Here is an article by Iowa City Sierra Club group member and work colleague.  It is also posted on the following URL: http://www.Coprenicus.com/articles/norton.htm

Rex Bavousett

Americans' concern about the environment has not been lost on the pro-corporate, anti-regulation wing of the Republican Party. In recent years, the consistent opponents of federal environmental protection, wilderness designation and species preservation have attempted to paint themselves a faint shade of polyester green, including creating faux-environmental organizations that the real, established defenders of the environment have dismissed with labels including "greenscam" and "greenwash."

One of these fake environmental organizations is the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates (CREA), a PAC organized for the right-wing in 1998 by partisans like Grover Norquist, a registered lobbyist for British Petroleum, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and one of the Heritage Foundation's authors of the Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America." Norquist, you may recall, tried to leave his mark on the environment by leading the national campaign to add the face of Ronald "trees cause pollution" Reagan to Mt. Rushmore National Monument.

Included in the founding CREA advisory committee was former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton, once a member of the staff of infamous Interior Secretary James Watt, and now offered for confirmation as Bush's Secretary of the Interior. It was her Reagan Administration boss who drew contrasts between "environmentalists" and "Americans" in a speech to ranchers and developers, and argued that there was no reason to protect the environment because Jesus was coming back soon. Before he resigned under siege in 1983, Watt cut expenditures for protecting endangered species, proposed eliminating the fund used to enlarge national parks and forests, advocated opening wilderness areas to oil and gas leases, and proposed selling public lands for development at bargain prices.

Even with the Watt association, Norton's ambiguous general record may blunt opposition to her confirmation. She defended Colorado's anti-gay-rights amendment before the US Supreme Court, supported the re-introduction of prison chain-gangs and advocated a constitutional convention to promote term-limit and balanced budget amendments, but she also is pro-choice and as Colorado's attorney general she vigorously joined the national anti-tobacco class-action suit. Some people's reservations may be assuaged when they learn that she wrote of the tobacco suit, " I do not consider myself an anti-tobacco activist. I am a free-market conservative and an advocate of judicial restraint. I am a proponent of personal responsibility for one's actions. Given these views, I was a tough sell on the idea that litigation against the tobacco industry was justified, or that new national legislation was a good idea. But I also believe in the rule of law. The facts that we've learned about the tobacco industry are extraordinary. They reveal behavior that cannot be ignored, behavior that must change. This is especially true when the price of this inappropriate behavior is public health."

As open-minded as that excerpt sounds, Norton's history on environmental issues tells you all you need to know about what we can expect from an Interior Department under her leadership. The right-wing Federalist Society, which Washington Monthly recently labeled " The Conservative Cabal That's Transforming American Law" (Starr, Scalia and Clarence Thomas are members), lists her among their recommended environmental-law experts, and her first prominent job was in the Coors-funded Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), of which Watt was the first president.

MSLF describes its mission as providing "a strong and effective voice for freedom of enterprise, the rights of private property ownership, and the multiple use of federal and state resources." Any environmentalist immediately recognizes this language as code for the philosophy of "Wise Use," which claims to balance environment concerns with economic development needs, but routinely values development over protection. In the Wise Use doctrine, the potential for economic exploitation trumps other options for land use.

One the recent initiatives of the MSLF was litigation to oppose President Clinton's designation of 540,000 acres of land in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona as national monuments. In another case, MSLF worked for the Independent Petroleum Association of America in challenging the Forest Service's decision not to offer oil and gas leases in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. The MSLF also supported Wyoming Sawmills, Inc. in a challenge to Forest Service decisions to remove an area in the Bighorn National Forest, visible from Medicine Wheel Historic Landmark, from logging plans as a gesture of respect for Native American religious groups.

MSLF lists as one of its focuses "takings." "Takings" is a gambit that seeks to discourage environmental protection by promoting the legal logic that the government should compensate landowners for the land-value costs of complying with environmental laws and other land-use regulations. "Takings" legislation has become a favorite strategy of environmental opponents: The National Wildlife Federation reports that "takings" proposals have been introduced in 43 states in the last decade.

As a Colorado state official, Norton was a strong advocate of Colorado's "self- audit" law, which allows companies to conduct voluntary self-policing to determine whether they are complying with environmental requirements. Promoted as an incentive for companies to self-report and correct violations, "self-audit" schemes are condemned by the EPA and environmentalists as a cover for lax enforcement of environmental laws. (Bush helped push corporate self-regulation in Texas, with the result that, during his tenure as governor, Texas became the most polluted state in the country, and Houston supplanted Los Angeles as the American city with the most polluted air.)

Norton's prominent role in CREA is also revealing. With more classic Wise Use obfuscation, CREA claims to "foster constructive discussion, not divisive debate" and promote "local solutions over Washington mandates, sound science over emotionalism, and common sense over extremism." That sounds moderate enough to the casual reader, but look who has funded CREA: The list includes the National Mining Association, American Forest Paper Association, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the Chlorine Chemical Council, the National Coal Council, Amoco, ARCO, Texaco, Ford Motors, Coors Brewing Co. and Edison Electric.

The CREA Steering Committee has included lobbyists for Amoco, Texaco, Shell Oil, Total Petroleum, Lion Oil, General Motors, the International Council of Shopping Centers, Smith & Wesson, Inland Steel, and Hydrocarbon Trading and Transport.

The prominent politicians in its founding membership -- including not only founding board member Newt Gingrich but also Trent Lott, Don Young, Larry Craig, Helen Chenoweth, Dirk Kempthorne, Richard Pombo, Bill Archer and Tom DeLay -- are among the those whose voting records have consistently scored at the bottom in the League of Conservation Voters' ratings. In fact, no Republicans with good environmental voting records have been involved with CREA. When the Atlanta Journal Constitution asked Republicans for Environmental Protection member Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) if he is associated with CREA, he replied, "Oh gosh, no. I belong to a respectable environmental organization."

Boehlert's comment is a reminder that there ARE pro-environment, pro-conservation Republicans from which Bush could have chosen. As Ronald Reagan was surprised to learn when he tried to broad-brush environmentalists as leftist radicals, the conservation movement has deep roots in the Republican Party -- after all, conservation is a conservative principle. Chuck McGrady, who became president of the Sierra Club in 1999, is a Christian Republican from North Carolina.

The fact that Bush by-passed available conservationist conservatives in favor of Wise Use rapacity signals, no less than the appointment of John Ashcroft as Attorney General, that the Bush regime will act as if it has a mandate to pursue a far-right, pro-corporate agenda. The Greens made the election close enough to be stolen, and Bush is going to rub their noses in it. As one environmentalist responded when learning of the Norton appointment, "Gentleman, start your chainsaws."