Rick Santorum Scores 100% On US Chamber's Environmental Scorecard

Hey, it's not a surprise, but . . .

Environmental groups say U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum is a complete zero when it comes to protecting the environment. They point to his votes to allow drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, and against tougher pollution control rules, among others. Mr. Santorum, a Republican who scored 100 percent on six environmental issues with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said liberal groups like the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters cherry-pick issues that help them raise money and ignore practical solutions he’s supported to address Pennsylvania’s environmental woes. They include fighting for money to repair coal-mine scarring and preserve farms. “What I’ve tried to do is deliver, not just talk, but deliver for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Mr. Santorum told a Pennsylvania Environmental Council forum in June.

His opponent in his bid for re-election to a third term, Democratic state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr., as he often does, portrays Mr. Santorum as a rubber-stamp for President Bush’s policies. Those policies, Mr. Casey and mainstream environmental groups say, increase pollution and fail to curb global warming or reduce America’s oil dependence, foreign or domestic. “With Sen. Santorum, when all is said and done, there’s a lot more said than done by this senator and that’s why I think we need a change in 2006,” Mr. Casey said at the same forum. Mr. Casey opposes the new drilling.

Except for briefly this summer when gasoline prices topped $3 a gallon, the environmental positions of Mr. Casey and Mr. Santorum have drawn little attention. Polls show environmental issues rank low in priority right now among voters, though the environment has regularly taken the national stage in the senator’s current six-year term. Perhaps most notably, President Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol because it didn’t apply to developing countries such as China and India and backed new source review rules that allow companies to avoid installing costly new pollution-control measures. The protocol, a treaty approved by most of the rest of the industrialized world, aims to reduce global warming, which is caused when burned fossil fuels such as gasoline release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The gases trap heat and raise temperatures, an effect that many experts believe contributes to more frequent extreme weather. Mr. Santorum opposed the protocol and voted against a study of the new source review rules.

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