Reply #13: CounterPunch also did an article on the DLC/Clinton versus the environment [View All]

[Robbien]

the environment part of the article:

Environmental protections? Clinton/Gore tipped the scales more decisively than ever toward the preferences of business. In the words of Jeffrey St. Clair, the coeditor of CounterPunch and a veteran environmental writer and activist, "Reviewing the environment during Clinton time is like watching a preview of the Bush administration. Indeed, many of Bush's worst ideas for the planet germinated with Clinton. It started early and didn't let up. At the behest of his friends in the chemical industry, Clinton moved to excise the Delaney Clause, a valuable law which had been around since the days of Rachel Carson that set zero tolerance for the presence of known carcinogens in processed foods. With Delaney gone, the chemical industry had smooth sailing for the approval of a host of new pesticides. This also set a bad precedent for other issues: Regulative prohibitions were going to be shoved aside in favor of 'risk assessments' and cost-benefit analysis. This approach was soon applied to air pollution, water pollution and toxic waste. But it saw its most malign and far-reaching application with the Endangered Species Act, which was essentially eviscerated under the guidance of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

"Midway through Clinton's first term, he signed what has been called the 'worst environmental law of the 20th century'--the Salvage Logging Rider, which allowed timber to be clear-cut on national forests across the country without compliance with any environmental laws and shielded from any kind of citizen challenge or lawsuits. In a 1996 op-ed the great environmental radical David Brower wrote that 'Clinton and Gore have done more harm to the environment in four years than Reagan and Bush did in 12.' And one very mainstream voice--Jay Hair, the former head of the National Wildlife Federation, who died recently--compared the experience of working with Clinton/Gore to date rape."

http://www.counterpunch.org/sperry1126.html