Carl Pope - c. 2000/CNN
Posted on 05/09/2004 8:59:30 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Carl Pope has helped turn the Sierra Club into a prominent voice in national politics by recruiting new members, lobbying government and motivating voters to think about the environment when they head to the polls.
The executive director of the nation's most influential conservation group is plunging deeper into politics this election year, writing a book that accuses the Bush administration of rewriting regulations to help polluters and stripping protections for 235 million acres of wilderness.
"Bush has done his best, in only three years, to break our national compact on environmental progress and turn the clock back - not years or decades but a full century," Pope writes in "Strategic Ignorance" with co-author Paul Rauber.
"This is what the American people do not know: The Bush administration is full of officials who believe ... that weaker laws on clean air, less funding to clean up toxic waste dumps, and national parks and forests run for private profit are actually good for the country."
Administration officials defend the president's record, saying Bush has built upon the last 30 years of environmental progress.
"It is a fact that the air is cleaner, the water is cleaner and the land is better protected" under the Bush administration, said Dana Perino, spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "We are working to accelerate the progress."
The San Francisco-based Sierra Club is planning an aggressive campaign against Bush's environmental policies. The group will formally endorse a presidential candidate this spring and plans to educate voters about the administration's "assault on the environment," said Greg Haegele, the Sierra Club's political director.
Pope said the Bush administration has abandoned the environmental principles first championed by President Theodore Roosevelt a century ago.
"They really don't accept the idea that one of the jobs of the federal government is to protect us from environmental risks," Pope said in an interview. "This administration is really quite consciously willing to risk the last century of environmental progress."
Pope, 58, is a veteran environmental leader known for his political savvy. Since he became the Sierra Club's executive director 12 years ago, the 112-year-old organization has grown by 200,000 members to 750,000 members and become more politically active in both local and national environmental issues.
A Harvard University graduate who grew up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, Pope rose through the Sierra Club's ranks over 30 years, serving as its conservation director and political director before landing the top job in 1992. He believes he shares the same views on the environment as most Americans.
"Wildness and wilderness are an important part of the American character, and I want to preserve that," Pope said. "I'm a strong believer in Teddy Roosevelt's notion that the government is the steward of our natural resources."
The political impact of "Strategic Ignorance," Pope's third book, is unclear in a year where the most important issues will be terrorism, Iraq and the economy.
"Voters who will make up their mind based on environmental matters are already lost to Bush," said John R. McNeill, an environmental historian at Georgetown University. "But with Iraq and unemployment, very few voters will make up their mind on the basis of environmental issues."
Pope's book reflects the depth of anger at the Bush administration among environmentalists eager to unseat the president. Pope also hopes to explain how and why the administration has acted.
"They've been very effective without passing much legislation," Pope said. "They mainly do it by denying us information. It's their strategy and our ignorance that they're counting on."
Bush supporters say Pope's book is politically motivated. Critics say environmental groups have been selective in choosing facts to criticize the administration.
"This is more about politics than anything else," said Frank Maisano, an energy industry lobbyist for Bracewell & Patterson in Washington, D.C. "Since the beginning of this administration, environmentalists have been playing politics with the environment."
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On the Net:
Sierra Club: http://www.sierraclub.org
How many trees had to die to make this book?
The guy's never had a real job.
He believes he shares the same views on the environment as most Americans.
Typical. Everybody he knows agrees with him...
On that you are dead wrong. It's a big deal on the entire West Coast. What's sad is that conservatives could own that set of issues and sink the Democrats forever with it as the corrupt corporate scam artists they really are. Instead, the RINOs jump on the bandwagon for the campaign money because they don't know how to handle the issue and don't care if they bankrupt their rural base.
Truly stupid.
The west coast is.....well....."different" from the rest of the country.
How incisive. As if electoral votes don't count.
Oh, to live long enough to see California become a conservative state. That would be nice. Unrealistic, but nice.
And now, a Republican administration will continue and complete the work of a Democratic administration. This is the way environmental policy should work.
(Good to see you too ... longer greetings forthcoming ... trust all is well with you and your lovely family)
With a chainsaw, and Andy Williams' "Born Free" blaring on a loudspeaker.
And all the homeless people disappear! Poof!
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