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More often, critics interpret the White House environmental agenda as political pragmatism, as simply an effort to stay in power and pay back corporate contributors.
Moyers: This is stealth war on the environment in the name of ideology. But you're right -- there is a very powerful political process at work here, too. It's payback time for their rich donors. In the 2000 elections, the Republicans outspent the Democrats by $200 million. Bush and Cheney -- who, needless to say, are oilmen who made their fortunes in the energy business -- received over $44 million from the oil, gas, and energy industries. It spills over into Congress too: In the 2002 congressional elections, Republican candidates received almost $15 million from the energy industries, while the Democrats got around $3.7 million. In our democracy, voters can vote but donors decide.
Grist: Add to that the fact that in every key appointment at every environmental agency you find someone from industry -- a lawyer, a lobbyist, a former executive.
Moyers: The list is shocking. The Interior Department is the biggest scandal of all. Current Secretary Gale Norton and her No. 2 man, J. Steven Griles, head a fifth column that is trying to sabotage environmental protection at every level. Griles has more conflicts of interest than a dog has fleas. The giveaway of public resources at Interior is the biggest scandal of its kind since the Teapot Dome corruption. You have to go all the way back to the crony capitalism of the Harding administration to find a president who invited such open and crass exploitation of the common wealth.
Grist: Protecting the environment has become an increasingly partisan issue under the Bush administration. The GOP has decidedly become the anti-environment party, causing pro-environment Republicans like Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont to defect. And yet historically, there has been a deeply entrenched ethos of conservation in the Republican Party.
Moyers: Absolutely. But that was before the radical right and the corporations took over the party. Your generation is too young to remember that back in the l970s, when the world began to wake up to the global environmental crisis, the U.S. became the undisputed leader in environmental policy. Richard Nixon signed some of the pioneering measures of the time, including the very Clean Water Act that Bush is now hollowing out. And before that, of course, Teddy Roosevelt put the Republican Party in the vanguard of conservation. This idea of protecting and passing along our resources to future generations was a deeply entrenched ideal among those who were known as conservatives. But this is not a conservative mentality in power today. It's a new political order.
Grist: How do you define that new political order?
Moyers: I'll give an example that says it all: Jim Jeffords, the former chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is an environmental champion. He made his priority efforts to curb global warming and protect the environment while advancing the economy. His successor is [Republican Sen.] James Inhofe of Oklahoma. He's the man who once characterized the Environmental Protection Agency as "gestapo." That's the new political order.
Grist: Can you describe any instances where you or your colleagues were shut out by the administration in your effort to report a rollback story?
Moyers: A press officer at the Interior Department told one of our producers no one there would appear on or speak to "NOW." We get [that response] all over town -- "We're not talking to 'NOW.'"
Grist: Has the Bush administration been more effective at pushing their environmental agenda than the Reagan and Bush I administrations before it?
Moyers: Ronald Reagan came to power with the same agenda, but made a mistake when he appointed James Watt head of the wrecking crew at the Department of Interior. Watt made no attempt to disguise his fanaticism. He was outspokenly anti-environment and he inflamed the public against him with his flagrant remarks. But he took over a bureaucracy of civil servants who had come of age in the first great environmental wave of the l970s -- people who believed they had a public charge to do the right thing. When Watt stormed into office, these civil servants resisted. Now, 20 years later -- after eight years of Reagan, four years of Bush the First, and three years of Bush the Second -- that generation of civil servants is gone. The executive branch is a wholly owned subsidiary of the conservative/corporate coalition.
Grist: And surely their public-relations strategies have become far more sophisticated.
Moyers: Absolutely. They learned a big lesson from the Watt era. Not to inflame the situation. Use stealth. If you corrupt the language and talk a good line even as you are doing the very opposite, you won't awaken the public. Gale Norton will be purring like a kitten when she's cutting down the last redwood in the forest with a buzz saw.
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