Reply #33: Here is his stance on environment.... [View All]

CLARK'S ENVIRONMENTAL POSITIONS

Can now be found online in his response to the League of Conservation Voters at

http://www.enviros4clark.com/lcv.shtml

Here are a fewf highlights from a 26 page document:

"I strongly support the goals of the Endangered Species Act – to protect the ecosystems upon which threatened and endangered species depend, to protect the species themselves from extinction, and to implement our obligations under international conservation agreements. While I believe the ESA has been quite successful in the 30 years since its enactment, more needs to be done to stem the tide of extinctions. We should once again pursue multi-species habitat conservation plans over wide landscapes. These plans protect species, as well as the economic interests of landowners. As Professor E.O. Wilson has said, allowing species to go extinct is the folly future generations are least likely to forgive us."

"...First, we need to provide tax incentives to get hybrids or other highly efficient vehicles into the marketplace and out on the road. With currently existing technology we can make great strides in reducing emissions. Second, I will put a stop to President Bush’s interference with California’s pioneering program to cut global warming pollution from new vehicles. Third, my Administration will lead an aggressive effort to promote the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which hold great promise for the future. Fourth, I will increase support for better public transportation and other measures to clean the air in new highway legislation."

"President Bush has proposed new legislation – mis-named “Clear Skies” – that actually would weaken current clean air laws and let the nation’s power plants continue to pollute at unsafe levels. For this President, environmental policy is all about rhetoric, not action. His plan would be much worse for the health of our children and all Americans -- especially those at risk for respiratory illness -- than enforcing current clean air laws. His plan does nothing to curb the carbon pollution that causes global warming.

President Bush has also weakened long-standing clean air standards. He has let power plants, oil refineries, and other big factories undertake huge expansion projects without modernizing their pollution controls – increasing dangerous pollution in neighboring communities – simply by mis-labeling their projects as “routine maintenance.” We have already given polluters a free pass for thirty years since the passage of the Clean Air Act by not requiring them to use the best available technology to control their pollution unless they build new plants. And now that the time has come for them to install the appropriate technology – technology that was developed in the United States and installed on nearly every power plant in Germany and Japan – the Bush administration wants to change the rules of the game. Not only is this bad for the environment and the health of our community, but it is also bad economic policy. We need a level playing field: one that is fair to the utilities and refineries that have complied with the law as well as those to which this administration has sold out by changing the laws.

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