http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10342
The Three Horsemen of the Environmental Apocalypse
David Helvarg, The Nation
January 16, 2001
President-elect Bush's naming of former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton
as Interior Secretary and recently defeated Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham
as Energy Secretary suggests that Republicans haven't learned from the 104th
Congress of 1995, when attempts to gut environmental protections helped
undermine the short-lived Gingrich revolution. The beliefs that Norton and
Abraham shared about natural-resource exploitation are as close as subsurface
oil and gas but completely out of whack with their departments' stated
missions. As Colorado's Attorney General from 1991 to 1998 Norton pushed
programs of voluntary compliance for industrial polluters and opposed
government (and voter) initiatives to counter sprawl. She has been an active
advocate for "property rights," the idea that government should compensate
developers when environmental laws and regulations limit their profits, while
also fighting hard to protect agribusiness access to cheap federal water.
Since 1999 she's worked for Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber & Strickland, a law
firm that has lobbied for a range of sprawl-promoting clients, including
Denver International Airport and the city's new taxpayer-financed stadium for
its pro football team, the Broncos. A four-year veteran of James Watt's
Mountain States Legal Foundation, Norton continued to work for Watt after he
became President Reagan's controversial ("We will mine more, drill more, cut
more timber") Interior Secretary. In 1998 Norton, along with right-wing
activist and BP oil lobbyist Grover Norquist, became co-chair of the
Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates. Dedicated to "free-market
environmentalism," CREA included "wise users," property-rights advocates and
auto, coal, mining and developer lobbyists. Traditional GOP environmentalists
like the late Senator John Chafee refused to join the group. In 1999 Norton
joined the team advising the Bush campaign on developing a conservative
environmental agenda. Among those working with her was David Koch of Koch
industries, which last year paid a $35 million fine for oil pollution in six
states; also Lynn Scarlett, a senior fellow at the antiregulatory Foundation
for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), which according to the
Washington Post lived up to its acronym by holding a series of
all-expenses-paid "seminars" for federal judges at a Montana dude ranch.
Norton's commitment to begin oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR) could make her the most controversial Interior Secretary since
her mentor. On the other hand, the media's focus on her being a pro-choice
Republican suggests she'll also support a caribou's right to abort before
losing its habitat. Working closely with Norton as Energy Secretary will be
longtime Republican operative and former Dan Quayle staff aide Spencer
Abraham, who only last year called for the abolition of the Energy Department
(as a cost-saving measure). During his one term as senator from Michigan
Abraham fought to limit fuel-efficiency requirements for SUVs, limit
renewable energy research, abolish the federal gasoline tax and open up ANWR
to oil drilling. While this won him a zero rating from the League of
Conservation Voters, it also scored him close to $450,000 in contributions
from energy and natural resources industries in his failed re-election bid.
Ironically, he has now become a personal example of recycling. Aligning with
Abraham and Norton will be Don Evans, a FOG (Friend of George) oil executive
and $100 million Bush fundraiser. As the next Commerce Secretary (another
department Abraham wanted to abolish), Evans will oversee the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the lead agency for America's oceans
(which are the source of 25 percent of our domestic oil and 26 percent of our
natural gas). If, following the lead of the oilmen in the White House,
Cabinet members Norton, Abraham and Evans should choose drilling,
particularly in ANWR, as their first environmental battle (something national
green groups believe they will), they could quickly find themselves sinking
in a political quagmire of their own creation.
