-Caveat Lector-
http://truthout.org/docs_03/030503G.shtml
Memo Exposes Bush's New Green Strategy
Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian
Tuesday 4 March 2003
The US Republican party is changing tactics on the
environment, avoiding "frightening" phrases such as global warming,
after a confidential party memo warned that it is the domestic
issue on which George Bush is most vulnerable.
The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz,
concedes the party has "lost the environmental communications
battle" and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the
view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of
greenhouse gases.
"The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet
closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the
science," Mr Luntz writes in the memo, obtained by the
Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based campaigning
organisation.
"Voters believe that there is no consensus about global
warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to
believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about
global warming will change accordingly.
"Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of
scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."
The phrase "global warming" should be abandoned in favour of
"climate change", Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its
policies as "conservationist" instead of "environmentalist",
because "most people" think environmentalists are "extremists" who
indulge in "some pretty bizarre behaviour... that turns off many
voters".
Words such as "common sense" should be used, with pro-business
arguments avoided wherever possible.
The environment, the memo says, "is probably the single issue
on which Republicans in general - and President Bush in particular
- are most vulnerable".
A Republican source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
party strategists agreed with Mr Luntz's conclusion that "many
Americans believe Republicans do not care about the environment".
The popular image is that they are "in the pockets of
corporate fat cats who rub their hands together and chuckle
manically [sic] as they plot to pollute America for fun and
profit", Mr Luntz adds.
The phrase "global warming" appeared frequently in President
Bush's speeches in 2001, but decreased to almost nothing during
2002, when the memo was produced.
Environmentalists have accused the party and oil companies of
helping to promulgate the view that serious doubt remains about the
effects of global warming.
Last week, a panel of experts appointed at the Bush
administration's request to analyse the president's climate change
strategy found that it lacked "vision, executable goals, clear
timetables and criteria for measuring progress".
"Rather than focusing on the things we don't know, it's almost
as if parts of the plan were written by people who are totally
unfamiliar with where ecosystems science is coming from," panel
member William Schlesinger told the Guardian.
Mr Luntz urges Republicans to "emphasise the importance of
'acting only with all the facts in hand'", in line with the White
House position that mandatory restrictions on emissions, as
required by the Kyoto protocol, should not be countenanced until
further research is undertaken.
The memo singles out as a major strategic failure the incoming
Bush administration's response to Bill Clinton's last-minute
executive order reducing the permitted level of arsenic in drinking
water from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion.
The new administration put the plan on hold, prompting "the
biggest public relations misfire of President Bush's first year in
office", Mr Luntz writes. The perception was that Mr Bush "was
actively putting in more arsenic in the water".
"A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more
emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth," Mr
Luntz notes in the memo.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.)
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