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Washington Times Earth Day Op-Ed Article 4/12/90 [OA 4727]
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4
Document No. 31884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
04/17/90
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
<
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
>
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
PINKERTON
CICCONI
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
The attached has been forwarded to the President.
RESPONSE:
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
1990 APR 16 PM 9: 29
April 13, 1990
INFORMATION
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
THROUGH:
CHRISS WINSTON
FROM:
EDWARD MCNALLY and
SUBJECT:
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY OP-ED ARTICLE
I. SUMMARY
Attached is a draft submission for your environmental
op-ed article, to be published next Friday in a special Earth Day
section in the Washington Times.
II. DISCUSSION
Next Friday, April 20, 1990, the Washington Times will
publish a special "Earth Day" section along with their regular
paper. Along with EPA Administrator William Reilly and others,
you have been invited to provide an op-ed article on your
Administration's environmental efforts.
The proposed draft emphasizes America's leadership role
in spurring the worldwide environmental movement over the past
two decades. But it also takes note of the many tough challenges
that remain -- both at home and abroad -- since "environmental
destruction knows no boundaries."
The draft includes a call for Congressional action on
your proposals for a new Clean Air Act and the Department of
Environmental Protection, includes a list of Administration
accomplishments and environmental initiatives, and concludes with
a call for "every community, every business, and every family" to
get involved.
McNally/Simon
April 13, 1990
Draft Five (E:EARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, a polluted American river literally
caught fire, whole cities were blanketed in clouds of industrial
air pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance. But Native
Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit the Earth from
our parents. We borrow it from our children."
Twenty years ago today, Americans started calling in the
debt. Earth Day was a phenomenon that was both the culmination
of much that had come before and the beginning of a new and
sustained effort. Those who worry about our environment today
sometimes forget how far we've come not only as a people but as a
planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
invisible toxics into the air, carelessly littering country roads
and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
2
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new awareness, new environmental ethos.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. Over the past two decades, America
cut airborne particulates by 60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide
by about 40 percent. Airborne lead has all but disappeared from
the American landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are
emissions of sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban
smog.
This nation has made solid headway towards our goal of clean
air for every American. But many tough challenges remain. The
U.S. still produces too much waste and wastes too many material
resources. And as I said in Germany last year, whether it's
Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid rain that's killing
Europe's Black Forest, "environmental destruction respects no
boundaries." A global problem demands global attention.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
3
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards,
pioneered here in the early 1970s, will go into effect in the
European Community in 1992. And Europe is now re-tooling to copy
the technological innovations that gave America the world's
cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or in the Eastern European
environments that were ravaged by decades of official neglect.
During America's own development from an agrarian culture to
an industrialized country, the U.S. suffered many decades of
environmental destruction, often unintentionally, often in
ignorance. For instance, the DDT designed to protect against
pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald Eagle.
As we have learned the hard way in America, developing
nations must find a responsible balance between quality of life,
a sound environment, and a sound economy. And in the developing
world, "quality of life" often means life itself. There's no
more hostile environment than one in which people are without
food, shelter, or jobs. Maintaining quality of life, which in
the developing world often means life itself, requires
maintaining a strong economy. Poverty does not allow the luxury
of the long view. Yet we must make the investments vital to
maintaining our beautiful planet.
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
4
also embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
the framework for an international agreement on research and
other efforts on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we kicked off in the Grand Tetons
last summer is an ambitious, aggressive piece of legislation. It
will help bring into compliance 100 or more cities that have
failed to meet national standards for carbon monoxide and ozone.
It includes the first acid rain control program in the U.S. and
powerful new incentives for burning cleaner fuel. Environmental
forces were harnessed to boost the economy; today we are
harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. We should never lost sight of the benefits of
environmental cleanup -- benefits that range from economic
savings in health care costs and lost productivity to the
opportunity for increased enjoyment of outdoor activity and the
beauty of nature.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
clean air bill. This is a bill that was gridlocked through the
1980s. It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have
to wait another day for clean air. The House should move
5
promptly to produce a bill consistent with the principles I have
stated are necessary for an environmentally strong and
economically sound new Clean Air Act.
The House also has been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy
loaded down with management directives from the U.S. Congress.
EPA deserves a seat at the table. Let's get it done without
changing its mission.
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to
expand new land for national forests, parks and
wildlife refuges, and other public lands.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
Proposed a significant increase for the EPA.
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House this week.
6
Worked to protect the ozone layer by backing a world-
wide phase-out of CFC's, which will help reduce
greenhouse warming potential.
Outlawed virtually all uses of asbestos.
Began developing policies to implement our goal of "no-
net-loss" of wetlands -- a policy first for America --
and for the world.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars this year
alone to clean up hazardous waste at federal
facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards faster clean-up and
better enforcement at hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Programs like the Superfund, aimed at cleaning up the
problems of the past, are important. But there's also an
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Whereas Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess, Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left but to
take the offensive and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces, but we need to help them along. We
need to reforest this bountiful land.
Renewing my call for every American to get involved, we have
launched a program to encourage an even greater degree of
7
voluntary tree planting nationwide, with a target of one billion
trees planted a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest, and most
efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean the air by
absorbing carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes to possible
greenhouse warming. Trees can reduce the heat of a summer's day,
quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, and provide shelter
from the wind. And every tree planted is a compact between
generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees. "
But at the end of his story, no trees remain. Gross
ecological mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air
unbreathable, the water choked with dying fish. And all that's
left is a pile of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning:
"UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our dream of a reborn healthy, productive global environment will
remain elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a
spectator sport.
