How Green Was Bill?

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    Then came Monica Lewinsky, impeachment and a host of other distractions, and it wasn't until this year that Clinton began to focus again on the environment. Making up for lost time, he has created or expanded 13 national monuments, giving new protection to more than 4 million acres of land, from the sequoias in California to salmon- spawning grounds in Washington to archaeological sites in Colorado and ancient ironwood trees in Arizona. And he is proposing to set aside 58 million acres of forest as sanctuaries that will be off limits to road builders.

    Western Republicans are infuriated by Clinton's new habit of flying out to some picturesque site in the West and unilaterally declaring it a national monument with a sweep of his hand. "Environmental law has become an oxymoron. It just serves whatever angle the Democrats are pushing," complains James Buchal, a Portland lawyer and author of The Great Salmon Hoax. Property-rights advocates accuse the Administration of carrying out land grabs. A series of lawsuits has been filed challenging the designation of national monuments throughout the West, including the sequoia forest. And vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney has said a Bush Administration would review many of the monument declarations Clinton has made.

    Environmentalists, for their part, fret that Clinton wasted too much time before addressing some of the more serious problems--possibly leaving them in the hands of a Bush presidency. "There is a tremendous amount of environmental damage the next Administration could do," says Jim Angell, staff attorney for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, who is fighting a challenge in federal court to the designation of five national-monument sites in the West.

    In his second term, Clinton's EPA moved to tighten clean-air rules, putting particularly tough new restrictions on trucks and coal-burning power plants, but the proposals are still tied up in lawsuits. Clinton has also not achieved as much as he wanted in the fight against global warming. Though Gore led the U.S. delegation that helped forge the Kyoto climate-change treaty in 1997, it was immediately criticized by opponents in the U.S. Senate, where it still needs to be ratified. Perhaps the recent negotiations to fill in the details of the treaty will change the Senate's negative attitude.

    Whatever the political battles ahead, much of what Clinton has achieved is tremendously popular with the population as a whole. Some 10 million visitors come to the Sequoia National Forest every year, and few of them want to see a return to the clear cutting that was carried out in the area up through the 1980s. After an hour's hike uphill to the snow line of the forest, Fontaine points to a 200-ft.-tall sequoia that fell 10 years ago right on the fringe of a heavily logged area. He thinks erosion around the 1,200-year-old roots caused its fall and curses loggers for leaving the tree without any protection. Clinton may have waited until the last minute to protect the sequoias, but Fontaine and many other Americans are now determined to keep them safe far into the future.

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