Return to Speeches Index

The Environment and Our Health: A Conservative Case for Stewardship: Speech 2

by REP Policy Director Jim DiPeso
Speech to Day of the Child continuing education event, West Reading Medical Center; West Reading, Pennsylvania; October 3, 2008

Good morning. It’s an honor speaking to all of you. I thank all of the people in the medical community who are taking time away from your busy schedules to be here this morning.

My name is Jim DiPeso, and I’m the policy director of Republicans for Environmental Protection.

Now, for many reasons, the phrase “Republicans for Environmental Protection” may sound odd, an oxymoron if you will.

We hear that a lot, so I’ve started an oxymoron jokes collection to get the jump on my audiences. My favorite oxymoron is the Federal Paperwork Reduction Act.

Our organization is not a joke, however. We have a serious mission, which is to restore the Republican Party’s conservation tradition. We are working to move the party towards a more sensible, mainstream approach to better stewardship of the resources that we depend upon for our health and well being.

We were founded in 1995 because we felt that, on this issue, the Republican Party had lost sight of its philosophical traditions and its proud history.

Let me start by telling you about those traditions.

We believe that good stewardship is consistent with traditional conservatism. That understandably may sound odd in today’s political context, but if you examine the history, you’ll see that it isn’t.

One of the intellectual godfathers of traditional conservatism was an 18th century British statesman named Edmund Burke.

Burke described society as an intergenerational contract, covering past, present and future. We, of the present, have a duty to pass on our common societal inheritance, intact, to future generations. To squander that inheritance is a breach of the contract.

That brings us foursquare to the topic of environmental health. The well being of our children, both today and in the future, depends on a healthy environment – clean air, clean water, and healthy food. I’ll talk more in some detail about clean air later.

Let’s see how the American conservation and environmental movement got started and why it is so important for children’s health today.

An important part of securing our children’s health is getting them outdoors and playing out in nature. You may have heard of a book called Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. It’s on my reading list and you may want to put it on yours.

The American conservation movement got started in the mid-19th century. At its root was an appreciation for the beneficial impacts of nature on human health.
In those days, we didn’t know anything about nature deficit disorder.

But we did know that the industrialization that was changing America into an economic superpower had a shadow side. People sensed then that a life of 12-hour workdays in noisy, dangerous mills and breathing the foul air that afflicted our cities was not good for our health.

In 1864, at the height of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the first and greatest Republican president, protected a faraway place called Yosemite Valley for public enjoyment and recreation.

In the 19th century, it was unheard of to set aside land for such purposes. Land was to be thrown open to settlement and use, for farming, logging, and mining. But in conservation, as with much else, Lincoln was a visionary.

His action set a precedent for establishing a system of national parks, which today number nearly 400.

Lincoln’s protection of Yosemite Valley was significant in and of itself. But also significant was the study of Yosemite Valley carried out shortly afterward by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed New York’s Central Park.

Olmsted’s study was quite a remarkable document. His report highlighted the importance of natural beauty to our physical, mental and emotional health.

He said, and I quote, It is a scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character, particularly if this contemplation occurs in connection with relief from ordinary cares, change of air, and change of habits, is favorable to the health and vigor of men. Of course, to bring the 19th century language up to date, that applies to both men and women.

Theodore Roosevelt was another great Republican president. He understood the connection between nature and health very well.

Roosevelt grew from a sickly child to a strapping young man by taking part in vigorous outdoor activities.

As a young man, the outdoors helped him recover from an enormous personal tragedy, when his mother and his first wife died on the very same day.

After that crushing below, he retreated to a ranch in the remote badlands of western North Dakota. There, he pulled his life back together. There, through his personal experiences in the wild, he set off on the path that made him the greatest conservationist ever to serve as our president.

TR was an expert in bird identification. During his lifetime, he was considered one of the world’s foremost experts on large North American game mammals. Had he not gone into politics, he might have made his mark as a great natural historian.

But Roosevelt's personal interests were not the only reason that he was a great conservationist. He was convinced that protecting our natural heritage was necessary for keeping America strong and prosperous.

He said, and I quote: “Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of ensuring the safety and continuance of the nation.”

Think about those words. Conservation is a moral responsibility. It is our patriotic duty. It will protect our country and keep it strong. Those are conservative values that we need to rediscover and embrace.

The word “conservation” often brings to mind protecting parks, forests, and wilderness areas. Until the middle of the 20th century, that was pretty much the extent of what we now call the environmental movement.