#
#
#
Document No. 131884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER piggle Pink up
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
=
a
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
d
GRAY 7803 Jeff
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
18:34 21 MAR 06
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIAL 1000 0₱ ADD ED I ARTICLE: DU 20
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
Polluted
literally
from pe
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire whole
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of industrial air
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents, LA4 we borrow it from our children."
ns
And 20 years ago today, America's kids started calling in
the debt.
that was both
Earth Day was a phenomenon 4 the culmination of much that
and
had come before 4 the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
worry about
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come tn not only as a
people but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
C
2
invisible toxins into the air, their children carelessly
littering country roads and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
2
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
ethos.
new environmental ethic a new awareness
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
over the past two decades,
as the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
solid
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste m and wastes too much money of
am matural
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
its
last year m whether Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest m "environmental
3
respects
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands
a
attention
global solution.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline m pioneered here in the early 1970's $14 will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
?
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
in
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
environments
official
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go During America's own development from
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S.
suffered many decades of environmental destruction, often
For motance,
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
the hard way
As we have learned, in America, developing nations must find
environment
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs. insert A
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've also
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about the
framework fort agreement research and other efforts on
an international treaty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
announced Kicked off
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
last summer is a very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
help
legislation. It will bring in to compliance 100 or more cities
national
Carbon monoxid e and
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
in the U.S.
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
Insent
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
B
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
most
historic compromise -- a strong and cost-effective compromise --a
5
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
U.S.
EPA deserves
management directives from the American Congress. As one
a seat at the table. Let's get it clone without changeng
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
its mission
teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig. H
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our
Besan Administration developing has: sthegoal.of policies to implement the good
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss" of wetlands -- a
move
policy first for America -- and for the world.
?
stet
expand
Q.
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
to
national forests
and other public londs
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
3 Proposed a signicont masse for the EPA
6
Concluded a historic, international conference on
this week.
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Worked to
world-wide
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC'sk whichwill help reduce greenhouse warming potential
virtuallyace all
watlond
Virtually outlawed the usesof asbestos.
"
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
this year alone)
Added hazandaus three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
toxic waste at federal facilities.
faster clean up and better
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
conforment at
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
rewrite
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution my pollution
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess m Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left m but to
take the offense ,ve m and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
meet
We have launched a program that to would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
absorbing
7 a gas that contributes to possible
green house worning.
the air by reducing carbon dioxide, Trees can reduce the heat of
and
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind, and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees."
at
of his tous,
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
cheam
healthy, productiveglobal
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#
#
- "alar"
Was there a good reason
for fouishing alas?
THE WHITE HOUSE
THE PRESIDENT HAS SEEN
WASHINGTON
oval
1900 APR 16 PM 9: 28
rect
P.M.
April 13, 1990
INFORMATION
but when I
or
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
THROUGH:
CHRISS WINSTON
FROM:
EDWARD McNALLY and
SUBJECT:
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY OP-ED ARTICLE
few
the Followy:
I.
SUMMARY
Attached is a draft submission for your environmental
op-ed article, to be published next Friday in a special Earth Day
section in the Washington Times.
II. DISCUSSION
Next Friday, April 20, 1990, the Washington Times will
publish a special "Earth Day" section along with their regular
paper. Along with EPA Administrator William Reilly and others,
you have been invited to provide an op-ed article on your
Administration's environmental efforts.
The proposed draft emphasizes America's leadership role
in spurring the worldwide environmental movement over the past
two decades. But it also takes note of the many tough challenges
that remain -- both at home and abroad -- since "environmental
destruction knows no boundaries."
The draft includes a call for Congressional action on
your proposals for a new Clean Air Act and the Department of
Environmental Protection, includes a list of Administration
accomplishments and environmental initiatives, and concludes with
a call for "every community, every business, and every family" to
get involved.
All at this can be done
methons without goog wen to the a extrement women out - at
wonh the must into though wholesale not let the extrines uneployment donnato debate then
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
April 13, 1990
INFORMATION
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
THROUGH:
CHRISS WINSTON
FROM:
EDWARD MCNALLY
and
SUBJECT:
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY OP-ED ARTICLE
I. SUMMARY
Attached is a draft submission for your environmental
op-ed article, to be published next Friday in a special Earth Day
section in the Washington Times.
II. DISCUSSION
Next Friday, April 20, 1990, the Washington Times will
publish a special "Earth Day" section along with their regular
paper. Along with EPA Administrator William Reilly and others,
you have been invited to provide an op-ed article on your
Administration's environmental efforts.
The proposed draft emphasizes America's leadership role
in spurring the worldwide environmental movement over the past
two decades. But it also takes note of the many tough challenges
that remain -- both at home and abroad -- since "environmental
destruction knows no boundaries."
The draft includes a call for Congressional action on
your proposals for a new Clean Air Act and the Department of
Environmental Protection, includes a list of Administration
accomplishments and environmental initiatives, and concludes with
a call for "every community, every business, and every family" to
get involved.
McNally/Simon
April 13, 1990
Draft Five (E:EARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, a polluted American river literally
caught fire, whole cities were blanketed in clouds of industrial
air pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance. But Native
Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit the Earth from
our parents. We borrow it from our children."
Twenty years ago today, Americans started calling in the
debt. Earth Day was a phenomenon that was both the culmination
of much that had come before and the beginning of a new and
sustained effort. Those who worry about our environment today
sometimes forget how far we've come not only as a people but as a
planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
invisible toxics into the air, carelessly littering country roads
and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
2
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new awareness, new environmental ethos.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. Over the past two decades, America
cut airborne particulates by 60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide
by about 40 percent. Airborne lead has all but disappeared from
the American landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are
emissions of sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban
smog.
This nation has made solid headway towards our goal of clean
air for every American. But many tough challenges remain. The
U.S. still produces too much waste and wastes too many material
resources. And as I said in Germany last year, whether it's
Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid rain that's killing
Europe's Black Forest, "environmental destruction respects no
boundaries." A global problem demands global attention.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
3
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards,
pioneered here in the early 1970s, will go into effect in the
European Community in 1992. And Europe is now re-tooling to copy
the technological innovations that gave America the world's
cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or in the Eastern European
environments that were ravaged by decades of official neglect.
