Power, Lost and Found: America At Century’s End 517supporters—especially the wealthy business elites—to view him as a defender
of economic growth in an intensifying global capitalist economy. Therefore,
U.S. environmental policy in the 1990s was designed to gratify the leaders of
worldwide business empires. Environmental politics purposefully ignored the
environmental byproducts of global economics such as the environmental
harm that came with the industrialization of poorer countries like exposure
to pollution and toxic chemicals. Bush openly renounced leadership in inter-
national policymaking. Environmental protection laws still in place in the
United States rarely transferred to American corporations operating overseas.
For instance, pesticides restricted within U.S. borders were frequently used by
agribusiness in foreign countries, ironically on the very crops that were
imported back for sale in the United States. Domestically, the Bush adminis-
tration reduced and removed regulations on natural resources to increase com-
mercial development. Accordingly, logging and natural gas development on
protected lands in the American West dramatically increased during the Bush
years. The attack on the environment during the Reagan years was reinvigo-
rated during the Bush presidency.
And the allegedly progressive Clinton administration continued the trend.
Like Bush, Clinton too made promises to protect the environment during his
campaign. Among his apparent goals: raise fuel-efficiency standards, encour-
age mass transit, expand renewable energy research, limit green house gas
emissions, intensify regulations on toxic chemicals, protect the nation’s forests
and wetlands, protect the Artic National Wildlife Refuge [ANWR] from oil
extraction, promote clean technology innovation in industry, and reform min-
ing and grazing laws. It was a hearty agenda, and won Clinton the support
of green voters who casted their ballots for Clinton over Bush by 5 to 1.
Clinton’s Vice President Al Gore seemed a promising candidate to environ-
mentalists; he had published a book, Earth in the Balance, in 1992 that focused
on global environmental issues. Early in the presidency, Clinton appointed
environmental protection advocates to key positions and used an executive
order on “environmental justice” that instructed the EPA to focus on pollution
issues that disproportionately affected racial minorities.
Clinton immediately faced strong opposition from Republicans and
Democrats alike. The 1994 congressional elections ended any hope for envi-
ronmental reform as anti-regulation, pro-business conservative Republicans
took control of both the Senate and House of Representatives. They strong-