But after World War II, the movement to set right our relations with nature was about to get a whole lot bigger. But first, let's return briefly to the 19th century.

Coal, including Pennsylvania coal, powered America's rise to industrial might during those years. Coal fired the mills, factories, and coke ovens, powered the railroads, and heated our homes, offices, and factories.

Coal produced pollution levels that were literally breathtaking. You could see it, smell it, taste it, even feel it. America’s cities were filled with smoke that smudged our lungs, dirtied our clothes, and blotted out the sun. Pittsburgh was described as “hell with the lid taken off.”

The use of coal increased in the 20th century as the use of electricity became universal and transformed our country and way of life.

But with the rise of motor vehicles, coal gave way to oil as the most important source of energy in America. In the economic boom, that followed the end of World War II, the first thing everyone wanted to do was to buy a new car.

Patterns of pollution changed. The use of oil-based fuels and synthetic chemicals derived from oil brought novel toxins unknown to nature into contact with air, water, and our bodies. Rachel Carson, a native of Allegheny County, wrote Silent Spring, a book that greatly raised public awareness of the hazards of synthetic chemicals.

The postwar expansion brought a level of prosperity that the world had never known before. But its shadow side was becoming all too apparent.

Air pollution changed the conservation movement. It brought the movement out of the remote West and straight into our homes, where it became better known as the environmental movement.

And you can argue that the shift started right here in Pennsylvania, in a mill town called Donora. On Halloween weekend in 1948, a toxic pall descended on Donora from coal-fired steel furnaces, coal-burning trains, and a four-mile-long zinc smelter. Twenty people died and thousands more were hospitalized that weekend.

On the other side of the continent, the fast growing metropolis of Los Angeles was becoming afflicted with a yellowish-brown haze that the locals called "smog."

A professor at Cal Tech figured out in 1952 what it was — ozone — and fingered the culprit — cars. His insight was the scientific basis for today’s health-based air quality standards.

On a hot July day in 1955, Los Angeles experienced the highest ozone level ever recorded. It was 680 parts per billion, nines times higher than the 8-hour ozone standard that is in force today.

I grew up in that yellowish-brown haze. In high school PE class, the boys periodically had to do the 12-minute run, one of a series of physical fitness tests. I still remember the soreness in my throat and chest from doing the 12-minute run on those smoggy days.

I remember the stinging sensation in my eyes. On smoggy days, the weather forecast routinely included warnings of eye irritation.

The smog came on hot days when inversions settled over the LA Basin. The glorious California sun cooked up all the hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, and turned it into low-level ozone.

That unsightly band of low-level ozone blotted out views of the nearby San Gabriel Mountains, a 10,000-foot mountain range that my mother remembered seeing when she was growing up in LA and the word "smog" had not yet come into broad use.

In 1969, under a Republican governor named Ronald Reagan, California established the nation's first ambient air standards — legally enforceable benchmarks for how clean the air must be.

That was a precedent for federal action.

The following year, in an address submitted to Congress on New Year's Day, President Richard Nixon proposed an unprecedented 37-point program for new laws to clean up the air and water and to protect our natural heritage.

In his 1970 State of the Union address, Nixon declared: "Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions."

Young people who were born long after Nixon's troubled presidency came to an end may not be aware of the instrumental role that he played in establishing the framework of environmental laws that protect us today and that have done a great deal to make our air and water healthier.

The Clean Air Act, which ensures that never again will there be another Donora.

The Clean Water Act, which ensures that never again will rivers catch fire.

The National Environmental Policy Act, which codifies the conservative principle of prudence, to look before you leap.

Nixon, a Republican president, worked with a Democratic Congress to pass legislation on a greater good that transcends partisan political considerations.

Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, whose first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, made the decision to phase out lead from gasoline, one of the greatest public health victories ever. Since the early 1970s, ambient lead levels in the air have fallen nearly 99 percent.

We had known for a long time what lead could do to our brains. In the 1920s, the factory workers who blended lead into gasoline called the fuel “loony gas.”

The Clean Air Act served as the foundation for follow-up achievements for environmental health.

One of the accomplishments that Ronald Reagan was most proud of during his presidency was negotiating the Montreal Protocol, a treaty to begin phasing out the cleaning and cooling chemicals that were linked to destructive of the upper atmosphere’s ozone layer.