During America's own development from an agrarian culture to
an industrialized country, the U.S. suffered many decades of
environmental destruction, often unintentionally, often in
ignorance. For instance, the DDT designed to protect against
pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald Eagle.
As we have learned the hard way in America, developing
nations must find a responsible balance between quality of life,
a sound environment, and a sound economy. And in the developing
world, "quality of life" often means life itself. There's no
more hostile environment than one in which people are without
food, shelter, or jobs. Maintaining quality of life, which in
the developing world often means life itself, requires
maintaining a strong economy. Poverty does not allow the luxury
of the long view. Yet we must make the investments vital to
maintaining our beautiful planet.
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
4
also embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
the framework for an international agreement on research and
other efforts on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we kicked off in the Grand Tetons
last summer is an ambitious, aggressive piece of legislation. It
will help bring into compliance 100 or more cities that have
failed to meet national standards for carbon monoxide and ozone.
It includes the first acid rain control program in the U.S. and
Where once
powerful new the incentives for burning cleaner fuel. Environmental
forces were A harnessed to boost the economy; today we are
harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. We should never lost sight of the benefits of
environmental cleanup -- benefits that range from economic
savings in health care costs and lost productivity to the
opportunity for increased enjoyment of outdoor activity and the
beauty of nature.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
clean air bill. This is a bill that was gridlocked through the
1980s. It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have
to wait another day for clean air. The House should move
5
promptly to produce a bill consistent with the principles I have
stated are necessary for an environmentally strong and
economically sound new Clean Air Act.
The House also has been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy
loaded down with management directives from the U.S. Congress.
EPA deserves a seat at the table. Let's get it done without
changing its mission.
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to
expand new land for national forests, parks and
wildlife refuges, and other public lands.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
Proposed a significant increase for the EPA.
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House this week.
6
Worked to protect the ozone layer by backing a world-
wide phase-out of CFC's, which will help reduce
greenhouse warming potential.
Outlawed virtually all uses of asbestos.
Began developing policies to implement our goal of "no-
net-loss" of wetlands -- a policy first for America --
and for the world.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars this year
alone to clean up hazardous waste at federal
facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards faster clean-up and
better enforcement at hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Programs like the Superfund, aimed at cleaning up the
problems of the past, are important. But there's also an
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Whereas Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess, Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left but to
take the offensive and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces, but we need to help them along. We
need to reforest this bountiful land.
Renewing my call for every American to get involved, we have
launched a program to encourage an even greater degree of
7
voluntary tree planting nationwide, with a target of one billion
trees planted a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest, and most
efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean the air by
absorbing carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes to possible
greenhouse warming. Trees can reduce the heat of a summer's day,
quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, and provide shelter
from the wind. And every tree planted is a compact between
generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees."
But at the end of his story, no trees remain. Gross
ecological mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air
unbreathable, the water choked with dying fish. And all that's
left is a pile of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning:
"UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our dream of a reborn healthy, productive global environment will
remain elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a
spectator sport.
#
#
#
Document No. 131884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
pm122
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
4/12/90
good! AND
gε :6v El MAR 06
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIALOP ADD ED I ARTICLE: 20
LOON
DU
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire, whole
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of industrial
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
And 20 years ago today, America's kids started calling in
the debt.
Earth Day was a phenomenon -- the culmination of much that
had come before -- the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come -- not only as a
people -- but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
invisible toxins into the air, their children carelessly
littering country roads and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
2
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and wastes too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
last year -- whether Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
3
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands a
global solution.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline -- pioneered here in the early 1970's -- will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S.
suffered many decades of environmental destruction, often
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs.
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
an international treaty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
last summer is a very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
legislation. It will bring in to compliance 100 or more cities
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
historic compromise -- a strong and cost-effective compromise --a
5
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy.
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
management directives from the American Congress. As one
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig.
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss" of wetlands -- a
policy first for America -- and for the world.
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
6
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC's.
Virtually outlawed the use of asbestos.
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
toxic waste at federal facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess -- Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left -- but to
take the offense -- and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
We have launched a program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
7
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees."
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#
#
Document No. 131884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
=
>
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
12 : Olv E1 MAR 06
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
April 13, 1990
MEMORANDUM FOR CHRISS WINSTON
FROM:
JIM PINKERTON
SUBJECT:
Earth Day Op-ed For The Washington Times
This draft's positive tone at the beginning, putting
environmental policy in perspective by showing how much
has already been accomplished, is right on target:
factual, realistic, a counter-weight to the apocalyptic
warnings about our situation on the one hand, and the
utopian solutions that are offered on the other hand.
We suggest that the draft not neglect to recapitulate
the State of the Union theme of stewardship, the ethos
behind the President's environmental policies.
Stewardship is one aspect of what can be seen as three
principles of the Bush environmental program; the other
two, which are mentioned in the draft, are: aggressively
seeking increased environmental benefits while balancing
the need for economic growth; and an emphasis on market-
oriented methods.
pg. 2, para. 2, line 4
"Ethos" instead of "ethic."
2,4,1 Typo: "nation" instead of "Nation"
2,4,3 "The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and
wastes too much of the world's non-renewable resources."
This sentence is, strictly speaking, true. But the way
it is worded leaves a slight "Small Is Beautiful" tinge of
Malthusianism on the one hand and self-guilt for the
American standard of living on the other. One could infer
from the sentence that the U.S. is exploiting the rest of
the world's wealth, taking more than our fair share; an
idea familiar to Marxists and the Left. The related idea
that waste of resources is causing irreparable shortages
is also somewhat controversial, with many pointing out
that almost all commodities, including non-renewables, are
cheaper now than they were in the '70's.
