Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 15, 1990 TAG: 9007150176
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"They haven't seemed happy with me for a long time," Bush said last week, referring to environmental activists critiquing results of the economic summit in Houston. "And I'm not too happy with them."
On his way to the White House, Bush courted the "green" vote so enthusiastically he promised to be the "environmental president." But increasingly harsh complaints about his performance in office have soured the relationship to the point of open hostility.
Environmental activists once welcomed to the Oval Office are now characterized by the president as purists and extremists who cannot be satisfied.
"There is a growing frustration here that we never get credit for anything," said a White House official.
Meanwhile, the "greenies" say Bush is being influenced by White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu to retreat from the bolder environmental stands he espoused during the campaign and in the early days of his administration.
"Sununu has put out the word that environmentalists are dead in this town," said Jay D. Hair, president of the National Wildlife Federation, which is considered one of the more moderate environmental groups. "He's isolating President Bush from other world leaders on environmental issues, and he's being isolated at the back of the pack."
It is clearly a case of unmet expectations on both sides.
Bush and his aides believe he should be welcomed by environmentalists as a great improvement over his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, whose early administration sought to dismantle many environmental protections.
For example, Bush proudly takes credit for moving to revive and update the Clean Air Act, begin negotiations with Canada on an acid-rain treaty and curtail emissions of pollutants that destroy the ozone layer.
At the economic summit in Paris last year, Bush took the lead in writing a communique that for the first time declared that "decisive action" by the world's leading industrial powers was "urgently needed" to address global warming and other environmental issues.
"Reagan never did anything like this for the environment, but we get all the complaints," the Bush aide lamented.
That is because environmental groups that lobby worldwide for the difficult and costly measures required to fight global pollution set a much tougher standard for Bush.
They want him to live up to his own rhetoric.
Perhaps most dismaying to the environmentalists has been Bush's refusal to commit himself to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that are believed to be a major cause of global warming.
Although he promised during the campaign to fight the "greenhouse effect" with the "White House effect," Bush says he is not ready to jeopardize the U.S. economy by curtailing the use of fossil fuels, such as gasoline.
Since his leadership role in Paris, where the Group of Seven summit partners strongly advocated common efforts to limit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, Bush has been the lone holdout who has not committed his nation to stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions.
In Houston, Bush succeeded in preventing West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl from taking the Paris language a step farther with an endorsement of efforts to reduce levels.
"President Bush has shown a shameful lack of leadership on the global environment," said Cathleen Fogel, a Sierra Club official. "The American people should not be fooled."
A coalition of 150 conservation groups, which had earlier issued a report card grading most of the seven summit nations poorly for not living up to their Paris commitments, pronounced the Houston meeting a failure.
"They abandoned their Paris promises to work together to solve the world's most pressing environmental problems," said a statement by the coalition, which dubbed itself Envirosummit.
Bush, who has been hearing more and more such criticism, told reporters at a Houston news conference that he has taken about as much as he can stand.
"I'm not going to respond to those groups that have been attacking us every time we turn around," the president said in a sudden display of temper.
by CNB