more. Climate change threatens the future of species and the planet’s long-term survival, industry and business groups work overtime to subvert environmental health measures, and we are still engaged in the false choice between jobs and the environment that should long ago have been resolved.
Many grassroots activists blame the environmental movement’s failures on the strategic shortcomings of national environmental organizations. These groups are said to be so concerned with appearing “reasonable” to the Washington, D.C., establishment that they unnecessarily compromise on key environmental goals. They are also criticized for failing to hold politicians accountable. We saw a textbook example of both problems in the first year of the Clinton-Gore administration.
As Goes East Liverpool, So Goes the Nation
The battle waged by Greenpeace and residents of East Liverpool, Ohio, to force the Clinton-Gore administration to keep a well-publicized campaign promise to prevent the opening of a dangerous incinerator should not have been necessary. Rejecting a permit for the proposed Waste Technologies Industry (WTI) hazardous waste incinerator was easily justified: the proposed site was close to houses, churches, and schools, and the incinerator would emit such toxics as lead, mercury, and dioxin into a low-income neighborhood. During the 1992 Clinton campaign bus tour, Democratic vice presidential candidate Al Gore described the WTI incinerator as an unbelievable idea that highlighted the concrete differences between the parties on environmental issues. Speaking of the incinerator in Weirton, West Virginia, in July 1992, Gore said, “I’ll tell you this, a Clinton-Gore administration is going to give you an environmental presidency to deal with these problems. We’ll be on your side for a change, instead of the side of the garbage generators, the way [previous presidents] have been.”4
Because Gore’s environmental treatise Earth in the Balance attacked solid-waste incinerators and praised their grassroots opponents, environmentalists saw the election of Clinton-Gore as the death knell for the WTI facility. This expectation was heightened when the vice president issued a press release on December 7, 1992, stating that “serious questions concerning the safety of an East Liverpool, Ohio, hazardous waste incinerator must be answered before the plant may begin operation. The new Clinton-Gore administration will not issue the plant a test burn permit until these questions are answered.” Attached to Gore’s release was a letter to the comptroller general raising several questions about the impact of the incinerator and how it had been approved. Gore and six U.S. senators signed the letter. The New York Times interpreted Gore’s statement as “sending a clear signal” that the “new administration plans an aggressive approach to enforcing environmental laws.” Incinerator opponents had even greater reason to cheer when the new administration appointed Carol Browner to head the Environmental Protection Agency. In the early 1980s, Browner had worked on anti-toxic issues for Clean Water Action and Citizen Action.5
But the Clinton administration broke its pledge to environmental supporters by issuing a temporary permit in March 1993 that allowed the incinerator to begin commercial operation. It did so despite the Ohio attorney general’s assertion that the facility violated state law and the EPA’s own assessment that it could pose health risks 130 times above the agency’s acceptable level.6
The Clinton-Gore-Browner flip-flop on the WTI facility was an early test of environmentalists’ willingness to hold the new Democratic administration accountable. It was no different from San Francisco mayor Agnos’s asking his core rent-control supporters to meet with their opponents as a condition of fulfilling his promises to their constituency. Just as the tenants’ surrender early in Agnos’s term paved the way for four years of broken promises and political inaction, Clinton’s betrayal on the WTI project, if unchallenged, would set a precedent for future betrayals on other issues. Every major environmental group, along with grassroots activists, should have recognized Clinton’s agenda and demanded accountability. Clinton, Gore, and Browner should have been heckled and protested at every public appearance. This confrontational approach was essential because the response to the WTI flip-flop would determine environmentalists’ power during the balance of Clinton’s term.
But Greenpeace was the only major national environmental organization to join the East Liverpool struggle. Greenpeace recognized that “if Clinton-Gore can break their promise on WTI—their first environmental commitment after the election, their first promise to an individual community—they can break them all.” Rick Hind, legislative director of Greenpeace’s toxics campaign, has learned from experience that politicians “only give you attention when you blast them, and in some cases activists must use the equivalent of a two-by-four.”7
Greenpeace and East Liverpool activists used a number of confrontational tactics to pressure the Clinton administration. In March 1993, anti-incinerator leader Terri Swearingen and seven other East Liverpool residents took the public tour of the White House. Once inside, they refused to leave until they could speak to Clinton. The eight activists were then arrested. Following this action, Swearingen and her fellow residents joined with Greenpeace for a “Put People First, Not Polluters” national bus tour. The motto perfectly captured the contradiction between Clinton’s campaign bus theme of “putting people first for a change” and his sacrifice of the people of East Liverpool to benefit garbage interests.
The bus tour began in April 1993 and traveled across the nation to twenty-five communities with hazardous waste incinerators. It won publicity for the East Liverpool campaign in local papers wherever it went. The tour arrived in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1993, and more than two hundred people protested in front of the White House, chanting for Al Gore to “read his book” and singing “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Seventy-five people were arrested, including actor Martin Sheen and Greenpeace executive director Barbara Dudley. The Washington Post noted that the demonstrators seemed to be Clinton voters who never expected to march against him; one East Liverpool mother of three said of Clinton, “We have got to make him more afraid of us.” Terri Swearingen observed, “Clinton talks about change and about giving us an environmental presidency. And so far, where is the change? There is no difference between Clinton and Bush.”8
Regrettably, other national groups and grassroots activists throughout the country failed to mobilize around this litmus-test issue. As Greenpeace’s Hind put it in April 1993, “The dirty secret is that we have been soft-pedaling this administration because we hoped that they would live up to their commitment. But it’s clear that they are either totally incompetent or are on the other side.”9
Predictably, the failure of national organizations to attack Clinton-Gore over the issuance of a permanent permit for the WTI incinerator wreaked further damage to the environmental cause. After twelve years of anti-environment Republican presidents, the first two years of the Democratic Clinton administration brought only one significant piece of national environmental legislation. This measure, the California Desert Protection Act, was passed at the last minute of the 1994 congressional session solely to assist California Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein in her tough reelection battle. Even worse, national environmental issues receded to the deep background of the public agenda; public opinion polls in 1994 regularly found that fewer than 5 percent of Americans viewed such issues as among the country’s most pressing problems.10
Strengthening the Clean Air Act
Some national environmental groups learned from Clinton’s first term that this was a president and an administration that responded only to the fear-and-loathing approach. Al Gore had declared in his popular book Earth in the Balance, “The people in a democratic society need to be prepared to hold their elected Officials accountable.” Yet national groups in the East Liverpool struggle passed up the opportunity to target Gore, who should have been held accountable for his broken promise on the WTI facility and for the Clinton administration’s entire record of environmental failure.
In