(more)
2-2-2
We are safer to knock waste because it is wasteful,
i.e., neglectful, prodigal, and squandering of our natural
patrimony. Otherwise we permit some to use the
President's remarks to unqualifiedly support the notion
both that the U.S. is disproportionatly greedy and that
the world is running out of resources.
Thus, we suggest simply: "We still waste too much in
producing what we consume, and produce too much waste in
consuming it."
4,3,3 Typo: "into" instead of "in to"
5,3,1 "What the EPA needs is clout -- not a new
bureaucracy. Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy
loaded down with management directives from the American
Congress."
The second sentence here is somewhat unclear in making
the point that the $100 million bureaucracy is what
Congress wants, i.e., it is not what already exists at
EPA.
5, first bullet "Made good our pledge of 'no-net-loss' of
wetlands -- a policy first for America -- and for the
world."
This is incorrect. We suggest: "Put forward a national
goal of "no-net-loss" of wetlands
"
6, fourth bullet
Typo: "Alar" " instead of "alar" --
Alar is a brand name.
6, fifth bullet "Barred all African elephant ivory
imports to the U.S."
For clarity, we suggest: "Barred ivory imports in order
to protect the threatened African elephant population."
6,2,3 Typo: "Whereas" instead of "Where as"
(more)
3-3-3
6,4,1 "We have launched a program that would promote the
planting of a billion trees a year. "
To prevent the likely misconception that taxpayer funds
will be paying for these trees, we suggest: "Renewing my
call for every American to get involved, we have launched
a program to encourage an even greater degree of voluntary
tree planting nationwide, with a target of one billion
trees planted a year. "
###
went
d
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20500
April 13, 1990
90 MAR 13 All : 06
MEMORANDUM FOR CHRISS WINSTON
FROM:
HOWARD GRUENSPECHT
SUBJECT:
Presidential Earth Day Op-Ed
Dr. Boskin had a number of serious concerns with the op-ed
draft:
1. The discussion of the economic benefits of environmental
protection on page 4, paragraphs 4 and 5 should be recast.
As written, it implicitly endorses the Lung Association study,
which is not, to my understanding the position of our health
agencies.
The cite to the $40 billion figure would also lead some
observers to question why we are so concerned with holding the
annual costs of the new clean air bill in the $20 billion range.
The sentence at the end of paragraph 5 belongs in paragraph 3
--it was a key part of the President's initiative.
SUGGESTED REWRITE: We should never lose sight of the benefits
of environmental cleanup--benefits that range from economic savings
Insert
in health care costs and lost productivity to the opportunity for
increased enjoyment of outdoor activity and the beauty of nature.
2. The discussion of the Senate clean air bill at the bottom of
page 4/top of page 5 suggests that the bill is a faithful version
of our agreement. In several ways it isn't. We are asking for
some important changes and prefer the House version in some
respects. A ringing endorsement of the Senate version cuts our
leverage to get the bill we want.
SUGGESTED REWRITE: Working with the White House, the Senate
has now passed a clean air bill. This is a bill that was
gridlocked through the 1980s. It's been 13 years coming. But no
wort
American should have to wait another day for clean air. The House
should take fast action on its own version of the legislation now
so that we can immediately begin to work with both houses to
Air Act.
develop an environmentally strong and economically sound new Clean
EI MAR 01
3. Page 6, bullet 2 should make the point that CFC phaseout will
significantly reduce greenhouse warming potential.
4. Page 6 (last word). We should be careful not to suggest that
carbon dioxide, which we all exhale regularly, is a pollutant or
somehow "unclean". Such an admission could have serious
implications under NEPA. Instead, we should make the correct point
that growing trees absorb carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes
to possible greenhouse warming.
Attachment
CC: Jim Cicconi
Document No. 131884
action. Haward
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
CC RLS
JBT
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIA 19000APRED ARTICLE:
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire, whole
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of industrial
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
And 20 years ago today, America's kids started calling in
the debt.
Earth Day was a phenomenon -- the culmination of much that
had come before -- the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come -- not only as a
people -- but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
invisible toxins into the air, their children carelessly
littering country roads and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
2
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and wastes too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
last year -- whether Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
3
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands a
global solution.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline -- pioneered here in the early 1970's -- will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S.
suffered many decades of environmental destruction, often
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs.
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
an international treaty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
last summer is a very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
legislation. It will bring in to compliance 100 or more cities
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
See cover for
remote
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
al
can
have
econome
have
And it's not only good for the environment it's also good
for the economy. Consider for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
pollution control at $40 billion per year.
Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
historic compromise -- a strong and cost-éffective compromise --a
5
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy.
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
management directives from the American Congress. As one
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig."
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss" of wetlands -- a
policy first for America -- and for the world.
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
and reduced our
global
contribution to greenhouse
6
warming potential
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC's.
Virtually outlawed the use of asbestos.
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
toxic waste at federal facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess -- Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left -- but to
take the offense -- and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
We have launched a program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
No
7
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees." M
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#
#
ENT BY:CEQ Jackson PI.
; 4-13-90 :10:41AM ;
2023953744-
2024566218:# 9
INSERT A:
In the late 1960s an American river caught fire because of
the industrial pollutants that saturated it. By 1970 incidents
like that caused a firestorm of indignation over environmental
degradation in this country. We were squandering our natural
inheritance, on on April 22, 1970--Earth Day--the American people
said, "No more."
INSERT B:
As we have learned in America, all nations need to find a
responsible balance betwen quality of life, a sound environment,
and a sound economy. Maintaining quality of life, which in the
developing world often means life itself, requires maintaining a
strong economy. Poverty does not allow the luxury of the long
view. Yet we must make the investments vital to maintaining our
beautiful planet.
insert A
Document No. 131884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
>
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston Thanks. by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
RESPONSE:
See comments
Bob X4844 Grady will call in comments
91 : Id EI MAR 00
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIA I ARTICLE: 20
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire, whole
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of industrial
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
And 20 years ago today, America's kids started calling in
the debt.