Just a word of explanation. High in the stratosphere, ozone is good. It protects us from harmful doses of ultraviolet radiation. But at ground level, ozone is not good. It can inflame air passages, set off asthma attacks, and lead to chronic bronchitis. It can prematurely age the lung.

Reagan’s administration was badly divided on the issue of phasing out chemicals that damage the upper atmosphere’s ozone layer. But Reagan backed up his scientists and ordered his diplomats to negotiate the strongest possible treaty.

In 1990, George H.W. Bush signed into law a much stronger Clean Air Act, which did many things. It toughened tailpipe standards for cars. It strengthened limits on power plant emissions, including a novel cap-and-trade approach for cutting sulfur dioxide pollution.

And it put in place a process to limit hazardous air pollutants – 188 chemicals and heavy metals suspected of causing cancer, or reproductive, neurological, developmental, or respiratory harm.

Let me dwell on air pollution and clean air protection for a bit, because it’s directly relevant to the work that you do.

First, I’m going to frame air pollution in conservative terms. In 1988, Ronald Reagan said that laws protecting environmental quality have, and I quote, “promoted liberty by securing property against the destructive trespass of pollution.”

In his book, The Making of a Conservative Environmentalist, Gordon Durnil said discharging untested chemicals into the environment is a breakdown in morality and a trespass.

We’ve come a long way from the days when smokestacks discharging foul gases and particles were viewed as a sign of progress.

The Clean Air Act has done tremendous good in making air healthier for kids and adults. Since 1970, when the law took effect, there have been significant reductions, ranging from 24 to 99 percent, in all six of the air pollutants for which EPA has set ambient air standards.

These achievements are especially beneficial for kids. We know that children breathe more air per pound of body weight. The lungs of infants are still developing.

Take sulfur dioxide, which is emitted by coal-fired power plants and is linked to acid precipitation and unsightly hazes. Levels of sulfur dioxide in the air have fallen by about half since 1970.

That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that we know much more now than we did in 1970 about the health impacts of ultra-fine sulfate and nitrate particles. These are particles that are produced through chemical reactions in the atmosphere that transform sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides — SOX and NOx — into ultra-fine particles.

You can’t see ultra-fine particles because they are far smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Ten thousand of these particles lined up side by side would be only 1 inch long.

These particles can burrow deeply into lungs, and carry various heavy metals and combustion by-products along for the ride.

These particles are so tiny, they can penetrate closed windows and enter buildings.

Impacts of ultra-fine particles include increased risk of mortality during pollution episodes, greater risk of cardiovascular disease, and increased incidence of asthma attacks.

In Berks County, the American Lung Association estimates that there are more than 8,000 cases of pediatric asthma out of some 93,000 people aged 18 or under.

The Lung Association’s latest State of the Air report awarded Berks County a failing grade because of the number of particle pollution days between 2004 and 2006, the three years covered by the report.

EPA has recommended that Berks County be classified as out of attainment with new, stronger standards for ultra-fine particles that were adopted in 2006.

Another bad actor is mercury, which is one of the impurities found in coal. Mercury emitted by coal combustion can transform through a series of complex biochemical reactions in the environment into methylmercury, a toxin that can cause a variety of neurological impacts on children.

You may have heard of some recent court cases in which federal judges threw out regulations that EPA adopted recently to reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury emissions.

EPA’s Clean Air Interstate Rule, for example, which would have applied to Pennsylvania and 27 other states in the country’s eastern half, was invalidated.

Without going into a lot of legalese, a federal appeals court essentially said that EPA improperly applied the Clean Air Act to establish the rule.

To sort all this out, Congress will have to step in. Next year, not this year. Congress has other things on its plate this year.

We believe that if Congress can keep the partisan politics to a minimum, there is an opportunity to pass legislation that would further strengthen the Clean Air Act in ways that would encourage businesses to innovate and cut costs.

Conservatives are generally seen as skeptical of putting mandates on business. But recall another perspective that views pollution as a form of trespassing that is bad for our health.

The right of individuals to be free of harms imposed on them without their consent is as important, if not more important, than the right of businesses to carry out their activities without undue government interference.

It is possible to write laws skillfully so that we balance these rights.

Here’s an example:

Our experience with the 1990 Clean Air Act shows that the cap-and-trade system that it imposed for cutting sulfur dioxide emissions worked well. It brought down emissions and encouraged business innovation.

There is an opportunity to expand this concept to drive SOX and NOx emissions down further, which would help reduce ultra-fine particulate pollution and of low-level ozone.

