George Bush on the Environment

George Bush

Editors' Summary: With virtual certainty, one of the two Dialogues that follow is the environmental views of the next president. Choosing between them is one of the most important environmental decisions that Americans collectively will make over the next several years.

This month, we publish side by side the environmental views of George Bush and Michael Dukakis. Both manuscripts are the most recent comprehensive statements received from the candidates as of late June 1988. To make the comparison as fair as possible, we have not edited either piece for substance, rather editing only to make the manuscripts uniform with our standard style for punctuation, grammar, and the like. In the case of Mr. Bush's manuscript, delivered originally as a speech to a Seattle audience, we have also eliminated the customary greeting and farewell to the audience and we have generalized such audience-specific phrases as "Here in Seattle."

Otherwise, for both candidates what you see is, come Inauguration Day, what you will get.

Mr. Bush is the vice president of the United States, and will be the Republican candidate for president in the November 1988 election.

[18 ELR 10293]

I want to talk to you today about the environment: about how we can better protect and enjoy the great gifts of nature that God has bestowed upon us.

Let me say right at the outset that I don't think we've been doing enough to protect our environment in recent years. We need to do more. The condition of our land, water, and air affects the health and quality of life of each and every one of us.

We have been blessed in this country with a bountiful land. Fertile soils, abundant water, great forests, productive fisheries, teeming wildlife, rich mineral resources — these have been our heritage.

Ours is also a land of incomparable natural beauty: of vast open spaces and magnificent mountains, of majestic rivers and shining lakes, of rolling plains and splendid sea coasts. These, too, are part of our heritage and have helped shape and inspire the American spirit.

We hold this natural bounty in trust for future generations of Americans. It is not ours to squander and despoil, but ours to use and manage wisely — not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of our children and our children's children.

For this reason, the protection of the environment and the conservation and wise management of our natural resources — this whole notion of stewardship — must have a high priority on our national agenda.

I love to hunt and fish, and I've been lucky enough to experience much of America's great outdoors. Recently, I went fishing on the Rouge River in southern Oregon. Four hours under a cloudless sky, running the white water and drifting in the still blue pools, flicking my lure for steelhead and salmon while the ospreys and herons wheeled overhead.

All of us have moments and places that have a special hold on our memories and our hearts. For me, one such moment came last summer, seeing the magnificence of the Grand Tetons through the eyes of our 10-year-old grandson. And always, I cherish my time each summer chasing bluefish in the choppy blue waters off the rocky coast of Maine.

In the same way, somehow, pollution is uniquely personal. For when we think about pollution, we think first of man's insults to the places we love: plastic 6-pack rings floating in the ocean, trash washing up on the shore.

We still have much to do.

I am proud of the leadership shown by Republicans on protecting the environment. It was a Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt, who declared 80 years ago that nothing short of defending this country in wartime "compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us."

And it was under President Nixon 20 years ago that we moved forward with landmark legislation on clean air and water and created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

We have made great progress in protecting our environment. Make no mistake about it. We have made very real [18 ELR 10294] headway in cleaning up our air and water. And we have done this at the same time that our population has grown and our economy expanded. It has been an effort that all Americans can take pride in.

The United States also has long been the world leader in the establishment of national and state parks, the protection of wilderness areas, the conservation of wildlife, and the creation of a system of national forests and other landmarks — preserving reminders of the wildness that once was America.

Likewise, we have done much to conserve our cultural and historic heritage, the historic structures and sites that are the visible symbols of our American past.

In this, as in so many other areas of our life, it has been not only government that has made the difference, but the voluntary efforts of private organizations and dedicated individuals in every part of the country.

There are some in the environmental movement who paint a picture of ecological disaster, who say our situation is all but hopeless.

Well, we've proved that isn't so. We've proved that once the American people put their minds to it, these problems can be solved. The solutions are not always easy or cheap. These are typically complex problems, the products of our complex, thriving, technological society.

But given sound research, innovative technology, hard work, sufficient public and private funds, and — most important of all — the necessary political will, we can achieve and maintain an environment that protects the public health and enhances the quality of life of us all.