Earth Day was a phenomenon -- the culmination of much that
had come before -- the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come -- not only as a
people -- but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
? only
invisible toxins into the air, their children carelessly
children?
littering country roads and city streets.
Sailly
45178
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
2
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and wastes too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
last year -- whether Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
3
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands a
global solution.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline -- pioneered here in the early 1970's -- will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992.
E And Europe is
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars. ars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S.
suffered many decades of environmental destruction, often
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs.
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
an international treaty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
announced
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
last summer is a very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
soully
X5178
legislation. It will bring in to compliance 100 or more cities
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the approximately 50,000
-
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed an
historic compromise -- a strong and cost-effective compromise --a
5
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy.
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
management directives from the American Congress. As one
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig.
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss" of wetlands -- a
policy first for America -- and for the world.
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
6
Concluded an historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC's.
Programs like the Superfund, aimed
Virtually outlawed the use of asbestos.
at cleaning up the problems of the past, are
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
important But there's allso an
toxic waste at federal facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess -- Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left -- but to
take the offense -- and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
We have launched a program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
7
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees."
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS." "
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#
#
Simon edits
McNally/Simon
J
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire, whole
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of industrial
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
And 20 years ago today, America's kids started calling in
the debt.
Earth Day was a phenomenon -- the culmination of much that
had come before -- the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come -- not only as a
people -- but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
invisible toxins into the air, their children carelessly
littering country roads and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
2
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and wastes too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
last year -- whether Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
3
respects
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands a
global solution.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline -- pioneered here in the early 1970's -- will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S.
suffered many decades of environmental destruction, often
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs.
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
an international treaty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
last summer is a very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
help
legislation. It will bring in to compliance 100 or more cities
national
Carbon monoxide and
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
historic compromise -- a strong and cost-effective compromise --a
5
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy
expensive
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
management directives from the American Congress. As one
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig."
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss" of wetlands -- a
Ken Yale says
no
policy first for America -- and for the world.
$250 million
O
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
6
Concluded a historic, international conference on
this week.
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC's.
Virtually outlawed the use of asbestos.
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
hazardous
toxic waste at federal facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
0000 Tough enforcement and the heavy liability for against hazardous waste dumpers
IS one for reason an
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess -- Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left -- but to
take the offense -- and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
We have launched a program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
7
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees. "
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#
#
Document No. 131884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
Please all comments, p.5.
4/12/90
£5:11v El MAR 06
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIAL lagn OP-ED APR I ARTICLE
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire, whole
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of industrial
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
And 20 years ago today, America's kids started calling in
the debt.
Earth Day was a phenomenon -- the culmination of much that
had come before -- the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come -- not only as a
people -- but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
invisible toxins into the air, their children carelessly
littering country roads and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
2
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and wastes too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
last year -- whether Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
3
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands a
global solution.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline -- pioneered here in the early 1970's -- will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S.
suffered many decades of environmental destruction, often
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs.
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
an international treaty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
last summer is a very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
legislation. It will bring in to compliance 100 or more cities
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
historic compromise -- a strong and cost-effective compromise --a
RNH alserves a rum as the casing rase.
and I hope let's get it Lone without
changing the very #5 EPA's mission.
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy.
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
management directives from the American Congress. As one
?
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig. H.
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss" of wetlands -- a
policy first for America -- and for the world.
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
6
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC's.
Virtually outlawed the use of asbestos.
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
toxic waste at federal facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess -- Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left -- but to
take the offense -- and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
We have launched a program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
7
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees."
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#
#
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
J
90 MAR 13 All : 57
April 13, 1990
MEMORANDUM FOR CHRISS WINSTON
DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
FOR COMMUNICATIONS
FROM:
JEFFREY R. HOLMSTEAD JRH
ASSISTANT COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT
SUBJECT:
Presidential OP-ED Article: Washington Times
Earth Day Issue
Attached are the comments of Counsel's Office on the article
referenced above.
Thank you for the opportunity to review this matter.
CC: James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President and
Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Document No. 131884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIA ARTICLE: DU 29
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire, whole
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of industrial
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
And 20 years ago today, America's kids started calling in
the debt.
and
boty
Earth Day was a phenomenon the culmination of much that
had come before
the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come -- not only as a
people -- but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
invisible toxins into the air, their children carelessly
littering country roads and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
2.
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and wastes too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
last year -- whether Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
3
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands a
global solution.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline -- pioneered here in the early 1970's -- will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S.
suffered many decades of environmental destruction, often
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs.
4
also
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
an international treaty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
last summer is a very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
legislation. It will bring inOto compliance 100 or more cities
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
Do
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
we really
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
believe
this
estimates are related to air pollution.
number
?
W when and
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
very
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
historic compromise -- a strong and cost-effective compromise a
5
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy.
the
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
who in is
this
management directives from the American Congress. As one
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
pis me w the
EPA
teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig."
Administri
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
of
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
cary
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start.
And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Hon can we say "start" number me
talk the earlier last asout new far we're cam in
20
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss of wetlands -- a
policy first for America -- and for the world.
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
6
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC's.
virtually all uses
Virtually Outlawed the use of asbestos.
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
toxic waste at federal facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left C but to
take the offense and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
We have launched a program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
Provide shelter
from
7
warnth?
warmith
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax, M: he says. "I speak
for the trees."
of his story,
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#
SENT BY:CEQ Jackson PI.
; 4-13-90 :10:38AM ;
2023953744-
2024566218:# 1
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
722 JACKSON PLACE, NW.
WASHINGTON, DC 20503
4/13/90
DATE:
TO:
CHRISS COINSTON/STEPHANIE
TELEPHONE NUMBER:
FAX NUMBER: 6218
SUBJECT
OF MATERIAL: CEQ COMMENTS OW WASHINGTON TIMES
OPED
NUMBER OF PAGES:
8
MESSAGE:
FROM
FROM: TOM SUPER ( 395-5750
TELEPHONE NUMBER:
FAX NUMBER: FTS: 395-3744
pt : 11v EI MAR 06
SENT BY:CEQ Jackson PI.
