A guest editorial by Mark J. Spalding, member Surfrider Foundation Board of Directors Surfrider Foundation is a non-partisan organization. This is why it is hard to address what seems to be a growing estrangement between our mission at Surfrider Foundation and the Grand Old Party. Surfrider Foundation is made up of members, volunteers, staff, and directors on our board who are registered Democrats and registered Republicans. Heck, we even have a few Greens and others in the mix. But, this isn’t about our Party registration, it’s about our respect for the environment; and the environment itself is non-partisan. So, we cannot stand by and watch the current Administration dismantle or weaken laws designed to protect the coast and oceans, many of which Republicans helped put in place. I grew up in a bipartisan household; dad was a Democrat, mom was GOP. When it came my turn to vote, I was all over the GOP. In 1980, I stood next to then Presidential Candidate Ronald Reagan on stage in Claremont, California, after I had pulled the rope to release the balloons as he came on stage (today I wonder how many animals choked on those balloons). One of the reasons I became a Republican was the environmental legacy of my party. Yes, believe it or not, Republicans have a positive environmental legacy. From the very beginning, the father of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln took unprecedented efforts to conserve and protect America’s environment by setting aside Yosemite Valley in 1864 through a public trust grant to California. As a conservationist, President Teddy Roosevelt was a key figure in decreeing the establishment of numerous national parks and forests throughout the country. President Roosevelt, an outdoor sportsman and lover of nature, in 1905, established the U.S. Forestry Service under the direction of Gifford Pinchot, who was the preeminent proponent of various federal laws and extensive oversight of the nation’s great forests and other natural resources. The formation of the U.S. Forestry Service led to the creation of numerous national parks on federal land and these became one of Roosevelt’s most enduring legacies. He increased national forest protection from 42 million acres to 172 million acres, decreed 15 national wildlife refuges and 18 national monuments, and he organized the first Conservation Conference (May 1908 at the White House). "Protecting human health is the main goal of conservation," Roosevelt said. Even as recently as the Nixon Adminis-tration, a number of pro-environment laws for the United States were passed by Congress and signed by the President. Many of these are the laws that we at Surfrider Foundation use everyday in our work to protect the coasts The Nixon Era Laws National Environmental Policy Act Creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Creation of the Council on Environmental Quality New and more powerful version of the Clean Air Act DDT ban Ocean Dumping Act A Clean Water Act Endangered Species Act Marine Mammal Protection Act A Safe Drinking Water Act President Nixon recognized the political capital of being green. Thanks to Nixon, who initiated the country’s most significant efforts to help clean up the environment, the U.S. became a global leader in environmental protection. President Nixon’s greening may have been due to public opinion; a Gallup poll in 1970 showed that 53 percent of Americans viewed "reduction of air and water pollution as a national priority." He recognized that society was becoming increasingly more concerned with pollution and reacted accordingly. He declared in his 1970 State of the Union address that it was time to clean air and water­­"it is now or never." In 1971, he wrote a message to Congress outlining a thirty seven-point plan to clean up the environment. His plan called for pollution controls by introducing several programs to regulate and implement laws using taxes and strict enforcement of standards. The plan also regulated toxic substances, noise pollution, industry pollution, ocean dumping, and protection from and clean up of oil spills. Nixon’s plans worked for two reasons. First, he had bipartisan support in Congress, and second, he devoted considerable money to meet his environmental goals. He provided funds for the implementation of many policies, including $25 million for better protection of the ocean, and $5 billion in 1973 for pollution control (50% more than the 1972 allocation). To further ensure the effectiveness of his plan, Nixon felt that the federal government had to be an active participant to implement his environmental agenda. To this end, he signed the National Environ-mental Policy Act that created the Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA); which is one of America’s most important policy-making and enforcement agencies to date.

