WASHINGTON — How the gods do play upon the poor soul who is
known to us all as Al Gore. On the day Boy Clinton was impeached
they sent him out on the White House lawn to laud The Groper as
“one of our greatest presidents.” In Campaign 2000, they cast him
as the Poor Loser. Ever since he has been wandering the land
looking for a friend and intoning preposterosities even more absurd
than when he wrote his green classic, Earth in the
Balance. There he predicted that all the automobiles in
America would soon be parked curbside while Americans squeezed into
public transportation and enjoyed the ride. Now he champions the
windmill over fossil fuel, no matter how many whooping cranes are
slaughtered by the whirling blades. He is Don Quixote turned upside
down.
What did the rude gods do to him this time? They forced him to
cancel a speech scheduled for New Orleans where he planned to blame
global warming for the hurricane season. You can be sure that when
Hurricane Katrina scotched his appearance in New Orleans Al, ever
the opportunist, saw this idiotic speech as a splendid opportunity
to summon the attention of the nation. Of a sudden Al would be the
man of the moment. He might yet become president — a
Green in the White House.
So where did Al choose to deliver this critical compendium of
misjudgments, hyperbole, and error? In San Francisco, of course,
where on September 9 he said, “The warnings about global warming
have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global
climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of
consequences.” And he urged that “the leaders of our country be
held accountable” for the flooding of New Orleans. Unfortunately he
was addressing the Sierra Club, which was not the best place to
bring up the flooding of New Orleans.
The very day he spoke a congressional task force reported that
the levees that failed in New Orleans would have been raised higher
and strengthened in 1996 by the Army Corps of Engineers were it not
for a lawsuit filed by environmentalists led by who else but the
Sierra Club. Among those “leaders of our country” to “be held
accountable” for the flooding of New Orleans, would Al include the
Sierra Club? How about the Save the Wetlands stalwarts? According
to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times, a 1977
lawsuit filed by Save the Wetlands stopped a congressionally funded
plan to protect New Orleans with a “massive hurricane barrier.” A
judge found that New Orleans’ hurricane barrier would have to wait
until the Army Corps of Engineers filed a better
environmental-impact statement.
Now, because those who would have improved hurricane protection
in New Orleans were prevented by the environmentalist rigorists,
the wetlands are polluted and imperiled and New Orleans has
suffered the damage that practical minds have been trying to
prevent for three decades. What has thwarted them are the Al Gores
of the environmental movement and a well-intentioned piece of
legislation that has become a major stumbling block to improving
the nation’s infrastructure and energy production, the National
Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA). The legislation might have
been sensible at the time, but it has grown like a bureaucratic
cancer. Environmentalist lawyers have expanded its reach until it
now entoils practically any construction done by the federal
government in red tape that stops projects large and small, some
mere pork barrel expense, some critical to the safety of the
citizenry.
The congressional task force that exposed the Sierra Club’s
mischief in New Orleans was convened in April to study the costs of
NEPA and suggest means to reform it. Doubtless members of the task
force — it includes 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats — will find
some valuable contributions to the environment that it has made.
But the task force and Hurricane Katrina have already revealed that
it is in need of serious reform.
For too long environmentalist fanatics with no sense of a
broad-based commonweal have had a veto over government projects and
projects in the private sector that are essential to the health and
wellbeing of millions of Americans. Cost-benefits analyses and
free-market treatment of pollution are but two alternatives the
task force should consider over the decades-long environmental
policy of “just say no.”