4-13-90 :10:38AM ;
2023953744-
SENI DI.VEW
2024566218;# 2
16 VV ******
NoMally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (S:ARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIA 1990- 100
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960 American rivers caught on fire whole
DONE
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of Industrial an
standitted may form unban areas
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
TWSERT
rivers. We ware aquandering our natural inheritance.
Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
an Earth say
And 20 years ago body, America's kids started calling in
the debt.
Earth Day was a. phenomenon -- the culmination of much that
and
had come before the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
work about
Those who beek at our environment today
@ sometimes forget how far we've come ww not only as a
people -- but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that bagan in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 19609 1960 many otherwise responsible
]
TONB
citizens worred across the landscape, their cars pumping
lown
invisible toxins into the air, their children caralessly
littering country roads and city streets.
on Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
SENT BY:CEQ Jackson PI.
4-13-90 10:39AM ;
2023953744-
SENI DTIVEW
#-16-9V I'VONM
2024566218;# 3
YES
a
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded rive tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's readways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
And just as America's readways have improved, so have the
cosans of air that fleat above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have saday resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4, parcent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model.
America out airborne particulates by
Dover the dent two decades
60 percent, airborne carbon menoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients solid of urban smog.
This Nation has made treaendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too such waste -- and Wasten too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
last year -- whether Chernoby1's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
SENT BY:CEQ Jackson PI,
; 4-13-90 :10:39AM ;
SENI DI'VEW
2023953744-
16 9V ,
2024566218:# 4
3
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands a
global solution.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline -- pionesred here in the early 1970 -- will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
new re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western in Europe, are far from
widespread countries in the developing world, or our the Eastern European
equiegies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
423 industrialized country, the to
suffered many decudes of environment distription,
often
FEM chectrance,
unintentionally, often Dr ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
INSERT
a responsible belence between quality of life, a sound ecology,
B
and a sound sconomy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs
SENT BY:CEQ Jackson PI.
4-13-90 10:40AM ;
SENI BYTCEN
2023953744-
4-16-94 DIVVAR
2024566218:# 5
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-1ad environment center in Sudapest. we've
embarked on a plan to stop hasardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
wanty
accelerate
actived Ve cooperation host Landmark meeting designed to
international tecenty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
not
crem
The Clean Air initiative we launched
last summer is a very help ambitious, vary aggressive piece of
legislation. It will brung in to compliance 100 or more
maternal
cities and coulon
that have failed to meet subjey standards for ozone. It
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to beest the economy, today
we are harnessing aconomic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has passed
aN
historic compromise --- a strong and cost-effective compromise --a
SENT BY:CEQ Jackson PI.
; 4-13-90 10:40AM ;
SENT DT.VEW
2023953744->
! 4-16-00 I 0.0.AM ,
2024566218;# 6
VENT
5
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is 8 bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980 m.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new clean
Air Act new.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
PR
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy.
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
management diractives from the American Congress.
its
Never
to
pig to Bing. It you, and the pig
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
MOVING
triumph will' "ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
thet.
But
it's
jump
AND
A
Buring its first year in
office, our Administration has:
so
Made good our piedge of
NOT
policy first for America "WE and world.
o
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and vildlife refuges.
o
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
SENT BY:CEQ Jackson PI.
VERI WI'VER
2023953744-
2024566218:# 7
6
a
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
o
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
crc's.
Virtually outlawed the use of asbeston.
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivery imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
toxio waste at federal facilities.
o
Targeted the Superfund towards finding parmanent
remedies for abandoned hasardous waste sites --- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
o
Launched a pilet tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
B
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
Linda
emerging new philosophy in sighting pollution pollution
better
prevention Where RW Farth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
** 2020 Earth Day 1990 18 aimed at stopping it at the source
drop
But
of
It's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. our mission is not just to defend what's left -- but to
take the offense - and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
Ke need to reforces Card Dountiful
We have launched & program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
SENT BY:CEQ Jackson PI.
; 4-13-90 :10:41AM ;
2023953744-
2024566218;# 8
7
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind and varath in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. seuse introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I 35 the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees."
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left 1s a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's ons-word warning: "UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message. of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family --- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not & spectator
sport.
1
how micros about
shat
May
7,
rad
Document No. 131884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
Blue = = EPA comments
Please see attached comments MAR 06
4-13-90 Holy Williamson
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
PRESIDENTIALOR 1000 ADD ED I ARTICLE: DU 20
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire, whole
cities were blanketed Shrouded in thick, black clouds of industrial
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
nation's waters. In short,
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
And 20 years ago today, America's kids youth started calling in
the debt.
watershed in our relationship with the earth:
Earth Day was a phenomenon the culmination of much that
and
had come before the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come -- not only as a
people -- but as a^planet.
community of nations concerned about the health
and productivity of planet earth.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
invisible toxins into the air, their many children carelessly
littering country roads and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
2
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Some
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
awareness among our people.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
brought about
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
when new
generation of new cars that/emit only 4 percent as much pollution
from their tailpipes
Aas the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and wastes too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
itis
last year -- whetherAChernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
3
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands a
global solution. And each one on the globe must be called todo their
part.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline -- pioneered here in the early 1970's -- will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
including the
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
environments (EPA too) havebeen
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S. nation
suffered many decades of environmental destruction/ often
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed applied to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
Symmetry among
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs, or hope for a better future.
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about the
framework for
agreement research tother efforts on
a an international treaty on Aclimate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
an
last summer is a very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
legislation. It will bring in to compliance 100 or more cities
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
inthe united States
includes the first acid rain control program/\and and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
?
