An area of America’s most beautiful wildlands — larger than Oregon — may get trashed as a result of this election. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have promised to open more than 60 million acres of public lands — wilderness areas, national wildlife refuges and monuments, and other irreplaceable treasures of our nation’s outdoor heritage — for logging, off-road vehicles (ORVs), oil drilling and pipeline construction. Tragically, Ralph Nader may help them do it.
The immediate environmental impacts of a Bush/Cheney victory, which is unlikely without Nader’s candidacy:
* Poorer environmental protection for national forests — including the Willamette and Siuslaw
* More destruction of our public lands — 20 percent of the United States — with logging, road building and ORV degradation
* Opening for logging the nation’s last 60 million acres of roadless National Forest — an area of virgin forest as big as Oregon
* Elimination of several recent national monuments, including Grand Staircase-Escalante, a million acres near Grand Canyon National Park, and Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, our country’s greatest concentration of Native American archaeological and cultural sites.
* Desecration of our magnificent Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with oil drilling, roads and pipelines. This is an extremely fragile habitat for millions of animals, and the impact of these oil projects on its vegetation and wildlife is immeasurable.
Under Bush, Texas has dropped to dead last of 50 states in environmental standards like toxic air emissions, toxic chemical accidents and livestock waste production. Add Dick Cheney’s rabid anti-environmental record, and you have a prescription for national environmental disaster. But to make it happen, you need Ralph Nader.
Nader can do permanent damage to our environment without even 2 percent of the vote. Because 2 percent will make the difference between Al Gore and Bush. But Nader doesn’t care. Vote for me, he says, because Gore and Bush are the same. And that’s a BIG LIE.
According to an article in Time magazine, Gore has made the Clinton administration more pro-environment than any in a generation. Gore’s environmental record over the last 22 years in public service is extraordinary. With the Clinton administration, he helped to create 13 new national parks and five national monuments, accelerated the elimination of ozone-depleting chemicals, forced passage of the Superfund Act and strengthened clean air standards and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Gore has been a world leader on global warming. He helped to lead the largest cleanup of toxic waste sites in history and quadrupled funding for parks and conservation. He proposed the recently passed legislation to restore natural water flows in the Everglades.
Most importantly for Oregon, Gore has guaranteed complete protection of the last three million acres of Oregon’s roadless National Forest. These lands are crucial habitat for Oregon’s big-game species and other wildlife, and provide recreation resources to fill our growing need for the outdoors. Moreover, Gore has promised to protect all of America’s last 60 million acres of roadless national forest, not only in the lower 48 states, but also in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
As one who has hiked and camped in Oregon for more than 30 years, I’d hate to see its environment, and the nation’s, get trashed by Bush and Cheney just because a handful of people voted for Nader.
Michael Bond has more than 30 years of experience as an environmental activist, Wild and Scenic Rivers planner, ecologist, author, and forest protection advocate in southern Oregon and throughout the United States, Europe, and Africa.