Slimed again.

• Author: Pope, Carl
• Position: Response to the article 'Slime Green,' May 1996, by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair - Includes authors reply to the response - Letter to the Editor

In their article on the environmental groups ("Slime Green," May issue) authors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair overlook some of the environmental community's greatest achievements ever--beating the odds to block a long list of devastating legislative assaults from the 104th Congress--and fail to mention several crucial facts.

The authors suggest that national environmental groups praised President Clinton for signing the budget rescissions bill with the so-called timber-salvage rider last July.

On the contrary, the environmental community hit the President with everything it had for signing this destructive bill.

A coalition of national groups took out full-page advertisements in national newspapers charging the President with "flip-flopping on the environment," ran radio ads against the President in the largest cities of the Northwest, and gathered across the street from the White House to give the President a sarcastic twenty-one-chainsaw salute with real chainsaws, to call attention to the devastation in our forests.

Cockburn and St. Clair neglect to mention that the timber-salvage provision was, unfortunately, only the first in a long series of Congressional attacks on our nation's environment.

They also fail to note that in the year since the timber-salvage rider was signed, President Clinton has repeatedly acted to block environmental attacks by an aggressive and hostile Congress.

Among the many destructive legislative proposals that would have become law had the President not stepped up with crucial vetoes are those that would have:

* opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling;

* denied funding for enforcement of pollution-control laws;

* given away our valuable natural resources to mining companies;

* promoted clear-cutting of Alaska's magnificent Tongass National Forest;

* blocked EPA efforts to issue health standards for drinking water;

* denied the EPA authority to protect the nation's rapidly disappearing wetlands;

* blocked the clean-up of Superfund hazardous waste sites; and,

* in the name of "regulatory reform," handcuffed government officials charged with carrying out environmental laws.

It was in response to the President's intervention to block these dangerous proposals that national environmental groups placed the THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT newspaper ad that Cockburn and St. Clair erroneously imply was a response to the salvage-logging bill. The Clinton Administration has not been perfect on the environment...