Interview with Dennis

http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/kucinich101503.asp

Grist: Great, let's start with a general response to President Bush's environmental policies so far.

Kucinich: I'll start by saying that I will have an Environmental Protection Agency.

Grist: So the implication is the Bush doesn't have one at all?

Kucinich: The implication is that the EPA under Bush stands for Every Polluter's Ally. The air and the water and the land are viewed by this administration as just another commodity to be used for private profit. We have to be about what one writer called "the great work" of restoring our air and our water and our land. to look at it as the common property of all humanity -- as the commonwealth, rather, of all humanity. And so my candidacy arises from a philosophy of interdependence and interconnection which respects the environment as a precondition for our survival.

I loved that.
It has been awhile since I heard someone voice sustainablity as a core goal of environmental policy.

Grist: So you want to apply the principles of sustainability we associate with environmentalism to an all-encompassing political model?

Kucinich: Yes. Sustainability is a principle that must infuse our whole approach to life. And the environmental movement is the path toward that. It's the key to understanding that the Earth and the air and the water provide the precondition for life. Life cannot exist without that. So we need to organize our structures of governance in a way that helps support basic principles for the furtherance of life on this planet. And when there is a collision between those values that support life and economic practices, the economic practices must always yield to protect the environment.

Grist: That's a very strong statement. Many environmentalists, and certainly most politicians, believe that there have to be tradeoffs between environmental and economic concerns. The Bush administration has led us to believe that these two goals of growing the economy and protecting the environment are radically incompatible. That's untrue, but still, you can't deny that big business at large fundamentally does not like environmental regulations. How would you balance these issues as president, knowing that you can't fully antagonize big business?

Kucinich: Well, wait a minute, you have to have enforcement of air and the water. Many big businesses are not using sustainability, we have to show big business where can make money by being sustainable. That's where the profits are in the future. You know, the thinking of the future shows that you can make money from clean air and clean water -- improve productivity. And we have to recognize that air pollution and water pollution find some sort of transfer of wealth away from the people of the country toward corporations. That's not fair and that's not just. So I intend to challenge that thinking and lead America to new thinking on sustainability.