Reply #30: So Edwards is promoting the false choice between jobs and environment? [View All]

[Feanorcurufinwe]

WARREN OLNEY: Senator Kerry.

SENATOR KERRY:I want to change the entire debate and discussion about the environment in this country.

It is about jobs. It’s about health. It's about our legacy as a generation, and it is our national security. And we need to make it clear to the country that the false choice that's been given by this administration is either jobs or the environment, is wrong.

The environment is jobs. And we are going to prove to Americans we can put them to work, and we’re going to do it in a way, Warren, that’s just. 80 percent of all the Hispanics in America live in counties that have bad air. 25 percent of the kids in New York have asthma today.

We need an environmental justice enforcement at the civil rights department of the Justice Department and I intend to guarantee that we restore that.
http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/interestg/lcv062603ta.html


STUDENT: Global warming is pretty much, like, the most important issue for me. We’ve denied it’s a problem for so long that it’s now this huge problem. You said this is one of the reasons you want to be President. What is your record as far as environmental stuff?

JK: I’m happy to share that with you. I have the strongest environmental record of anyone who is running for President. I began my involvement with the environment, it was pretty much against my will, when my mom got me up at four in the morning and dragged me out for a so-called nature walk. She told me to stop and listen, and I did, and I heard things I hadn’t heard and saw things that I hadn’t seen. She began to explain all of that to me, and I’ve never forgotten it, because that connection is what started it.

When I came back from Vietnam, I became involved in Earth Day. This was 1970, and then I was chairman of Earth Day in New England in 1990(sic). We actually painted Storrow Drive biodegradable green, and we had hundreds of booths up and down the Charles River showing people what the technologies of the future could do.

I’ve been chairman of the Oceans Committee in the Senate. I’ve written our fisheries laws, I’ve written our plastics pollution laws, our marine mammal protection laws, our flood insurance laws, our coastal zone management laws. I was in Rio for the Earth Summit in 1990. I was at Buenos Aires, Kyoto, The Hague for the global warming conferences. I’ve helped negotiate with the less developed countries on those issues. I led the fight to stop Newt Gingrich from literally killing the Clean Air Act. I led the fight as a Lieutenant Governor to make acid rain a national issue, and it’s now in the Clean Air Act. I led the fight to stop the drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I come to this race with a long and passionate record of caring about the environment.

Sometimes in America, the environment becomes a really bad discussion. People like George Bush and his friends will say, “You have a choice. You can have a job, or you can have a clean environment.” Have you ever heard that argument? Jobs or environment, right? It’s a false choice. Cleaning up the environment can be jobs. In Massachusetts, the fastest-growing part of our economy is environmental companies that do clean-up of toxic waste and chemicals, and to consult with companies so they don’t spit out dirty water and the like.

I’m convinced that a good President can help bring the country together in a way that doesn’t lose us jobs, and in a way that helps create a better future, and that’s why I’m running. That’s why I’m here.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/122203A.shtml