Give us your trees, your air, your crystal waters

Environmentalists say that four more years of Bush will turn even the red states black.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Nov 5, 2004 | In his first four years in the White House, George W. Bush was accused of being the worst environmental president in American history by conservationists ranging from Al Gore to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So what can we expect this self-proclaimed "good steward of the land" to do for an encore?

"I think it's pretty clear that a second Bush administration means lack of funding for environmental issues," says Betsy Loyless, vice president of policy for the League of Conservation Voters. "It means energy legislation that's dedicated to 19th century tenets. They may try drilling in the Arctic Refuge and perhaps change the Clean Air Act. It means more proposed drilling on public lands."

It also means environmental groups have lost the chance to get off the defensive after four years of pouring money, time and energy into staving off the president's slash-and-burn, pro-industry policies that masquerade under Orwellian names like "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests." After all, they had been looking forward to working with a new president with one of the consistently highest green ratings of any senator in the past two decades.

Even so, the election wasn't a referendum on the environment. Just over half of American voters may have been in sync with the president on moral values and security. But environmentalists argue that it would be a gross misreading of election results to assume that Bush speaks for the majority of the country when it comes to protecting their land, air and water.

"This election focused on just about everything but the environment," says Peter Rafle, a spokesman for the Wilderness Society. "War, foreign policy, security questions occupied people's minds, for better or worse."

With the race as close as it was, Brendan Bell, a spokesperson for the Sierra Club, says, "I don't think that we see this election as an endorsement of President Bush's environmental policies. And if the Bush administration believes that it is an endorsement, they're going to be in for a surprise."

At the state and local level, green issues faired well, even in the so-called red states. Voters nationwide approved $2.4 billion in funding for new open space, according to the Trust for Public Land, signing off on 111 of 147 land conservation measures -- a 76 percent passage rate, including in red states such as Florida and Virginia.

In Colorado, solid Bush country, voters approved a renewable energy portfolio standard, requiring that 10 percent of the state's electricity be derived from renewable energy sources like wind and solar by 2015. (In his first term, Bush fought the creation of such a standard at the federal level.) The Colorado law is the first time that voters have directly approved such a measure by ballot initiative. And in Montana, another red state, voters shot down a measure that would have relaxed restrictions on the use of cyanide by gold-mining firms.

It might seem like grasping at straws, but Montana's just-say-no vote to cyanide is one of many local green bills that buck up environmentalists. "In the presidential election, people talked about Iraq, the war on terror, jobs, the economy and cultural issues like gay marriage. But when voters got to vote on purely environmental issues, they often voted with the pro-environment vote," says Karen Wayland, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. So the president may be in for some big surprises if he expects Americans to roll over and embrace every pro-industry policy that he and his oil-and-gas men dish out in the next four years.

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