the Wall Street Journal to cover the news that matters. On the front page of yesterday's edition, the artful Alan Murray described the feud now being conducted within the Clinton Administration on the degree to which the President should embrace the new standards for the Clean Air Act proposed by EPA Administrator Carol Browner. EPA says that the science is clear that the public health will benefit significantly from new rules that would reduce the tolerated levels of ground-level ozone and soot and other tiny airborne particulates. Economists with the President's ear argue that the benefits to health are outweighed by the costs of compliance: costs to industry, consumers, and taxpayers. Both sides argue their cases with passion, Murray reports, a fact which pleasantly surprises many enviros who had thought that Browner was a lukewarm advocate of their interests.

The President and Vice President are taking cover behind sound management practices. This is an internal process which has to run its course, and when a position has been hammered out, we'll go to the Congress with a unified proposal. It would be inappropriate for the office of the Chief Executive to intervene prematurely. But, as Murray reports, the distance between the sides is considerable, and time is running out: "If Ms. Browner and her adversaries can't reach agreement in the next few days, President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore will have to step in and find a way to bridge this chasm. It will be a politically treacherous task."

To be sure. Greenwire yesterday reported that nine out of ten newspaper editorials and op-eds take the anti-EPA side of the argument. Hats off to the utilities and fossil-fuel companies and automakers and other manufacturers who caught the enviros flat-footed with their pre-emptive strikes on the scientific reliability of the evidence underpinning the proposed new standards. Battalions of sympathetic academics and think-tankers were mobilized to write robust, appealing little pieces on the need to wed scientific judiciousness with a balanced approach to economic and environmental trade-offs. The EPA and its enviro backers quickly found themselves painted as unrealistic zealots.

Some of the more nimble of the enviro groups have mounted counter-offensives (along with the indispensable American Lung Association), and there's been some excellent educational work done on the Hill and within the Administration itself. But no one can say that the environmental movement is entering into the Clean Air fight with anything approaching the money and discipline of their opponents. The "environment" plays well as an issue in the polls, but enviros haven't yet mastered the art of converting that general well-wishing into a strong political force that rewards friends and punishes enemies.

That capacity will be tested soon in an even more important context: the debate about the appropriate position of the US government for the international negotiations on a treaty to moderate climate change. Murray reports that the President will make a major climate change speech in July, as a runup to the Climate Summit later this fall in Kyoto.

Already you can hear the opening salvos of what will be cannonades of public relations campaigns. As we reported late last month ("Over the Top"), opponents of greenhouse-gas caps are simultaneously preparing positions that question climate science, that appeal to national patriotism, and that (most importantly) call into question the wisdom of undercutting national prosperity. It was on that last front that yesterday's Journal was particularly valuable.

There you found a two-page centerfold advertisement from The Business Roundtable, self-described as "an association of Chief Executive Officers committed to improving public policy." At the center of the center was a photograph of the Earth taken from space. Atop was a bold headline: "WITH A BALANCED APPROACH. We're Committed to a Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy."

In the terse body of the ad, you read that the CEOs of the Roundtable want to call attention to the importance of the "international climate treaty designed to reduce the potential dangers of global warming. It may be the most important economic decision of this century and the next as well... We have a responsibility to ensure future generations will have a healthy economy and enjoy an ever-increasing standard of living. We have an equal responsibility to protect our environment for future generations. We believe it's possible to do both with a balanced approach. But a balanced approach is only possible with careful study, input from a wide variety of sources, and extensive public debate. We strongly urge the Clinton/Gore administration not to rush to policy commitments until the environmental benefits and economic consequences of the treaty proposals have been thoroughly analyzed." Most of the two pages were filled with the signatures of about 100 big-time CEOs.

Uh-oh. That's pretty slick, very expensive, utterly focus-group-grounded. The Roundtable is the conciliatory, "progressive" wing of the let's-not-do-much forces, to the left of the fossil-fuel people and the manufacturers, and it will be interesting to see if it becomes the flag bearer of choice. And it will be interesting to see if the enviros can split the business ranks. Among the CEOs whose names did not appear in the ad were Warren Buffett, Gerald Levin, Bill Gates, or any other spokesmen from the worlds of computers, communications, finance, and insurance. A movement with multiple capacities and a shrewd sense of strategy would exploit their absence as it developed messages for opinion-shapers and ordinary citizens alike. The next six months will demonstrate whether we enviros constitute such a movement.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

There's a new Op-Ed on the site, as of yesterday afternoon. Kieran Mulvaney, an Irishman inexplicably attracted to the polar realms of the world, describes current threats to the Antarctic environment, threats which emanate not from resource exploiters but from scientists and tourists who go to Antarctica to study and admire. You can love a place to death if you're not careful.

 

6/09: Swimming
6/06: Enviros and Transpo
6/05: Fabulous Ethanol
6/04: Swine and Federalism
6/03: A New Measure
6/02: My Front Yard
5/30: Funders
5/29: Quantification
5/28: Over the Top
5/27: Solar Hippies
5/23: Spiffy Cars, Clunker Bikes
5/22: Petroleum Heresy
5/21: We Irish
5/20: Shallow Backpackers
5/19: Songbirds
5/16: Fat, Fat, Fat
5/15: Our Forthright Administration
5/14: Coral Reefs of the Sahara
5/13: (Life Before) Death and Taxes
5/12: Kids
5/09: Free Trade and Hormones
5/08: Sherry Boehlert, Republican
5/07: Fort Davis, West Texas
5/06: Europe (yawn)
5/05: Divorce, Mothers, Equality
5/02: Killer Grannies and the Highway Bill
5/01: China
4/30: Pity the Mangrove
4/29: Grizzlies off Battery Park
4/28: Mighty Monsanto
4/25: Growth
4/24: Refrigerator Wars
4/23: The Day the Earth Day Stood Still
4/22: Doorman Ecology
4/21: Toyota Steps Out
4/18: Victims of Extremism
4/17: Our White Guy Problem
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway

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