I stress the word all because no one pays a higher price for a degraded environment than the poor of our central cities. It is there that air pollution exacts its greatest toll on health and lead contamination is at its worst. It is there that the lack of open space and decent outdoor recreation opportunities blight the lives of young and old alike.

We all have a stake in a healthy environment. We all want an EPA that is committed unequivocally to environmental protection. We want environmental regulation based on good research and sound data, developed with a clear eye and an open mind, and vigorously and uniformly enforced. And under my leadership, that's what we'll have.

A new administration is a time for change, a time for renewal. I will put the very best people we can find to work on our environmental agenda.

I believe that most corporations want to be good environmental citizens, that they see the need for sustainable development. It is in the economic self-interest of industry to avoid polluting by recycling wastes, by minimizing wastes at the source, or by changing to a nonpolluting process, just as it is in the economic self-interest of farmers to avoid excessive use of chemicals that can contaminate both surface and groundwaters.

In my view, environmental action has too often been marked by confrontation among competing interests. The fact is that, more often than not, there is a common ground if the parties will make an effort to find it.

Over the long run a process of cooperation and consultation will produce the most protection for the environment in the fastest time and in the most cost-effective way.

Of the many major environmental issues facing us today, some have long been with us, and some are just emerging. Some seem almost intractable. Most are much more complex than they were a decade ago.

The challenge for industry is to identify and provide innovative technological solutions. Breakthroughs that we can already identify, such as biodegradable plastics made from corn, and others that we can only guess at — for example, in biotechnology — hold great promise for cleaning up the environment.

The challenge for government is to encourage, not stifle, these new approaches to our problems, and to work just as hard at anticipating and preventing problems as we do in reacting to them.

A Bush administration will enforce environmental laws aggressively, putting the responsibility for cleanup where it belongs, on those who caused the problem in the first place; but we will also understand that micromanagement from Washington leads only to paralysis.

Let me highlight now a few critical problems that are part of our unfulfilled agenda.

There is hardly a community in the land that is not afflicted with the problem of toxic waste. We have put major funding into the Superfund program, yet it is seriously lagging. Any further delay where there is a threat to public health is simply intolerable. We must speed up the cleanup of toxic waste dumps.

There is a need to push harder on enforcement. There is a need to streamline and accelerate the process, to promote voluntary settlement procedures, and to reduce the regulatory barriers to new and innovative cleanup technologies.

Unfortunately, some of the worst offenders are our own federal facilities. As president, I will insist that in the future federal agencies meet or exceed environmental standards: the government should live within the laws it imposes on others.

The problem we have created is so large and so hugely expensive that we cannot expect to correct it overnight, but attack it we will, as rapidly as we can.

Closely related to the problem of toxic waste is the growing threat of contamination of our nation's groundwater. More than half of the American people depend on this source for their drinking water.

The safety of our groundwater is threatened by cancer-causing chemicals from toxic waste dumps, industrial wastes, agricultural runoff, and septic systems. Once groundwater is contaminated, the damage can be almost irreversible. We must give a high priority to groundwater protection, with federal leadership and state implementation. We must take action now.

Clean air has been on our environmental agenda for decades. We have made good progress in reducing emissions from cars, factories, and power plants. We have the toughest automobile emission standards in the world. But nearly 80 metropolitan areas are flunking federal clean air standards.

As our regulatory objectives grow more stringent, regulation becomes more costly and disruptive. We should also look to the marketplace for innovative solutions.

For example, repeal of the Fuel Use Act has resulted in greater use of clean natural gas, reducing both sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions. Similarly, approval of the Canadian Free Trade Agreement will bring more natural gas on the market.

The use of oxygenated fuels, such as ethanol and methanol, holds the promise of significantly reducing smog and acid rain caused by automobile emissions. As head of [18 ELR 10295] the President's Task Force on Regulatory Relief, I've fought to reduce regulatory barriers to these fuels.

