Board Finds Consensus On Environmental Issues Both Sides Of Presidential Panel Oppose Relaxing Existing Laws
After a year in which industry and environmental groups have been at war over Republican-led efforts to roll back federal environmental regulations, a presidential panel with representatives from both sides has reached a rare consensus that while the existing system can be improved, it must not be weakened.
Rather than strip away many environmental regulations, as Republicans in Congress tried to do last fall, the panel calls for a new regulatory framework to give businesses more flexibility in preventing pollution - but only if they can perform better than is required under the current system of strict safeguards.
The group included two sides that are more likely to be found in court than at a negotiating table: leading companies in the oil, paper and chemical industries, all of which have supported Republican proposals for regulatory relief, and major environmental organizations which have accused the industries of trying to undo 25 years of progress. It also included members of President Clinton’s Cabinet and labor and civil rights groups.
In its final report, the panel, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, also calls for a comprehensive review of taxes and corporate subsidies, aimed at increasing taxes on pollution and consumption in exchange for cutting income taxes.
It urges long-range steps to stabilize the country’s population, including more federal money for family-planning and contraceptive research. And it says the United States, “even in the face of scientific uncertainty,” should lead the world in heading off serious or irreparable global trends such as climate change.
The report will be issued by the White House in the next few weeks, and in the months ahead, it appears destined to serve as the environmental platform for Clinton’s re-election campaign. Members of the council, created by the president in 1993, gave a copy of the report to The New York Times.
Clinton has been striving to make environmentalism a key issue separating him from the Republicans. The report offers him a coherent environmental credo that is not anchored in the status quo and that draws support not only from liberals but also from businesses.
“Implicitly, this denounces the kind of work that Congress has been up to for a year,” said Kathleen McGinty, who heads the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
“The environment is something that brings us together as a nation. It is a deplorable idea to use it to polarize the nation.”
The president’s council spent three years touring the country and debating how to balance economic growth and environmental protection. Among the members were leaders of environmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund plus executives of Georgia-Pacific Corp., Enron Corp. and Chevron Corp.