What the Sierra Club says about Nader's Inaccuracies
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Re: Ralph Nader attack on environmentalists who are supporting
Vice-President Gore
Yesterday I received from Ralph Nader a letter addressed
to concerned environmental voters, but distributed also
through the Nader press list. The letter attacked Vice-
President Gore, but went beyond that attack to criticize
those environmentalists who are endorsing Gore for adopting
a "servile mentality." While the letter raised, legitimately,
a number of valid issues on which Nader and Gore differ, it
also contained a number of inaccurate and utterly unfair
attacks.
Additionally, Green Party spokespeople have begun attacking
the Sierra Club, and other environmentalists who are
supporting the Gore-Lieberman ticket, in increasing harsh terms,
terms that go far beyond anything that we have said or would
in any conceivable world want to say about our differences with
the Nader candidacy.
I have responded to this attack, and my response is attached.
Ralph Nader
Nader 2000
PO Box 18002
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Ralph:
Yesterday you sent me(and many other environmentalists) a
long letter defending your candidacy and attacking "the servile
mentality" of those of us in the environmental community who
are supporting Vice-President Gore.
I've worked alongside you as a colleague for thirty years.
Neither the letter nor the tactics you are increasingly
adopting in your candidacy are worthy of the Ralph Nader I knew.
The heart of your letter is the argument that "the threat
to our planet articulated by Bush and his ilk" can now be
dismissed. But you offer no evidence for this crucial assertion.
Based on the polls today Bush is an even bet to become the next
President, with both a Republican Senate and a Republican House
to accompany him.
You have referred to the likely results of a Bush election
as being a "cold shower" for the Democratic party. You have made
clear that you will consider it a victory if the net result of
your campaign is a Bush presidency.
But what will your "cold shower" mean for real people and
real places?
What will it mean for tens of millions of asthmatic children
when Bush applies to the nation the "voluntary" approach he's
using in Texas to clean up the air. And what about his stated
opposition to enforcing environmental standards against
corporations?
What will it mean for Americans vulnerable to water
pollution when Bush allows water quality standards to be degraded
to meet the needs of paper mills and refineries as he has
consistently done in Texas, most recently at Lake Sam Rayburn?
And what if he eliminates federal financial support for both
drinking water and water pollution, as his budget calls for and
his record in Texas (46th in spending on drinking water) suggests?
What will it mean for communities of color and poverty located
near toxic waste sites, when Bush applies his Texas approach of lower
standards and lower polluter liability to toxic waste clean-up?
What will a Bush election mean to the Gwich'in people of the
Arctic, when the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is turned over the
oil companies and the calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou herd
on which they depend are destroyed and despoiled?
What will it mean for the fishing families of the Pacific
Northwest when Bush amends the Endangered Species Act to make
extinction for the endangered salmon a legally acceptable option?
If he refuses to remove the dams on the Snake River or reduce
timber cutting levels to preserve salmon?
What will it mean for millions of rural Americans whose
livelihood, health and communities are being destroyed by
unregulated factory feeding operations, if Bush weakens the Clean
Water Act? When he appoints Supreme Court justices who complete
the task of shutting down access to federal courts for citizens
trying to enforce environmental laws?
What will it mean for the wildlife that depend upon our
National Forests when Bush undoes the Clinton-Gore Administration
reforms, reverses their roadless area protection policy, and
restores the timber industry to the mastery of the forests and the
Forest Service that it enjoyed under his father? If he doubles, or
triples, the cut on those Forests?
What will it mean for millions of people in Bangladesh and
other low-lying countries when an American refusal to confront the
problem of global warming unleashes the floods and typhoons of a
rising ocean upon them?
Your letter addresses none of these real consequences of a
Bush victory. Nor has your campaign. Instead, you indulge yourself
in the language of academic discourse when you claim:
"Bush's "old school" allegiance to plunder and extermination
as humanity's appropriate relationship to our world speaks a language
effectively discounted by the great tradition of naturalists from
John Muir to David Brower. Bush's blatant anti-environmentalism will
lose corporate favor as it loses popular support. It is a language of
politics fading rapidly, and without a future."
Candidate Bush may well be speaking a fading language. So was
candidate Reagan in 1980 when he ranted that trees caused air
pollution. It is power, however, not language, that determines policy.
President Bush would be vested with the powers of the government of
the United States, and he is an even more devoted servant of
environmental counter-revolution than Reagan ever was.
Because your letter is couched in this language, so divorced
from the real world consequences of your candidacy, and the real world
choices that face Americans, it is difficult to respond to all of its
selective misrepresentations and inaccuracies. A few samples, however,
may show you why I am so disappointed in the turn your candidacy has
taken:
You claim that "Earth in the Balance" was "an advertisement
for his calculated strategy and availability as an environmental
poseur." Can you offer a single piece of evidence to support this
quite astonishing statement?
You claim that the Clinton Administration stood up to the oil
industry on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge only because "focus
groups have shown him he cannot give" it up. In fact, most polls
show that the public is somewhat split on this issue, and there are
certainly no focus groups I know of showing that it is a third-rail
which no President can cross at his peril. Can you cite your
evidence?
You lament that the Administration has "set aside lands not
in National Parks, but rather in National Monuments...." You are
surely aware that a President cannot legally create national parks,
which require an act of Congress; nor can you be under the
misapprehension that this Congress with Don Young as the head of
the House Resources Committee and Frank Murkowski as his counterpart
in the Senate would have designated these areas as parks however
long a battle Clinton and Gore might have fought. No, you simply
took a cheap shot, and ignored the facts.
You have also broken your word to your followers who signed
the petitions that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged
you would not campaign as a spoiler and would avoid the swing states.
Your recent campaign rhetoric and campaign schedule make it clear
that you have broken this pledge. Your response:
you are a political candidate, and a political candidate wants to
take every vote he can. Very well -- you admit you are a
candidate -- admit that you are, like your opponents, a flawed one.
Irresponsible as I find your strategy, I accept that you
genuinely believe in it. Please accept that I, and the overwhelming
majority of the environmental movement in this country, genuinely
believe that your strategy is flawed, dangerous and reckless. Until
you can answer how you will protect the people and places who will be
put in harm's way, or destroyed, by a Bush presidency, you have no
right to slander those who disagree with you as "servile."
You have called upon us to vote our hopes, not our fears. I
find it easy to do so. My hope is that by electing the best
environmental President in American history, Al Gore, we can move
forward. My fear is that you, blinded by your anger at flaws of the
Clinton-Gore Administration, may be instrumental in electing the
worst.
Sincerely yours,
Carl Pope
Executive Director
The Sierra Club
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