🚀 go-pugleaf

A number of new environmental bills have been brewing on Capitol Hill during
1992. There are strengthened forms of the Endangered Species Act (ESA)
including ecosystem protection as a keystone. There is a bill to create a 
National Institutes of Biodiversity, possibly under the Smithsonian, one of 
whose jobs would be to identify the biodiversity hotspots to be protected. 
And there are others: bills to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
ancient forests, wetlands, etc. 

One idea which is emerging is a coordination of these and related measures
-- on toxics, air and water pollution, etc. as well as the enabling 
legislation for our UNCED treaty obligations -- under a large umbrella:
The Sustainable Biosphere Initiative, or SBI.

If Bill Clinton is elected on Nov. 3, look to see the SBI blossom next year
into the largest new environmental initiative since the Nixon administration,
which enacted ESA and NEPA (the act which created the EPA) in 1972. 20 years
later, the US has relinquished its leadership in the environment to Europe 
and Japan, and sacrificed its market share in environmental technologies,
because of the Reagan-Bush trickle-down economic dogma that the only thing
the government can do for the economy is to lower taxes on the wealthy and
get out of their way. Since the Europeans and Japanese have not been 
mesmerized by such voodoo, they are now the leaders in the environment as
we saw at Rio.

Clinton will undoubtedly flesh out the SBI with economic stimuli for 
environmentally sound technologies in transportation and agriculture, 
targetted small business loan guarantees and tax incentives, and help 
in economic diversification to wean areas such as the Pacific Northwest 
which are currently dependent on unsustainable practices (clearcut logging,
in that case) and to help defense-industry conversion.

If George Bush is reelected on Nov. 3, we can expect continued gridlock for
another four years as a Congress committed to change and to progress on the 
environment tries to pass SBI legislation while Bush vetoes it. Then in 1996
an even more disgusted populace will take one look into the vacant eyes of
Dan Quayle and do what they should have done in 1992.

Let's not waste four more years before we get started. Vote for Bill Clinton
and Al Gore on Nov. 3.

------------
Alan McGowen