The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party

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In this section:
     Core Values
     War on Nature
     Christian Coalition Scorecards Compared to Environmental Scorecards
     Chair of the Committee on the Environment and Public Works: Senator James Inhofe

Core Values

This disregard for the environment reflects core values of the Religious Right, a movement strongly allied with big corporations. The Texas Republican Party Platform, 2002, opposes efforts to regulate industry by affirming a belief in "a strong and vibrant private sector unencumbered by excessive government regulation." It calls for abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency, and reaffirms "the belief in the fundamental right of an individual to use property without governmental interference.."

An impending sense of "end times" is good news for that portion of the Religious Right that sees destruction of the earth as leading to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and 1,000 years of earthly paradise. Those who don't seek "end times," blame resource depletion on environmentalists who view natural resources as limited. Secular society "lack(s) faith in God's providence and consequently, men will find fewer resources... The Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth." (America's Providential History.)

Not all Evangelicals support the political agenda of the Religious Right. For example, the Evangelical Environmental Network's Declaration on the Care of Creation assumes responsiblity to protect and restore the environment. "Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation. Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator's work." Click Here.

War On Nature

"For two years, it has come in bursts, on issues from arsenic to wetlands: the unfolding of what President Bush, as a candidate, promised would be a new era of environmental protection. Whether rejecting a treaty on global warming, questioning Clinton-era rules on forest protection or pressing for changes in landmark environmental laws, Mr. Bush has imposed a distinctive stamp on a vast landscape of issues affecting air, water, land, energy and the global climate. The New York Times, February 23. Click Here.

Healthy Forest Initiative

The cartoon strip, "Boondocks," September 9, 2003, captures the spirit of Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative .
Huey is listening to the TV news.
BOX 1: "And now we go live to the southwest where President Bush is talking about his environmental policy."
BOX 2: "Ladies and gentlement -- America can no longer turn a blind eye to a terrible enemy that lives among us. An enemy that has betrayed and scarred us as a country."
BOX 3: "Trees -- nature's terrorists."

Defenders of Wildlife call Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative a plan that "comes straight from corporate timber interests, which have yet to encounter a question to which more logging isn’t the answer." Click Here.

"[In] the so-called forest stewardship program, ... timber companies are allowed to harvest trees as payment in kind for other projects like road clearing or the thinning of underbrush to prevent forest fires. Conservationists fear that open-ended, broadly drawn stewardship contracts will give the loggers license to cut huge tracts that would otherwise be spared."New York Times Editorial, February 12, 2003, discusses a Senate-House appropriations bill loaded with destructive anti-environmental riders. Click Here.

Clear Skies

The New York Times calls Bush's clear air initiative, a "reckless and insupportable decision to eviscerate a central provision of the Clean Air Act and allow power plants, refineries and other industrial sites to spew millions of tons of unhealthy pollutants into the air."Click Here.

"Bush Administration to Gut Clean Air Act. Rule Would Allow More Pollution at 17,000 Facilities," claims the Natural Resources Defense Council. Click Here.

The following press release from the Natural Resources Defenses Council criticizes the Bush administration for joining with Detroit to fight California's zero emissions vehicle. The "federal government's siding with Detroit is an unprecedented attack on California's legal right to regulate air pollution." Click Here.

Undermining Environmental Law

"On issues large and small, the Bush administration has spent the better part of two years rolling back Bill Clinton's environmental legacy. It has abandoned the Kyoto accord on global warming, weakened protections for wetlands and eased mining laws.

"Now it appears to be aiming at even bigger game - the National Environmental Policy Act, regarded as the Magna Carta of environmental protection and perhaps the most important of all the environmental statutes signed into law by Richard Nixon three decades ago." NY Times Editorial, September 30, 2002, "Undermining Environmental Law," Click Here.

Undermining The Montreal Protocol to Protect the Ozone Layer

On February 7, the Bush administration sought an exemption to a ban on methyl bromide, a chemical that harms the ozone layer. He is now instituting that ban, threatening to unravel the Montreal Protocal to protect the ozone layer, the most successful treaty in the history of the environmental movement. Environmental writer, Glen Scherer, has writter an article in Salon on this important decision. Click Here.

Wetlands Protection Fades By

The New York Times, February 11, 2003, claims that for the past two years the Army Corps of Engineers has been undergoing a "broad retreat" in the amount of wetlands it protects. Click Here.

"Here's why the environmental community isn't ecstatic over President Bush's call to spend more than $1 billion over five years to develop a hydrogen-powered car to wean us from our addiction to Middle East oil." Robert Kennedy Jr. discusses problems with Bush's proposal for fuel cell cars in this New York Times Op-ed, February 16, 2003. Click Here.

The White House is proposing that the military be exempt from environmental regulations, reported in New York Times, February 6, 2003. Click Here.

Christian Coalition Scorecards compared to Environmental Scorecards

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) publishes a National Environmental Scorecard. The Scorecard provides objective, factual information about the environmental voting records of U.S. Representatives and Senators. Click Here. The higher the rating from Religious Right groups, the lower the rating from the League of Conservation Voters.

The following graphs compare how Christian Coalition and the League of Conservation Voters(LCV) rated Congress in 2001. Republicans are red, Democrats blue. LCV is made up of several environmental groups.

The first graph is the Christian Coalition's scorecard for the United States Senate in 2001. The second graph shows how the League of Conservation Voters rated the U.S. Senate that year. 15 Democrats voted in favor of environmental issues 100% of the time. 34 Republicans voted in favor of environmental issues 0% of the time. If you add the 25 Democrats who received 80% with the 15 who received 100% the number is 40. 40 out of 50 Democrats in 2001 had strong environmental voting records. If you add the 10 Republicans who received 20% with the 34 Republicans who received 0%, 44 out of 49 Republicans that year had very low environmental voting records.

The fourth graph shows how the League of Conservation Voters rated members of the U.S. House of Representatives. 100% -- 2 Republicans, 106 Democrats. 80% -- 10 Republicans, 60 Democrats. 60% -- 13 Republicans, 26 Democrats. 40% -- 13 Republicans, 11 Democrats. 20% -- 44 Republicans, 9 Democrats. 0% -- 137 Republicans, 0 Democrats.

Leadership of U.S. Congress