Environment right for a political showdown

story.news.yahoo.com Mon Feb 17, 9:42 AM ET Add Top Stories - USA TODAY to My Yahoo! Kathy Kiely and Traci Watson USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- President Bush (news - web sites) and his Republican allies in Congress have an opportunity to give the nation's energy and environmental policies a more pro-business tilt, and they're moving quickly to take advantage of it.

The pending war with Iraq and disruptions of oil supplies from Venezuela highlight the need for greater energy independence, a goal Bush listed as one of his top priorities in his State of the Union address last month. Republican leaders in Congress are moving quickly to revive an energy bill that died last year in the Senate, which was controlled by Democrats.

This year, Republicans control both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and a number of key committee chairmanships and leadership posts are held by staunch conservatives. Several were small-business owners who had run-ins with environmental agencies before coming to Washington. They view the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) as a bureaucracy run amok.

Last week, the conservatives demonstrated their new clout. They expanded a program that allows for more logging on federal land. They lifted a ban on preliminary oil and gas exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (news - web sites). They barred environmental lawsuits over reissuing permits for the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. And they cut $140 million from Bush's requests for national parks and wildlife refuges.

The measures, all controversial, were part of a massive spending bill that had to be approved for the federal government to continue operating.

In the coming months, the president and his allies are hoping for more energy exploration on federally owned lands; more freedom to thin national forests; and environmental regulations that would give businesses, power plants and property owners more flexibility in meeting federal standards on clean air, clean water and the preservation of endangered species.

The stage is set for a showdown that could move environmental issues to the top of the political agenda.

Conservative Republicans think voters will agree that it's time to update environmental policies that they say have put the interests of obscure bugs and plants over Americans who need jobs.

Democrats are trying to make an issue of the administration's plans for energy and the environment. ''They're set on rolling back 30 years of environmental progress,'' House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said last week.

New power brokers

When Republican congressional leaders made appointments to key committees last month, moderates with close ties to the environmental movement were shunted aside in favor of Westerners with a history of tangling with the EPA. Among the new chairmen:

• Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma. At a recent appearance before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (news - web sites), Inhofe recited a list of epithets environmentalists have hurled at him since he took over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: '' 'An extremist, a dangerous idiot, Mr. Pollution, Gunga Din, Attila the Hun and Villain of the Year,' '' he said with a laugh.

The combative businessman-turned-lawmaker has said he intends to change the EPA, which he sees as too closely tied to ''environmental extremists.'' He called it an agency of ''bureaucrats inflicting terror'' on small-business owners. He said the costs of environmental regulations need to be weighed against their benefits. He wants more oil and gas drilling in areas that are now off-limits. ''You can't run the most heavily industrialized nation in the world on windmills,'' Inhofe said.

• Rep. Richard Pombo of California. In a rare decision to circumvent the congressional seniority system, House Republican leaders passed over nine more-senior members to make Pombo chairman of the House Resources Committee. The recipient of a ''zero'' rating from the League of Conservation Voters, Pombo is an outspoken fourth-generation rancher who favors cowboy boots and an equally flamboyant rhetorical style. ''I'm anything but politically correct,'' he once said.

A 1996 book that Pombo co-wrote, This Land Is Our Land, inveighed against ''an eco-federal coalition that owes more to communism than any other philosophy.'' But as chairman, Pombo is sounding more conciliatory. He said he's seeking a ''broad consensus'' on ways to ''do a better job of protecting our environment and have less conflict with people.''

• Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma. The 22-year Senate veteran and ace parliamentary strategist took over the Senate Budget Committee this year. Each year, the committee writes one of the few bills that is not subject to a Senate filibuster. That could lead Republicans to include controversial issues in it, such as a measure to permit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

• Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico. The new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee also favors opening the Arctic refuge for drilling. And he wants any new national energy policy to include additional nuclear power. No new nuclear power plants have been built since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.

   

The committee chairmen help set the legislative agenda. They can showcase an issue by holding a hearing on it. They can bury a bill by never scheduling it for consideration. They can make policy behind closed doors.

A pro-business agenda

The conservatives are assuming leading roles on the environmental and energy committees at a key time. The administration is trying to revive several bills that never made it out of Congress last year, largely because of opposition in the Democratic-led Senate:

• The ''Clear Skies'' bill, a sweeping proposal that the administration says would reduce airborne sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury by about 70% over the next 16 years. Environmentalists argue that the bill does not address pollution from carbon dioxide, which some scientists believe causes global warming (news - web sites). The environmentalists also say the president's measure is too lenient on coal-fired power plants that cause some of the worst pollution problems. The bill would allow plants the option of installing new pollution-control equipment or buying clean-air ''credits'' from other, less dirty facilities.

• A comprehensive national energy strategy. It would open up new opportunities for oil and gas drilling in regions where it is currently prohibited, including the Arctic refuge. Environmentalists say the White House isn't putting enough emphasis on cleaner, alternative energy sources. Supporters of the Bush approach say it is ''balanced.'' Any long-term energy strategy ''has to involve alternative energy and where we're going to be in 30 years,'' Pombo said, ''but it also has to take care of our needs right now.''

• Speeding up timber cuts in Western forests. Advocates say doing so would prevent wildfires in a region where they have recently caused devastation. Environmentalists counter that it would be used as an excuse to expand commercial logging.

Also on the agenda for conservative Republicans such as Inhofe and Pombo: a rewrite of the endangered species act. Advocates of the law say it protects important plants and animals from extinction. Opponents argue that it deprives property owners of the right to use their land.

But there are signs of a schism in Republicans' narrow congressional majority. Influential centrist Republicans have delivered a vote of no-confidence in Bush's ''Clear Skies'' plan. Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both Maine Republicans, are supporting an alternative by Vermont independent Sen. Jim Jeffords and backed by a number of leading Democrats.

Centrists also have objected to Bush's plans for energy exploration in the Arctic refuge. Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., is co-sponsoring a bill to ban oil and gas drilling permanently in the refuge.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., plans to use his post as chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to crusade against global warming. And Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., who often holds the deciding vote on the Environment and Public Works Committee, is prepared to break ranks with the Bush administration on environmental issues.

Nonetheless, business leaders and property owners think they have their best chance in years to rein in government regulators. ''It does look as if the stars are lined up,'' says Nancie Marzulla of the Defenders of Property Rights.

Environmentalists agree. They say they're facing the most hostile Congress in at least a generation. John Echeverria, director of the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute, said, ''You can be confident nothing good will happen for the next two years from an environmental standpoint.''