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
Another
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
protect
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed an
historic compromise -- a strong, and cost-effective compromise --a
HHS wants todelete these
2 paragraphs. They say
they cannot reliably estimate
Those numbers.
5
I hope we willsee
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House
has
also
been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy.
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
management directives prescriptives from the American Congress.
As one
delete
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
?
teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig."
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
iong distanced
us
N race for life for^all, Americans, a race in which the final ultimate
triumph will ultimately belongs to the long distance runner with Stamnia and
In any race, you need a good start,
perserverance.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its our first year in> in ithas
office, our my Administration has:
been
over
promess?
NO this whis wrong sensitive also.
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss" of wetlands --
a
a year
EPA
policy first for America -- and for the world.
very
issue
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
appointed a very aggressive EPA Administrator, William
Reilly
achieved record or near record enforcement levels
for ourenvironmental laws. 6
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC's.
Virtually outlawed the use of asbestos.
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
toxic waste at federal facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threaten our beaches.
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
1
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution it is generated
preventing it before
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
IS
this
But of course, it's not enough to prevent control environmental
our
theme ?
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left -- but to
ive to
take the offense and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
to
We have launched a program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
7
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
for songbirds and other wildlife.
shelter from the wind and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
youth
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees.' "
at
of the tale
But in the end/no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS."
first Earth Day'schildren
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
visions
healthy) productive global
our goal of a reborn, world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#
#
Document No. 131884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
>
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston Thanks. by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
RESPONSE:
ok
XX
10:60 EI MAR 06
James W. Cicconi
Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
I ARTICLE: 20
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire, whole
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of industrial
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
And 20 years ago today, America ns S kids started calling in
the debt.
Earth Day was a phenomenon -- the culmination of much that
had come before -- the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come -- not only as a
people -- but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
invisible toxins into the air, their children carelessly
littering country roads and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
2
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
clean air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and wastes too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
last year -- whether Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
3
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands
global attention solution.
answer
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded gasoline -- pioneered here in the early 1970's -- will
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of official communist neglect.
My frequent travels through some the pollution-choked cities of
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S.
suffered many decades of environmental destruction, often
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs.
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
an international treaty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
last summer is a very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
legislation. It will bring in to compliance 100 or more cities
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
historic compromise -- a strong and cost-effective compromise --a
5
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy.
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
management directives from the American U.S. Congress. AS one
To paraphase
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
teach a dog pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig. dog
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss" of wetlands -- a
policy first for America -- and for the world.
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
6
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC's.
Virtually outlawed the use of asbestos.
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
toxic waste at federal facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess -- Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left -- but to
take the offense -- and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
We have launched a program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
7
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees."
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#
Document No. 131884
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
2850
04/11/90
10:00 A.M. Friday 04/13
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL OP-ED ARTICLE: WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
MCCLURE
SUNUNU
NEWMAN
SCOWCROFT
PORTER
DARMAN
ROGICH
BATES
UNTERMEYER
CARD
ROGERS
CICCONI
PINKERTON
DEMAREST
DELAND
=
>
FITZWATER
BROMLEY
GRAY
BOSKIN
HAGIN
WINSTON
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments/recommendations directly to Chriss
Winston by 10:00 a.m. on Friday, 04/13, with a copy to my office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
TO:
CHRISS WINSTON
April 12, 1990
The idea of a Presidential op-ed piece for Earth Day is
good. However, the attached draft is neither very Presidential
nor inspiring. Specific points are noted on the text. 03
9E Will GA MAR 06
William F. Sittmann
James W. Cicconi
Acting Executive Secretary Assistant to the President
and Deputy to the Chief of Staff
CC: James Cicconi
Ext. 2702
McNally/Simon
April 11, 1990
Draft Three (E:ARTHDAY)
I ARTICLE?
WASHINGTON TIMES EARTH DAY ISSUE
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1990
In the late 1960's, American rivers caught on fire, whole
cities were blanketed in thick, black clouds of industrial
pollution, and raw sewage was discharged directly into our
rivers. We were squandering our natural inheritance.
But Native Americans have an old saying: "We don't inherit
the Earth from our parents -- we borrow it from our children."
And 20 years ago today, America's kids started calling in
the debt.
Earth Day was a phenomenon -- the culmination of much that
had come before -- the beginning of a new and sustained effort.
Those who look at our environment today only with increasing
apprehension sometimes forget how far we've come -- not only as a
people -- but as a planet.
The Earth Day tradition that began in 1970 has grown into a
worldwide environmental movement, a movement born in the U.S.A.,
a movement nurtured by two decades of American leadership.
The change in attitude has been both fundamental and
pervasive. In the late 1960's many otherwise responsible
citizens roared across the landscape, their cars pumping
toxics
invisible toxins into the air, their children carelessly
littering country roads and city streets.
On Earth Day 1970, students in Lake Ozark, Missouri,
collected refuse along a stretch of U.S. Route 54, producing five
toxins refer to microaganisms, planter animal compounds
2
piles along the roadside, each more than 10 feet high. In West
Virginia, a five-mile span of U.S. Route 50 yielded five tons of
trash. About a year later, on June 5, 1971, three and a half
million Americans worked with the Boy Scouts and the Keep America
Beautiful campaign to conduct what was probably the largest one-
day litter clean-up project in history.
Today, America's roadways are vastly improved, ranking among
the most beautiful in the world. True, government action helped
spur this change. But the real change came about because of a
new environmental ethic.
tx
And just as America's roadways have improved, so have the
oceans of air that float above them. Automobile emission
controls, first mandated in 1970, have today resulted in a
generation of new cars that emit only 4 percent as much pollution
as the typical 1970 model. America cut airborne particulates by
60 percent, airborne carbon monoxide by about 40 percent.
Airborne lead has all but disappeared from the American
landscape. Factory smoke levels are down, as are emissions of
sulfur and some of the prime ingredients of urban smog.
This Nation has made tremendous headway towards our goal of
cléan air for every American. But many tough challenges remain.