This is an important but little-recognized initiative. Seattle is showing the way with 10 methanol-powered buses on the road. In the Denver area, drivers are required to use oxygenated fuels in gasoline blends during winter months.

With regard to acid rain, we can no longer afford to simply study the problem; we must begin to take effective action. There must be a national commitment to continue to reduce emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides.

I support our $ 5 billion program to develop new clean coal technology and other pollution control incentives. We should pursue the initiatives that have emerged from our dialogue with Canada, and if they do not produce results, establish specific emission reduction goals that promise steady progress toward cleaner air.

Like acid rain, many of our most serious environmental problems respect no borders. Some can only be addressed effectively by worldwide cooperative efforts and with an understanding of the international political sphere.

For example, evidence is continuing to mount that the stratospheric ozone layer, essential to protecting all life from destructive ultraviolet radiation from space, is being dangerously depleted by the emission of chlorofluorocarbons and other gases from man-made products.

I am proud to have played a role in getting our administration to take the lead in developing and promoting a multilateral agreement on this matter, and I am pleased to see other nations beginning to ratify the Montreal Protocols.

American companies have already begun to take action. I applaud the decision of Du Pont, Dow, and other companies to withdraw CFCs from the market in the near future.

Some of the most acute of the world's environmental problems occur in the Third World, where growing human populations are increasingly out of balance with their natural resource base.

These problems include the rapid spread of deserts, the extinction of species, and massive soil erosion. The destruction of tropical rain forests may contribute to climate changes that cause drought in other parts of the world.

Other international challenges confront us as well: pollution of the oceans and global climate change, the so-called "greenhouse effect."

We are all passengers together on a boat that we have damaged — not with the cataclysm of war, but with the slow neglect of a vessel we thought was impervious to our abuse. In the last analysis, we all have a stake in maintaining the ecological health of the planet. International environmental cooperation will be one of my foreign policy priorities.

We must spread the word that economic development and environmental protection are not just compatible, they're intertwined. In the long run, economic development must be sustainable development. Conservation, as Gifford Pinchot once said, provides "the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest time."

We can also join together on expeditions into space to look back at our Earth, to discover what it is we are doing to ourselves, and to alter our self-destructive course.

Such a "Mission to Planet Earth," as proposed by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration commission headed by Sally Ride, would establish a global observational system in space, aimed at developing a fundamental understanding of the Earth system.

We must remember as we chase our dreams into the stars that our first responsibility is to our Earth, to our children, to ourselves. Yes, let us dream, and let us pursue those dreams, but let us first preserve the fragile and precious world we inhabit.

Finally, let me say a word about the world we see and treasure firsthand, about our own oudoors. I have long sought creative new ways of protecting our outdoor and recreational resources. As a congressman from Texas, I sponsored legislation to create a 150,000-acre national park in an ecologically critical area of east Texas.

More recently, I was a strong supporter of the Wallop-Breaux amendment, which provides money from user fees on fishing equipment to manage and enhance sport fishing opportunities, perhaps the most important legislation benefitting the 60 million sport fishermen in this country.

I support many of the recommendations made last year by the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors; for example, the encouragement of public-private partnerships for recreation, the creation of greenways and the strengthening of urban parks to provide open spaces close to where people live, and the protection of rivers and streams and our fast-disappearing wetlands.

The Commission also recommended the encouragement of an outdoor ethic — "a new appreciation of air, land, water, and all living things."

There is, after all, much that we can do ourselves, individually, to benefit the environment: we can reduce our municipal solid waste problem with a greater commitment to recycling. We can improve the outdoor experience simply by picking up the trash we see and not leaving any of our own behind.

Nature was once the great enemy of Man: a ferocious and fearful force to be conquered, tamed, and harnessed to our needs. Now we find that we must protect her from ourselves.

Walt Kelly was talking about polluters when he penned his famous words, "We have met the enemy, and they is us."

Let us resolve today to find a truce with that enemy within. Let us seek once again a world where our air and water are metaphors for purity and not threats to our very lives. Let us join together to protect the glorious but fragile beauties of America.