Mercury, however, does not lend itself to the cap-and-trade approach. Mercury is bad for kids, inside the womb and beyond. Mercury emissions are not family-friendly. We should minimize those emissions as soon as practicable.

Of course, keeping the partisan politics surrounding environmental health issues will be hard. Over the last quarter century or so, the environment has been used as a political football.

To anticipate your questions, why has the environmental issue become so partisan? Why do Republicans seem anti-environmental and uncaring about the impacts of pollutants on human health and on protecting our natural heritage?

Those are good questions and fair criticisms.

There are several reasons why the bipartisan environmental consensus of the 1970s went off the rails.

Since those days, both parties have become much more hard-edged in their ideology and their political disagreements have become much more personal.

The days are long gone when liberal Hubert Humphrey and conservative Barry Goldwater could argue vigorously on the Senate floor but after the close of business go off and enjoy dinner together as friends.

As recently as the 1980s, Ronald Reagan invited members of Congress from both parties over to the White House to enjoy cocktails and joke telling, only hours after battling over the great issues of the day.

It sounds like harmless fluff, but Reagan was shrewdly building social capital that made governance easier and more productive.

Today, the penalty for perceived apostasy from party dogmas is more severe. For the Republicans, here’s an explanation written earlier this year by David Brooks, a conservative commentator who with the NY Times:

…A great tightening occurred. Conservative institutions and interest groups proliferated in Washington. The definition of who was a true conservative narrowed. It became necessary to pass certain purity tests.

An oppositional mentality set in: if the liberals worried about global warming, it was necessary to regard it as a hoax.

Likewise, Democrats became more rigid and more unforgiving of political incorrectness. Unwittingly or not, they conflated environmental concerns with orthodoxies about giving government more power over our lives.

Republicans came to fear that environmental stewardship was one more way for Democrats to impose onerous rules, regulations, and regimentation on individuals and on businesses.

Whoever is chosen president and elected to Congress on November 4 will have a plate full of issues to contend with. It will be time for us to come together, once again, as one country, and try to think more about what unites us rather than rehash what divides us.

What unites us is the land, air, and water, our natural heritage that nourishes our lives and sustains our civilization. There are no Republican rivers and there are no Democratic forests.

The air and water take no notice of political affiliations. Every mother and every father wants their children to have a fair chance of reaching their full potential. That can only come with a clean and safe environment.

The laws passed with bipartisan support have done much to make America a safer, healthier place for our children. But we have so much yet left to do.

Here’s an example: Bisphenol-A is the material used to produce shatterproof polycarbonate plastics. Bisphenol-A is only the latest strange sounding chemical that may be adding unwanted, disruptive ingredients into the biochemical recipes that drive the basic processes of life at the cellular level.

While the evidence is not 100 percent definitive, there is enough known about bisphenol-A’s impacts to warrant a prudent response to protect children’s health. Wal-Mart and other merchants are already ahead of the government by promising to remove from their shelves baby products that contain this substance.

As I mentioned earlier, there is more to do to scrub the air of the ozone that scars lungs, the ultra-fine particles that can stop hearts, and the mercury that addles young brains.

And then there is climate change, the elephant in the living room. It will affect the health and prospects of all of us, from you in Berks County to people you will never see on the other side of the world.

To get a handle on climate change, we must rewire an energy system that, for many historical reasons, locked itself into fossil fuel technologies in which a great has been invested. Retooling our energy system will be one of the greatest tasks facing our country in the 21st century.

We will have to find new, cleaner, more secure and more diverse energy sources for powering our civilization, and above all we must use that energy much more efficiently.

All of us, Republicans and Democrats, must be at the table debating the solutions. If those solutions are passed on party line votes, they will not work and they will not last.

We must untangle the environment from the ideological knots in which it has been twisted.

First and foremost, the environment is a matter of practical household management. If you have a leak in the roof, you go up and fix it – you don't try to convince the rest of the family that the puddle building up on the living room floor isn't really there.

We must help people understand science – what science is telling us, but more importantly, how science works.

We don't have much time to get this right. The pressures that we are imposing on ecosystems that provide us with essential services are building. But it is our ethical responsibility to try – Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. Our health and that of those who will follow depends on it.

As a great conservative named Margaret Thatcher once said: "None of us has a freehold on this Earth. All we have is a life tenancy with a full repairing lease."

Thank you .