February 21, 1973
Page 4852
PRESIDENT NIXON'S ENVIRONMENTAL MESSAGE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, last Sunday in an editorial titled "A False Middle Way," the New York Times shed some harsh light on the President's environmental message to Congress. As the Times suggested, the state of our environment is not nearly as rosy as the President has proclaimed; nor does the "rhetorical middle ground" which the President has adopted hold much promise of a cleaner environment in the future. The Times said:
To seek a middle ground between saving the environment and not saving it, is as sensible as going halfway over a precipice.
The editorial is a realistic appraisal of the state of the environment and the President's record in protecting it, and I ask that it be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
A FALSE MIDDLE WAY
In his brief radio address on Tuesday and again in the more detailed message he sent to Congress, President Nixon made this astonishing assertion: "I can report that America is well on the way to winning the war against environmental degradation; well on the way to making our peace with nature."
That statement is totally at variance with the facts. The harsh truth is that this country – and every other country in the world – has barely begun to comprehend the complexity and severity of the ecological danger. The small, timid steps which the United States has taken in recent years under this Administration and its predecessor are only the beginning of the necessary response. Instead of inane chatter about "winning the war against environmental degradation," President Nixon ought to be explaining to the nation how serious the issues are and how painful the choices inevitably must be.
The air over the nation's cities is getting only marginally cleaner, if at all. Every major river system in the country is badly polluted. Great portions of the Atlantic Ocean are in danger of becoming a dead sea. Plastics, detergents, chemicals and metals are putting on insupportable burden on the biosphere. The land itself is being eroded, blighted, poisoned, raped.
Mr. Nixon has carved out a large rhetorical middle ground and invited all men of reason to join him there. But in some human situations, there is no middle ground. There is none between life and death, between war and peace, between truth and falsehood. To seek a middle ground between saving the environment and not saving it is as sensible as going halfway over a precipice.
To turn from the President's rhetoric to the actual substance of his legislative program is a considerable relief. That program is inadequate because it is constricted by the Administration's fundamental unwillingness to face the environmental realities; but at least it is drawn from recommendations – after being bureaucratically mangled – of conservation experts and enforcement officials who are in touch with the real issues.
The list of problems for which Mr. Nixon submits recommendations is a catalogue of the environment's peril points – land use, wetlands protection, strip mining, toxic substances, disposal of hazardous wastes, safe drinking water, sulfur oxides emissions, sediment control, endangered species, wilderness, ocean dumping, protection of marine fisheries.
Several of these proposals are well conceived. Reform of the outmoded 1872 law on mining and mineral leasing on public lands is long overdue. It has been blocked in the past by former Representative Wayne Aspinall, long-time chairman of the House Interior Committee. With his defeat for renomination last year, the way is now cleared for Congressional action on this issue.
Tighter Federal control of new chemicals and other toxic substances is desirable as well as stricter regulation of the disposal of hazardous wastes. Last May, the Senate passed a bill covering both these subjects; a somewhat different measure passed the House but too late to arrange a compromise version. Similarly, bills on land use policy and on national standards for safe drinking water passed the Senate but not the House last fall. A revised version of the land use bill is already under consideration in the Senate Interior Committee.
Several items on the President's list are relatively noncontroversial such as approval of the international convention on ocean dumping. Others provoke as much strife in Congress as they apparently do inside the Administration. There are, for example, conflicting reports on whether the Administration's strip mining bill is to be the strong measure which some officials favor or the toothless imposter put forward by other officials.
On certain specific environmental decisions this Administration has a good record. But its good deeds are too often offset by legislative sellouts, budgetary cutbacks and administrative sleight- of-hand. The President's own rhetoric bears much of the responsibility. A successful program requires a frank commitment to ecological values. That cannot be forthcoming as long as the Administration searches for a politically safe and inexpensive middle way between doing nothing and doing what the facts require.