THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 3, 1995 TAG: 9503030010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
The current Sierra Club magazine contains an open letter from Carl Pope, the environmental organization's president, asking club dropout Newt Gingrich whether he ``would lead a new war on the environment'' or ``respond to your better instincts and make peace with the earth.''
It's a loaded question, but interesting, especially to Virginians who turn to the environmentally fragile Chesapeake Bay for livelihood or recreation.
Gingrich, speaker of the House of Representatives, belonged to the national nonprofit club of more than a half-million members from 1984 to 1990 and was endorsed by it in 1988. Till Gingrich became minority whip in 1989, the League of Conservation Voters generally rated his environmental support at a moderately favorable 50 percent to 60 percent, compared with a highly unfavorable zero to 10 percent from then on.
On a subject dear to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Gingrich once said: ``The ecological significance of freshwater wetlands, and the significance of the rapidly declining acreage of wetlands in the United States, cannot be overemphasized. It is vital that our wetlands are protected.''
The letter notes positions on which Gingrich and the Sierra Club agreed in the past, including opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and support of the Clean Air Act.
``Given your positive environmental record,'' Pope's letter asks, ``what led you to select, as chairs of the key environmental committees in the House, members with anti-environmental voting records as extreme as Don Young's of Alaska and Thomas Bliley's of Virginia? (Both received ratings of zero from the League of Conservation Voters last year.)''
And the letter wonders why membership in the Sierra Club was used ``as a negative litmus test in questionnaires given to potential House staff employees''?
Gingrich has not responded directly, but in a speech Feb. 16 in Washington, D.C., to an environmental policy group, he said he quit the Sierra Club because it ``became so partisan it was irrational and I decided it wasn't worth the energy to fight with them.''
Mark A. Yatrofsky of Norfolk, chair of the Sierra Club's local conservation committee, was asked this week about the environmental impact of laws Gingrich is pushing through Congress as part of the Contract With America. ``The effect,'' Yatrofsky said, ``would be quite deleterious to the health of the Bay, because this would provide a lever for rolling back just about every improvement that has been put in place. Most of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act provisions and regulations to enforce them would be vulnerable to roll-back.''
One proposed law would compensate property owners for losses in value caused by new pollution rules. Had this law been in effect years ago, rules that have protected wetlands would have been prohibitively expensive.
Another proposal, which passed the House this week, would bar new environmental rules unless the benefit from them exceeded the cost of implementing them. That road leads to ``paralysis by analysis,'' as the Sierra Club puts it. And what dollar amount do you assign to nature? To soaring eagles or lowly sparrows? To clean Bay water? Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner testified before a congressional committee recently, ``We don't think that under the risk provisions of the Contract With America we could have banned lead in gasoline.''
At least on environmental matters, Chesapeake Bay lovers should prefer the old Gingrich over the new one. by CNB