(3 of 4)
Financial pressures have led many developing nations to continue shortsighted policies that squander natural resources. In Brazil the appointment by President Fernando Collor de Mello of outspoken conservationist Jose Lutzenberger as Secretary of the Environment raised hopes that the burning of the Amazon rain forest would be halted. But environmentalists are still waiting for Collor to prove that his commitment to saving the Amazon is more than public relations. "Lutzenberger has not presented one significant change in internal policy," says Fabio Feldmann, the only Brazilian congressman elected on a green platform.
Throughout the world, environmentalists look to America to provide leadership, but instead the nation sits on its hands like a perplexed giant. Both individually and at the policy level, Americans seem to be all for environmental protection, so long as it does not disrupt business as usual. Though the U.S. is the world's biggest contributor to the industrial and automobile emissions that threaten to wreak havoc with the global climate, none of the past three Administrations have delivered a national energy policy.
Attempts by several states to fill the policy vacuum floundered this year, and the tactics of the environmental lobby were at least partly responsible. The contest over California's "Big Green," Proposition 128, for instance, was marked by overstatement on both sides of the issue. Prominent environmentalists, including EPA Administrator William Reilly, were troubled by the sweep of some of Big Green's provisions, like the pesticide curbs that would have banned any chemical found to cause cancer in any rat. Given the legitimate debate over many of the provisions in the proposition's 16,000 words, it was entirely possible for a Californian to vote against the measure and still feel that he or she was an environmentalist.
People have long distrusted industry assertions, but they expect better from environmentalists, who have enjoyed great credibility. The debate over Big Green's pesticide provisions left many voters wondering whether environmental interest groups exaggerate for effect. Congressman Al Swift of Washington State says the environmental lobby in Congress has grown from a David into a Goliath without exercising the restraint that should come with its greatly expanded influence.
The defeat of the environmental ballot initiatives provides an opportunity for interest groups to rethink their approach to environmental issues. Many citizens are tired of being asked to become lawmakers when they enter voting booths and decide on the merits of intricate policy questions that are supposed to be the province of Congress and state legislatures. Environmentalists might also reconsider their tendency to favor more government regulation as the answer to most ecological problems. In Washington State voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have put curbs on development, partly because they feared it would mean new government intrusions into their lives. Regulations that lead to the creation of new bureaucracies are not attractive to citizens who are fed up with the inefficiency of government red tape. "People want to be more certain and careful about how their money is spent to clean up the environment," says Sheldon Kamieniecki, an associate professor at the University of Southern California.