President Nixon expanded his efforts to the global arena in June of 1972. He sent a U.S. delegation to the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden. At this conference, several agreements were made to protect the environment nationally and internationally. For example, a Nixon proposal for a $100 million UN Environmental Fund was approved. In addition, the World Heritage Trust (a part of Nixon’s thirty seven-point plan) was also established. However, in the 1980s, things began to change. President Reagan and the Christian Right attacked environmental non-profit groups for raising nature above humanity­­which Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell, among others, considered un-American, anti-human and anti-Christian­­certainly directly against biblical teachings. The 1980s were a period of reversal for the environmental movement and for the development of environmental law. With support from businesses and property rights advocates, President Reagan dismantled many existing regulations. In many ways, Reagan was the exact opposite of Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt felt government has a responsibility to its people and to natural resource management, etc. Government was a partner and could offer solutions. For Reagan, the government was the problem. It was what stood in the way of all progress. Reagan was not sympathetic to environmentalists­­he labeled them as extremists. Almost single handedly he made the environment a partisan issue. Reagan mistakenly assumed the popularity of environmentalism had declined. In fact, it had not. What even Big Business wanted were alternatives to regulation, not outright anti-environmentalism. Following on Ronald Reagan’s anti-environment efforts came the hostile nature of the Newt Gingrich ‘Contract with America,’ which helped earn today’s Republicans the worst anti-green reputation in history. Since January 2001, we have been facing in the Bush Administration an effort to reverse, de-fund, or intentionally fail to enforce laws related to our most important environmental issues: pollution, public lands, global warming, biodiversity, and sustainability. According to a listing of Bush political appointments, posted by the non-partisan League of Conservation Voters, the Bush Administration’s environmental record did not even start out on the right track. "Through his appointments, President Bush has put environmental policy in the hands of industry interests. The backgrounds of the majority of Bush administration environmental appointments clearly indicate that energy, extractive and corporate interests will have significant influence in the oversight of the nation’s public lands, natural resources, air and water quality and the enforcement of environmental laws." While Bush's pre-war approval rating hovered around 60%, and rose even higher during, and now after the war, two-thirds of Americans correctly believe that Bush puts the interests of big business first and thus dislike his negative environmental actions. Ironically, even the Nixon-era National Environmental Policy Act, the mother of all modern environmental laws, has been one of the focal points of attack by anti-environmental Republicans today. In the past, the Republican Party was on the right track. However, such conservationist themes within the GOP of only 30 years ago are now forgotten due to the fact that Republican leaders have become somewhat indifferent and at times antagonistic about environmental issues. Today, what are conservatives conserving? The intemperate anti-environmental stance by the Bush Administration is disappointing because it violates fundamental conservative principles. Shouldn’t it be the conservatives who seek to "conserve" our natural resources for use by future generations? Or, who fight against having the taxpayer saddled with the bill for health care costs that are a direct result of environmental degradation. And for cleaning up the air and water while the corporations make a profit from producing oil, chemicals and other toxins that end up in the surf? Shouldn’t environmentalists and Republican conservatives stand together to fight against subsidies for natural resource exploitation, as well as destructive and polluting activities? Climate change has now been well established as a threat by scientists, and it will cost far less to prevent it than to deal with the consequences. So shouldn’t fiscal conservatives be leading the charge to do something about it? Conservatism and environmentalism need not be in conflict. Unfortunately, few Republicans today are interested in discussing the consistency between conservatism and conservation, the constitutional obligation of government to protect its citizens, or our common-sense desire for clean water. On this issue there ought to be nonpartisan consensus. We at Surfrider, as a private non-profit, non-governmental organization, are motivated less by political philosophy than by the desire to clean up a local beach or to reduce the pollution from urban runoff that ends up in our surf and makes us sick. Unfortunately, it’s politics that will defeat us, if we sit by and don’t speak up. This year two major reports will be released on the state of the oceans: the Oceans Report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the report of the U.S. Oceans Commission. As those reports come out, we should call attention to the currently sad fate of the oceans. We must care even more about the coasts and ocean and work harder to prevent their swiftly advancing decline. No matter what our individual political affiliation, or maybe especially if Republican is your Party, please join us as we proceed to question the authority of our government to reverse environmental protections. After all, it’s your beach! Bush and the Environment The Bush Administration withdrew from the Kyoto protocol on preventing climate change. Bush’s father signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992. President Bush reneged on his campaign promise to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants. The administration tried to reverse new rules to reduce arsenic in drinking water. President Bush's 2002 environment budget cut federal spending by $2.3bn­­or 8%. The same budget cut research into renewable energy technologies by $33m­­or 36.4%. Rules that would have tightened mining standards on federal lands have been put on hold. President Bush and his interior secretary, Gale Norton, want to drill for oil in the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. An administration energy task force led by Vice President Cheney, comprising executives from the oil industry and others in the energy sector, including the now infamous Enron Corp-oration, held secret meetings and wrote our nation’s energy policy leaving out conservation and alternative energy sources. President Bush abandoned his campaign promise to invest $100m a year in rainforest conservation. The White House is seeking to limit the right of private citizens and environmental groups to use U.S. courts to add species to the national endangered species list. The reintroduction of endangered species has been halted. And, a recent proposal seeks to exempt the Department of Defense from having critical habitat designated on its bases. Rules restricting the use of snowmobiles and jet-skis in Yellowstone and other national parks have been reversed. The conservation rule protecting roadless areas in national forests has been weakened, thus opening pristine national forest areas for logging. Protection for wetlands has been reduced. Rules allowing the disposal of mining waste in streams have been proposed.. The White House decided to store nuclear waste in Nevada. In June 2002 a 'major relaxation' of clean air enforcement was announced, to allow our nation’s worst polluting factories to expand without installing air pollution controls. The Administration is attempting to exempt the military from the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The Administration argues in court that the Environmental Impact Assessments are not required in U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone ocean areas. Mark J. Spalding can be contacted at mspalding@ucsd.edu. He left the Republican Party after the moral majority controlled it; he then left the Democratic Party when Clinton/Gore failed to fulfill their environmental promise. He sits today as a member of the Green Party, thinking, "Ralph Nader was wrong, there was a difference between Al Gore and George Bush." *   *   *