Environmental law and millennial politics.

• Author: Hayes, Denis (American environmental scholar)

A few weeks ago, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara published a mostly autobiographical book about the War in Vietnam.(1) It ignited a firestorm. The book elicited editorial condemnations of the author's arrogance from some, and op-ed paeans to the author's courage and candor from others. Talk radio boiled over with the rage of opponents and supporters of the war alike. Two decades after the last GI returned to America, the wounds of the 1960s remain raw.

Earth Day was a protest, too, but a protest with a difference. In a society that was coming apart at the seams, the Earth Day organizers tried to pull people together. We reached out to tycoons like Dan Lufkin, and welfare organizers like George Wiley. We actively sought the participation of schools, colleges, churches, business, and labor. Indeed, in this era of jobs versus owls" bumper stickers, it is worth remembering that organized labor provided the largest source of funding for the first Earth Day, dwarfing the contributions of traditional conservation sources, most of which viewed the campaign with skepticism. Indeed, the United Auto Workers provided more enthusiastic support for the Clean Air Act of 1970(2) than most traditional conservation organizations, which then still viewed air pollution as outside their missions.

The Earth Day message was, of necessity, broad enough to be broadly inclusive. At the same time, it was genuinely revolutionary. America, we said, was growing wealthier but not better. There was a fundamental conflict between how the nation measured progress and what people really cared about--a conflict between what our statisticians counted and what really counts.

Not long before his assassination in 1968, Robert Kennedy discussed the gross national product in a speech that could have served as the anthem for Earth Day:

[The gross national product] counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and

ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our

doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our

redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts

napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead . . . .

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children,

the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include

the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of

our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. h measures neither

our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion

nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except

that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about

America except why we are proud that we are Americans.(3)

That--expressed in myriad ways by all manner of people-was what Earth Day was about. The message resonated across the moats and barricades that divided the land. And twenty Million people came together to launch what has become the modem environmental movement.

Twenty-five years after Earth Day, the bald eagle is no longer endangered, and the Great Lakes are returning to life. Air pollution has decreased by more than one-third, even though we now are driving almost twice as many cars more than twice as many miles every year. The Cuyahoga River no longer catches on fire, and hundreds of streams, lakes, and bays are swimmable. Millions of people choose to recycle, conserve water and energy, eat lower on the food chain, and limit their family size for environmental reasons.

Most of this change has been immensely popular. Even at the zenith of the Great American Tax Revolt, eighty percent of Americans told pollsters they favored spending as much as it takes to protect the environment.(4) Strong environmental support is found among all income groups, education levels, geographic regions, and ethnic backgrounds.

The environmental movement that grew out of that spring protest in 1970 may well be the most successful social movement in American history. Environmental concerns guide the nation's investments, its lifestyles, and its laws. The right to a safe, healthy environment is a concept that essentially did not exist before 1970. When I grew up in Camas, Washington, the ungodly stench that pervaded everything was considered normal, even praised as the smell of prosperity. Today, the right to a safe and healthy environment has become an American core value, possessing wider, deeper public support than some values enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The new congressional leadership seems not to understand this, and it may eventually pay a heavy price for this misunderstanding

The 1994 Election

Last November, the nation inadvertently elected the most rabidly anti-environmental Congress in its history. I say "inadvertently" because exit polls and focus groups found that while many voters were motivated by concern for crime, the budget deficit, the economy, and a simple blood lust against Democratic incumbents and the big, faceless, bureaucratic government with which they are identified, only seven percent were influenced by environmental factors. Most voters appear to have assumed, as usual, that everyone was for the environment. It is absolutely clear that the 1994 election provided no mandate to trash twenty-five years of popular environmental progress.

However, the election was a landscape-altering earthquake for Democrats. Not one Republican governor, senator, or representative lost a bid for reelection. Republicans now control the Senate by a margin of 5446, the House of Representatives by a margin of 230-204, the nation's Governors' mansions by 30-19-1, and a majority of state legislative chambers.

The Democrats control the White House. But in winning the Presidency, Bill Clinton received three percent fewer votes than Michael Dukakis got four years earlier, when Dukakis was routed by Bush. The wild card in 1992 was Ross Perot. Perot took nineteen percent of the popular vote, and he took sixteen percent of it from George Bush. If Perot had not run in 1992, Clinton would have lost in a landslide. If Perot runs in 1996 (and his organization is currently busily preparing to run a fifty-state campaign), then, depending on who the Republican candidate is, Perot could draw evenly from both candidates. If Jesse Jackson runs an independent campaign in 1996, he will take all his votes from Clinton.

From a Democratic point-of-view, this sounds pretty bad. But, as Mark Twain replied when asked what he thought of Richard Wagner's music, it's "better than it sounds."(5) The current Republican hegemony is more correctly viewed as a beachhead than a landslide. A switch of just 170,000 votes in 13 congressional districts last November, and Newt Gingrich would be the minority leader, not the Speaker. And trouble looms ahead. The first one hundred days were truly the easiest. The major entitlement programs the Republicans will have to tame if they are to balance the budget--social Security, Medicare, subsidies to farmers, and aid to veterans--are hugely popular with bedrock Republican constituencies. But if the Republican leaders duck these issues, they virtually guarantee a Perot candidacy. Abortion is a no-win issue for them, but Pat Robertson will not let them avoid abortion forever. Promoting assault rifles carries a political cost and that cost will grow if new right-wing, paramilitary terrorist organizations start using them. All in all...