This is the third in a three-part series about health and science issues in the 2004 election.
President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., both claim to be stewards of the environment—but experts and policy groups, citing both positive and negative aspects of the candidates’ platforms, remain unconvinced. The Sierra Club calls Bush’s environmental record the worst of any president, while Kerry has the highest congressional ratings from the League of Conservation Voters. Experts at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, however, find problems with both candidates’ platforms.
“The Bush environmental record is indeed as bleak as it could be,” said Stuart Pimm, professor of ecology. “There has been no other administration that has interfered with scientific advice. In all sections—air, land and water—this administration has pushed for less regulation and short-sighted policy. The trouble is it is hard to say if Kerry will be better because one never knows exactly what he is going to do in office.”
Three main issues have surfaced during the campaigns. Global warming, one of the three issues, is the theory that increases in greenhouse gasses are raising the world’s temperature and changing climates. Energy policy has also become a pressing issue due to rising gas prices and the United States’ dependence on oil. Candidates’ environmental policies, another primary campaign debate, will help determine the purity of the skies and water. According to experts, all three looming issues will need to be addressed within the next four years.
Global warming
A theory most experts accept as fact, global warming deals with the idea that the worldwide temperature is rising because carbon dioxide particles are trapping energy in the atmosphere at an increasing rate, which could cause climate changes.
During the second presidential debate Oct. 8, Kerry accused Bush of not accepting global warming as fact. The administration “pulled out of the global warming, declared it dead, didn’t even accept the science,” Kerry said. “I’m going to be a president who believes in science.”
Kerry’s main argument stems from Bush’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, a European treaty that committed 37 industrialized nations to a reduction in gas emissions. Bush pulled out of the talks March 2001, saying in the debate, “It’s one of these deals where, in order to be popular in the halls of Europe, you sign a treaty. But I thought it would cost a lot—I think there’s a better way to do it.”
Peter Feaver, professor of political science, said Kerry would also not have supported the Kyoto Protocol. “The basic point is that both Kerry and Bush claim that the Kyoto treaty is unworkable for us,” Feaver said, adding that Kerry voted in favor of an amendment that essentially rejected the Kyoto treaty by not supporting any treaty that had provisions similar to the Kyoto treaty.
Kerry, however, publicly supported in the second debate some sort of worldwide emissions treaty.
But William Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School, said a more efficient energy system—one that would more effectively utilize current energy sources—would lower global warming. “If we use energy efficiently, we stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” he said, noting that additional greenhouse gases exacerbate the problem of global warming.
Energy
Schlesinger noted that for the candidates’ energy policy, the issue of oil shortages will be the first problem to solve. He also said oil prices are being driven up as more countries—such as China and India—demand more oil, which may potentially become a problem as oil production around the world is reaching its maximum limit.
“In the short term they will both have to guide the country through a real immediate problem—the world is peaking in the production of oil and a number of countries are now competing with us,” Schlesinger said.
Bush’s platform is to maintain the current energy sources and allow for further exploration of new sources of gas, energy and oil. Kerry’s platform also involves maintaining energy sources while researching new alternative sources of energy such as hydrogen fuel technologies.
One such new energy source that has created controversy is oil drilling in Alaska. Bush supports such a plan, maintaining that even though it would not add enough to domestic production to replace imports, there would be less price fluctuation and it would help the economy. Kerry opposes this plan, instead supporting conservation of oil through raising minimum gasoline efficiency standards on cars and developing alternative fuels.
“If they opened it up for drilling though, it would only be a trivial answer to the energy problem we are facing,” Schlesinger said, adding that although he opposes drilling, there are other problems more urgent that are not being addressed by the presidential candidates. “It is an unfortunate lightning rod issue.”
Developing cars that run on hydrogen fuel is also a big Republican issue, Schlesinger said, but he warned that the hydrogen that can be converted to energy is currently created using other energies—both non-renewable sources, such as fossil fuels, and alternative sources like solar energy.
Environmental policy
The future of U.S. environmental policy will effect problems ranging from logging in forests for fire prevention to factories’ emissions and pollution standards. Experts almost across the board pan Bush on the policies he has adopted during his term.
“It’s hard to talk about the environment and not sound partisan,” Schlesinger said. “Not much has gone on during the last four years that makes me think Bush is sympathetic to environmental issues at all.”
But members of Bush’s staff disagree, pointing out several improvements from previous presidents.
“The president, of course, has called on Congress to pass his Clear Skies legislation, which would dramatically improve air quality by reducing power plants’ emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury by approximately 70 percent—more than any other presidential clean air initiative,” said Bill Holbrook, deputy director for communications at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Schlesinger noted, however, that if rules from the previous administration had remained the same, air quality would have improved by more than 70 percent.
“The Clear Skies policy is a license to pollute,” Pimm said.
Even though environmentalists criticize the Bush administration’s environmental policies, they are unsure of how Kerry will act if elected.
“It’s hard for me to tease out his record in the past, but all the things he is saying at the moment sound very encouraging,” Pimm said.
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