Pacific Views

The Battle For The Environmental Vote

[Ed: This article was first published for Vox Populi Nebraska in May, but I wanted to post it as well the rest of the series of environmentally themed articles I've published there on this site so I can reference them more easily. They consist of my current research in regards to Bush's record on the environment. I'll be posting one each for the next few Sundays.]

Republicans know that Americans care about the environment. For years the best minds in advertising have been marketing GOP policies and now they want to sell the GOP as environmentally friendly. GOP polls showed them that, “The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general – and President Bush in particular – are most vulnerable.”

Bush’s record became even more of an issue after Dick Cheney made the statement, “conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” As Time Magazine reported last December, Karen Hughes was appalled by his statement and had the President do a series of photo-ops in natural settings to show that Bush actually cares about the environment.

The other thing they did was to hire Frank Luntz, a well-known Republican pollster and communication expert, to find a way to convince Americans that Republicans were better on the environment than Democrats. His organization, the Luntz Research Companies, has produced a memorandum that provides Republicans talking points that have been carefully focus group tested to overcome the advantage Democrats have today. (A USA today poll taken in January of this year showed that people trusted Democrats over Republicans on the environment by an almost 2 to 1 margin.)

What are Republicans saying now?
Republicans are very good at saying what people want to hear. They are also very good at denigrating progressive policies by defaming governmental solutions and government employees. Frank Luntz’ memo carries on with this tradition.

His first message is to use a “softer, greener language” to show people that Republicans care about the environment, but they just disagree with Democrats on how to go about protecting it. In particular, he targets federal regulation as one of the key areas for which Republicans must undermine popular support. When discussing what Republicans should say about local vs federal regulation for the environment, Luntz says, “People believe they know better than do nameless, faceless federal bureaucracies how to preserve and protect their local environment”. But of course, those “faceless federal bureaucrats” are usually very competent and idealistic scientists who have taken relatively low paying government jobs to protect the environment because they care about environmental issues.

How does this reflect on what they are doing for the environment?
In the area of global warming, Luntz tells his clients to keep repeating that not everyone believes there is a problem today and that the scientific question is still open. He advises them: “…, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainly a primary issue in the debate, ….” And he tells them to find scientists and engineers that back up this claim and to say: “We must not rush to judgment before all the facts are in.” I found it telling that in this memo he also said, “The scientific debate is closing [against us] but is not yet closed. There is still an opportunity to challenge the science.” (Emphasis in original document.) So while more and more scientific evidence says global warming is an urgent problem, Frank Luntz’ advice is: find scientists that will deny this and who will keep the argument open for as long as possible. The ultimate goal of his advice is to make the problem of global warming someone else’s concern while the problem gets worse.

Advertising is subtle and subversive because it works on our unconscious minds and doesn’t get filtered through our rational thoughts. The memorandum that Luntz put out is a very good example of how to use unconscious beliefs and prejudices to shape attitudes about environmental issues.

His advice for using language:

• Name policies for maximum positive exposure: (e.g., Healthy Forests).
• Undermine the current options (e.g., regulations are bad and cost jobs)
• Promote the Republican mantra to “let the market find solutions” (e.g., GOP policies make sensible tradeoffs by letting the timber companies tackle the problem of forest fires. But we must make it worth their while by letting them cut in formerly off-limits old growth forest).

Contrast this with the way other administrations have handled forest policy: Clinton’s policy making included years of discussion and a myriad of people including environmentalists, the timber industry, the communities and representatives from the state. Under Bush, the policy was unilaterally rewritten after excluding all those “government meddlers” – viz: scientists, local leaders and NGOs.

What can you do to make sure you actually know and support someone who is strong on the environment?
How can we make good decisions when everything we hear has been carefully tested by “focus groups” to see what words will “sell a policy” even if the words lie about the actual results of the policy? I think we need to have a set of questions that help us rate the proposed policies.

1. Who is involved in proposing and defining the policy? The latest forest policy was written by the timber industry: environmental and biological scientists were excluded.
2. What is the record of the political leaders responsible for setting environmental policy? The Republicans selected Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) to head the Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe called the Environmental Protection Agency a “Gestapo bureaucracy” and declared that even the White House is “too pro-environment” for his taste.
3. How open is the process of proposing and setting policy? Public policy is best set by having an open and public process, which includes all the interested parties to the table. Frank Luntz’ memo mentions that local communities felt like the government was over-reaching when they were shut out of the discussions about policy proposals. Yet Cheney’s secret energy task force denies us wise energy policies by excluding representatives outside of industry.
4. Does the policy make good trade-offs between the rights and needs of the citizens and of industry? When all the stakeholders are represented, then it is more likely that the policies represent reasonable tradeoffs.

One way to minimize the need for more restrictive regulations is to promote sunshine laws to encourage open and accountable environmental policies. If the argument is that a particular policy is bad because of the regulations, then check to see what types of proposals are put forth and who is behind the proposals and will they support open and accountable measurements instead?

Regulations are as good as the procedures for making them. For generations, environmental regulations have been made by a wide range of stakeholders all whom have fought for the right to be represented. Secrecy and unilateral decisions destroy the foundations of democracy itself, and leave the environment open to wholesale plunder.

Addendum: To find out more about the Luntz memorandum, check out http://www.ewg.org/briefings/luntzmemo/ where you can find examples of how the Republican language is being used in news reports and you can even download a copy of the Luntz memorandum to read. You can find yet more information at http://www.luntzspeak.com/ - a site run by the National Environmental Trust, an organization dedicated to educating the public about environmental issues.

Posted by Mary at December 7, 2003 05:06 PM | TrackBack