From the Philadelphia Inquirer, by Paul Nussbaum
Environmental issues, especially at the state and local levels, are bringing together conservatives and liberals who agree on little else, providing common ground in an increasingly polarized nation.
And some Republicans and Democrats see environment-related agreements as a way to build broader consensus.
"I have formed relationships with members of the other party based on our interest in the environment," said Rep. James Saxton of New Jersey, one of the most pro-environment Republicans in Congress, according to the League of Conservation Voters' annual scorecard. "I'm still on the conservative side, and they're still what I'd call liberal, but we now have a kind of bond that you get with people you work closely with."
Conservatives such as pro-gun hunters and antiabortion evangelicals are making common cause with pro-abortion-rights, gun-control liberals on land conservation, pollution, and endangered-species protection.
"We've heard a lot about the death of environmentalism, but I think what we're seeing is the rebirth of environmentalism. We're going back to where we were in the 1970s," said Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters. "We're building a populist movement."
Callahan said 90 percent of the 18,000 campaign volunteers who worked for the league last fall had not been members of environmental organizations.
"You have a new politics overlaid on the old that talks about the environment," said Robert J. Brulle, associate professor of sociology and environmental policy at Drexel University. "About 70 percent of the issues still break down along the old lines, but for 30 or 40 percent of them, the traditional left-right dichotomy doesn't work anymore.
"The strangest bedfellows I've ever seen are Earth Firsters and evangelical Christians."
Brulle said the blurring of ideological lines on the environment is apparent in Washington: "When you look at this Congress, it's easily the most conservative in 50 years, but the Clear Skies bill didn't even make it out of committee and the opening up of ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) won by a single vote."
At the ballot box, on issues such as land preservation, water quality, renewable energy and public transit, American voters crossed party lines to approve about 75 percent of environment-related ballot measures last November, even as they chose George Bush over John Kerry for president.
Most Americans - 61 percent - say they are active in the environmental movement or sympathetic toward it, according to a 2004 Gallup poll. That number is down from 71 percent four years earlier. Thirty percent said they were "neutral" toward environmentalism in 2004, up from 23 percent in 2000.
Local and state issues often appeal across political divides, as shown in the 2004 election:
In "red" Montana, voters rejected a proposal to repeal a 1998 ban on cyanide leaching, a gold-mining method. The debate pitted concerns about water pollution against proffered economic gains from mining.
Colorado voters, who put their state in the "red" column for Bush, also approved a measure requiring electric utilities to obtain 10 percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2015. And they elected a Democratic U.S. senator, Ken Salazar, whose slogan was "our land, our water, our people."
In conservative Gwinnett County, Ga., where 66 percent of voters picked Bush, voters by the same margin approved a one-cent sales-tax increase to pay for $85 million to protect open space. In Indian River County, Fla., voters went overwhelmingly (61 percent) for Bush, and even more overwhelmingly (67 percent) for spending $50 million to preserve open space. Nationwide, 162 of a record 217 land-preservation ballot measures were approved, according to the Trust for Public Land, a land conservation organization.
Denver-area voters approved a $4.7 billion mass-transit plan to vastly expand the region's commuter-rail system and pay for it with a 0.4-cent sales-tax increase. Around the country, 23 of 31 transit-ballot measures passed.
The Denver measure brought together disparate groups.
"On the transit issue, we were thinking about it as an environmental issue, and one of the other major groups pushing it was the Chamber of Commerce because it was good for business," said Susan LeFever, director of the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Sierra Club in Denver. "So we'd work together on this, and then they'd go off and work for Republican candidates and we'd go off and work for Democratic candidates."
And most evangelical Christians, a pivotal conservative group for Bush in the last election, say they favor strict rules to protect the environment even if they cost jobs or result in higher prices, according to the 2004 National Survey of Religion and Politics.
"Evangelicals are more sympathetic to the environmental movement than people think," said Rich Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. "The stereotype of evangelicals is that we're all sitting at home reading "Left Behind or out pillaging and plundering the environment. That's just not the case."
The evangelical association's manual on public policy says, "We are not the owners of creation, but its stewards, summoned by God `to watch over and care for it.' This implies the principle of sustainability; our uses of the Earth must be designed to conserve and renew the Earth rather than to deplete or destroy it."
Hunters and fishermen, typically conservative in politics, can be a powerful pro-environment force. In 2003, sportsmen's groups succeeded where traditional environmental groups had failed in lobbying the Bush administration to scrap plans to reduce protections for isolated wetlands - critical habitat for fish and wildlife and essential to waterfowl and duck hunting.
"Our interests sometimes merge," said James D. Range, chairman of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a coalition of hunting and fishing organizations. "Environmentalists for a long time didn't want to talk to the conservation community ... but now, I think the environmentalists realize they need an ally and that they're going to have to negotiate what many would perceive as a more reasonable position to go forward. They're going to do that, and that common ground is where progress is going to be made."
Jim DiPeso, policy director for Republicans for Environmental Protection, a small national group based in Albuquerque, N.M., said environmentalists need to do a better job of linking economic and environmental issues.
Recent Gallup polling indicates Americans are interested in the economic impact of environmental protection: In 2004, 49 percent said protection of the environment should be given priority even at the risk of curbing economic growth, down from 69 percent in 2000. Those who felt economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers, rose from 26 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2004.
"The lesson that environmentalists really need to learn is that when you're talking about environmental protection, you have to frame it for the audience and community that you're trying to reach," DiPeso said. "You need to show tangible, concrete benefits that are relevant to people's lives. It's time to bring environmental benefits back to earth."
"A lot of environmentalists are uncomfortable with that - they say, `You're putting dollar signs on the environment.' Well, yeah, you are."
Conservative voters who typically oppose increased government spending or tax increases often support spending for land preservation because it "delivers tangible results, close to home," said Ernest Cook, senior vice president and director of conservation finance for the Trust for Public Land.
He noted that 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties voted for Bush last November but that many of those same counties recognize "a great need to set aside land for conservation purposes."
"We are translating what people already know and feel into action," Cook said. "People understand more about the environment than we give them credit for."