The U.S. still produces too much waste -- and wastes too much of
the worlds's non-renewable resources. And as I said in Germany
last year -- whether Chernobyl's radioactive steam or the acid
rain that's killing Europe's Black Forest -- "environmental
Do we really want to raise the problem funclear safety ?
good question noi
3
destruction knows no boundaries." A global problem demands a
global solution.
Part of the solution lies in America's technological and
legislative leadership. Automobile emissions standards and
unleaded
unleaded gasoline -- pioneered here in the early 1970's -- will
unlearea gar s/a
go into effect in the European Community in 1992. And Europe is
now re-tooling to copy the technological innovations that gave
beenen
America the world's cleanest cars.
Unfortunately, American breakthroughs, and the kind of
environmental progress we've seen in Western Europe, are far from
widespread in the developing world, or even the Eastern European
ecologies that were ravaged by decades of communist neglect.
My frequent travels through the pollution-choked cities of
with
developing nations have served to remind me how far we as a
relate
planet still have to go. During America's own development from
evelomp
Countries
an agrarian culture to an industrialized country, the U.S.
mormously
suffered many decades of environmental destruction, often
unintentionally, often in ignorance. The DDT designed to protect
against pests nearly destroyed our national symbol, the Bald
Eagle.
As we have learned in America, developing nations must find
a responsible balance between quality of life, a sound ecology,
and a sound economy. And in the developing world, "quality of
life" often means life itself. There's no more hostile
environment than one in which people are without food, shelter,
or jobs.
4
Overseas, America is offering technical assistance, such as
through the new, U.S.-led environment center in Budapest. We've
embarked on a plan to stop hazardous wastes from being
indiscriminately exported to foreign countries -- and thrown U.S.
support behind a U.N. Convention to help achieve this goal. And
we've offered to host a landmark meeting designed to bring about
an international treaty on climate change.
Back at home, America has continued to lead by example,
setting the pace in balanced efforts to protect the world's air.
The Clean Air initiative we launched in the Grand Tetons
last summer is a. very ambitious, very aggressive piece of
legislation. It will bring in to compliance 100 or more cities
that have failed to meet health safety standards for ozone. It
includes the first acid rain control program and powerful new
incentives for burning cleaner fuel.
And it's not only good for the environment -- it's also good
for the economy. Consider, for example, the enormous savings in
health care and lost productivity if we can reduce the 50,000
premature deaths a year that the American Lung Association
estimates are related to air pollution.
All in all, one estimate puts medical bills avoided by
pollution control at $40 billion per year. Where once
environmental forces were harnessed to boost the economy, today
we are harnessing economic forces to boost the environment.
Working with the White House, the Senate has now passed a
historic compromise -- a strong and cost-effective compromise --a
5
balanced compromise that today awaits fast action in the House.
This is a bill that was gridlocked throughout the 1980's.
It's been 13 years coming. But no American should have to wait
another day for clean air. The House should pass the new Clean
Air Act now.
The House has also been the battleground for our campaign to
elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to the highest level
of the federal government -- the Cabinet level. The American
people want this done. But they also want it done right. They
want it done responsibly.
What the EPA needs is new clout -- not a new bureaucracy.
we us particles va
Especially not a $100 million bureaucracy loaded down with
make land pomt. b
management directives from the American Congress. As one
congressional critic of the House bill put it: "Never try to
teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you, and irritates the pig. H
The campaign to protect the environment is a marathon, a
race for life for all Americans, a race in which the final
triumph will ultimately belong to the long distance runner.
But it's needed a jump start. And during its first year in
office, our Administration has:
Made good our pledge of "no-net-loss" of wetlands -- a
policy first for America -- and for the world.
Asked Congress for nearly half a billion dollars to buy
new land for parks and wildlife refuges.
Launched an ambitious, billion dollar a year research
program on climate change.
6
Concluded a historic, international conference on
climate change at the White House just yesterday.
Protected the ozone layer by backing a phase-out of
CFC's.
Virtually outlawed the use of asbestos.
Banished alar from America's supermarkets.
Barred all African elephant ivory imports to the U.S.
Added three quarters of a billion dollars to clean up
toxic waste at federal facilities.
Targeted the Superfund towards finding permanent
remedies for abandoned hazardous waste sites -- an
effort now being copied in Italy and West Germany.
Launched a pilot tracking program to stop the medical-
waste wash-ups that threatens our beaches.
Our medical waste tracking program is a good example of the
emerging new philosophy in fighting pollution -- pollution
prevention. Where as Earth Day 1970 was devoted to cleaning up
the mess -- Earth Day 1990 is aimed at stopping it at the source.
But of course, it's not enough to prevent environmental
damage. Our mission is not just to defend what's left -- but to
take the offense -- and improve our environment. Nature has
powerful rejuvenative forces. But we need to help them along.
We need to reforest this bountiful land.
We have launched a program that would promote the planting
of a billion new trees a year. Trees are the oldest, cheapest,
and most efficient air purifier on Earth. They can help clean
7
the air by reducing carbon dioxide. Trees can reduce the heat of
a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide
shelter from the wind and warmth in winter. And every tree
planted is a compact between generations.
About a year after the first Earth Day, Dr. Seuss introduced
America's kids to the fable of a lakeside forest and the brave
little man who defends it. "I am the Lorax," he says. "I speak
for the trees."
But in the end no trees remain. Gross ecological
mismanagement leaves the forest leveled, the air unbreathable,
the water choked with dying fish. And all that's left is a pile
of barren rocks, and the Lorax's one-word warning: "UNLESS."
Today the Earth Day kids have grown up. But the message of
the Lorax still rings true. Unless every business, every
community, and every family -- in this nation, and in every
nation -- pauses to consider what they can do to fight pollution,
our goal of a reborn world environment will always remain
elusive. The race to protect the environment is not a spectator
sport.
#
#