Environment? What Environment?

By Sunny Lewis, Environment News Service. Posted September 1, 2004.

None of the speeches made in New York have addressed, or even mentioned, the environment. First Lady Laura Bush spoke about watching her husband "wrestling with these agonizing decisions that would have such profound consequence for so many lives and for the future of our world."

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recalled coming to the United States from Austria and becoming a Republican after listening to President Richard Nixon speak because he "sounded more like a breath of fresh air."

Education Secretary Rod Paige defended the No Child Left Behind program under which, he said, "States, not Washington, set the standards. Schools that need assistance get assistance."

Opening the convention on Monday night, Senator John McCain spoke of the necessity of war in Iraq. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D. spoke of medicine and drugs and denigrated trial lawyers.

But there was no mention of natural resource conservation, or energy, forests, water, oil, oceans, chemical contamination or the environmental causes of disease.

The Republican Party platform, approved by the convention on Monday, includes several statements of environmental policy most related to the supply of energy – support for drilling in the Arctic, for a revival of the nuclear power industry, for clean coal and hydrogen research.

It hails the record of President George W. Bush in "incorporating appropriate labor and environmental concerns into U.S. trade negotiations," and facing with China "shared health and environmental threats, such as the threat of HIV/AIDS, SARS, and other infectious diseases...."

It upholds the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which declares "private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation." This clause has been used to require compensation when an environmental regulation reduces the value of property or makes any part of a parcel of property unusable. "We oppose efforts to diminish the rights of private citizens to the land they own," the platform states.

The platform urges Congress to pass the President's energy bill, which "includes over 100 recommendations, nearly half of which addressed renewable energy, energy efficiency, and conservation." The policy statement warns that "Recent electricity blackouts, the California energy crisis, natural gas and oil price spikes, and high gasoline prices remind us that only a comprehensive energy policy will produce energy stability for America's families and businesses."

The future of energy lies in clean coal research and development and President Bush's Clear Skies Initiative which "would create a $50 billion private market to deploy these clean coal technologies," the Republican platform says.

The policy statement supports FutureGen, a $1 billion initiative to build the world's first zero-emissions fossil fuel plant that integrates carbon sequestration and hydrogen production research. A hydrogen economy would be of "enormous benefit" and put the United States on "the cutting edge of energy technology," the platform says.

The FreedomCar Partnership and Hydrogen Fuel Initiative include $1.7 billion over five years to begin building hydrogen cars and the infrastructure to support them is part of this platform plank.

Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should move ahead immediately using "sophisticated technologies," says the Republican platform.

Sunny Lewis is editor-in-chief of Environment News Service, an independently owned, continuous, real-time wire service covering the environment.

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