Environmentalists Have Soured On Clinton Conservationists No Longer Believe They Can Rely On President To Veto Bills

Environmentalists who celebrated President Clinton’s election say they now cannot count on him to veto Republican-sponsored bills rolling back environmental protections.

“I count on no politicians,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. “I think if push came to shove he’d veto some of them, but I’m not looking to him to rescue us.”

And Clinton should not take environmentalists’ support for granted in the next election, the groups say.

More than a dozen environmental groups launched a $2 million media campaign earlier this month, trying to alert voters to what they call an unparalleled assault on U.S. environmental laws in Congress.

“I think the American people have to demonstrate this is their air, their water, their communities,” Pope said.

“And they have to demonstrate they are not going to let anybody - whether it is Bill Clinton, the U.S. House or the U.S. Senate - mess with it.”

Proposals moving through Congress, in many cases with support from conservative Democrats, would exempt some national forest logging from environmental laws and prohibit new listings of wildlife to be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The television ads financed by the environmental coalition warn that additional legislation would repeal protections of air and water quality and give private land owners carte blanche when it comes to development of their property.

“There is a second target for this campaign,” said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. “It is to try to convince the White House this is an important issue to their re-election.”

Environmentalists have had a lovehate relationship with President Clinton since he took the White House after 12 years of Republican administrations.

They loved him when he named Vice President Al Gore as his running mate, a hero in environmental circles.

They hated him two years ago when, faced with opposition from Western Democrats, he backed off bold reform proposals that would have curtailed subsidized mining, logging and livestock grazing.

One problem conservationists run into when they try to politically pressure Clinton is that his views are compared to those of the Reagan and Bush administrations, clear enemies of environmental activists.

“When you have a strong White House and you have Vice President Al Gore it’s hard to imagine that the environment would really be in trouble,” Schlickeisen said.

“The buck may stop in the White House on these issues. He needs to know that. The public needs to know that our ultimate line of defense is the White House,” Schlickeisen said.

Clinton has indicated opposition to the idea of exempting salvage logging in national forests from environmental laws. But that proposal is part of a sweeping bill that could cut billions of dollars in spending - a measure unlikely to draw Clinton’s veto pen on its own.

Gore said Clinton likely will veto a measure that would reimburse landowners for diminished property values blamed on environmental regulations.

“We will fight against the rollback of environmental protection that some have proposed on Capitol Hill,” the vice president said at the National Press Club in an April 6 speech.

“We believe that American families want their children to be able to drink water from the tap without getting sick, and so we are going to insist that clean water and clean air and the environment be protected,” Gore said.

Critics within the environment movement say national conservation groups have been too timid with the Clinton administration.

“Nobody has betrayed the environment worse than Clinton,” said Tim Hermach, executive director of the Native Forest Council in Eugene, Ore.

“He got elected by environmentalists because he chose Al Gore and then he emasculated the man. They’ve done nothing on the environment since,” he said.