Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 22, 1995 TAG: 9504260016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
There has been much progress. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, when 20 million people turned out in communities across the land to demand that lawmakers force some respect for Mother Earth:
Leaded gasoline has been banned, and cleaner-burning fuels combined with cleaner-burning engines have cut tailpipe emissions 95 percent from 1960s levels. So, while Americans are driving almost twice as many miles a year as they were in 1970, air pollution has been reduced by more than one-third.
DDT has been banned and the American bald eagle, consequently, is no longer an endangered species.
Federal standards have resulted in water that is safer to drink, that is able to support life in the once-dying Great Lakes, and that is clean enough for swimming in twice as many lakes, streams and bays as in 1970.
All cause for celebration. But not unfettered.
Environmental-protection legislation has made impressive improvements in water and air quality, but plant and animal species continue to disappear, urban sprawl continues unabated, and ozone depletion and global warming continue, even as their risks continue to be debated.
And while environmental damage continues on some fronts, laws designed to protect or reclaim resources have, in some cases, hatched some colossal stupidities. The Superfund springs to mind.
While some environmentalists have begun looking for win-win arrangements, reduced costs of compliance and more flexible regulatory schemes, a lot more of the old command-and-control style of bureaucratic mandates persist than are necessary.
The greatest damper on Earth Day observances, though, comes from the Republican Congress, particularly the House. There, a new majority elected on a wave of anti-government, anti-incumbent anger has rallied under a banner of anti-regulatory zeal to launch an overly aggressive assault on environmental protection - though surveys show such protection is popular with citizens in every socio-economic group.
In their urgency to ram through legislation to meet a self-imposed 100-day deadline, House Republicans passed bills - drafted, in some cases, by lawyers and lobbyists for industries promoting their own interests - that could dismantle 25 years of gains that have meant real improvements in the quality of people's lives.
Critics of costly rules that yield few environmental benefits are right to demand that regulatory controls be backed up with better science and creative, market-oriented incentives. But the anti-environmental movement has been more a rush to turn back the clock than a sober, dispassionate reassessment of what has worked and what has not.
The hope is that the cooler, more deliberative Senate will moderate extreme legislation passed rashly by the House. Unfortunately, moderation may be threatened by presidential politics. The GOP's presidential hopefuls are busy jockeying to show who can be most conservative - an ironic label for a political outlook becoming increasingly hostile to conservation.
by CNB