Just think of it.

Picture a time, will you, when the automakers are more environmentalist than the U.S. Senate’s Environment Committee.

The mere notion — a veritable heresy to anyone who has tilled these fields over the past few decades — is daunting. To anyone who has known the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works to have been a bastion of pollution control vigor and fervor, the mere suggestion does wholly unsettle. The wolf ousts the shepherd as the great protector.

Where have you gone, Phil Shabecoff and, even longer gone, Gladwin Hill, whose coverage for so long had informed readers of The New York Times? Where are you now, Casey Bukro of the Chicago Tribune, Tom Harris of the Sacramento Bee, and the indefatigable Paul MacClennan of the Buffalo News? What must you, and other seasoned ink-in-the-veins newsroom veterans, be thinking of such an image?

How, just how, would it — might it? — change the face of environmental journalism? Especially, but not only, as practiced (if at all nowadays) in the nation’s Capital?

Conjure it. Detroit’s environmental efforts inspired and driven not by congressional directive and Federal Register mandate. But also by impulses from Japan’s Honda and Toyota, Germany’s DaimlerChrysler, Sweden’s (and now Ford’s) Volvo cars.

And, perhaps even more importantly, by its customers. “Market survey after market survey tells us environmental issues are increasingly important to our customers,” the Times recently quoted GM Vice Chairman Harry J. Pierce as saying (see “Reading Rack,” this issue).

Nor is it — nor need it be — “just” the automakers who could transcend “EPW” (aka the Environment and Public Works Committee). Look around you, look around your beat. There may be others, could well be others.

The notion of a major polluting industry’s surpassing EPW for the “green” mantle cannot, should not, be taken lightly.

Or, some might say, even seriously, though on that score you’ll get plenty of reasoned dissent given the seemingly opposite trajectories of the institutions involved. (Surely, the industry(ies) would not be where they are now on these issues had EPW, and lots of others by the way, not been where they have been all these years. No doubt about that.)

As for reporting, the prospects of serious environmental journalism’s being headquartered beyond the Washington Beltway for some must be tormenting. For others, a long-overdue recognition of reality.

Who knows? Maybe soon, maybe some day at least, there will be environmental journalism without bad guys! Without black hats! Serious environmental movers and shakers whose playground is not the halls of Congress and regulatory agencies, but rather of board rooms and individual manufacturing sites! And so noted by the nation’s media.

It staggers. It dwarfs. It profoundly revolutionizes all that environmental journalism, circa Washington, D.C., at least, has long accepted as an inalienable truth.

Fact is this: American manufacturing industry has changed, is changing, significantly. Almost as much, perhaps, as EPW itself has changed in recent years and unquestionably will in coming ones.

That’s something for serious environmental journalists (no oxymoron, not yet at least) to ponder. To debate. To cogitate. To muse.

And to see what — precisely what — it may mean for their own brand of informing citizens about environmental risks, opportunities, and challenges in coming months and years.

Where have you gone, Tom Harris, Casey Bukro, Phil Shabecoff, and others? How can you now help your journalism successors in thinking it through, thinking it out?

They’ll need all the help they can get.

Just think of it.

The New York Times and The Washington Post for the time being at least are dealing with environmental news in the nation’s Capital without a reporter assigned specifically to the beat.

It’s not clear how long the arrangements will last at each of the newspapers, although the Post has been operating this way for about five months now. No change appears imminent either at the Post or at the Times.

Reporters at both papers, while acknowledging that environmental news is not currently “hot” in their newsrooms, say the situation should not be seen as generally reflecting significantly less interest in the beat in their newsrooms.

At the same time, there are other signs that interest in environmental news continues to shrink in Washington mass media, perhaps moreso than in some other metropolitan areas. While specialized and electronic news outlets proliferate and environmental issues appear to be holding their own in those formats, the weekly 30-minute and 60-minute “Living on Earth” radio program, for instance, has no public radio outlet in Washington.

While prominent dailies like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and St. Louis Post-Dispatch are hiring environmental journalists back home, even veteran and established environmental journalists are finding slim pickings, at best, among major news outlets in Washington.

At the Times’ Washington bureau — for more than two decades among the prized daily environmental reporting positions in the country — five-year veteran environmental reporter Jack Cushman has moved to a weekend editing position, where he is responsible for coordinating the bureau’s 40 reporters’ contributions to the Sunday and Monday Times.

As Cushman describes the situation, time simply ran out after a longer than normal stint as the Times’ Washington bureau environmental reporter. He says his five-plus years in the position was longer than his three previous beats in the bureau.

At the Post, reporter Joby Warrick has moved from the daily environmental beat to a new position with the paper’s investigations division, where he still will be focusing largely on environmental issues. Callers to his old number at the paper are advised by message that he “no longer is the environmental reporter” and are referred to the Post’s Tom Kenworthy in Denver.

Warrick said in a phone interview that the decision to leave the daily reporting beat was “entirely my own.” He acknowledged that the current arrangement can pose particular challenges when a local general assignment reporter needs to cover a particularly complex story, such as the recent appeals court decision overturning EPA Air Act regulations for ozone and particulate matter.

“It’s definitely true in Washington that this beat comes in and out of fashion,” said Warrick, who moved to the Post after he and two colleagues won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize Public Service Award at the Raleigh News and Observer for their 1995 “Boss Hog” series on corporate livestock operations in North Carolina.

“I don’t have a sense that it’s real, real high on the list of priorities right now,” in part, he said, because many editors see so many other issues as being more pressing. (Warrick said he anticipates the Post will publish in June his first investigative environmental piece, which he has been working on since January.)

Cushman, at the Times, said the paper’s decision not to quickly fill his environmental reporting position does not suggest a declining commitment to the beat at the Times. He pointed to Robert Semple’s 1996 Pulitzer for environmental editorial writing as evidence to the contrary and said the paper “recognizes, as few other newspapers do, just how important the environmental beat is.” He pointed also to the paper’s having a strong metro environmental reporter, Andrew Revkin, and to its use of a number of national correspondents for environmental stories.

According to Cushman, “the whole desk is being reorganized, and environment isn’t being singled out.” He said D.C. bureau news managers “haven’t yet sorted out” how and whether to fill his former position. He said that “if it were the story of the moment,” editors might proceed with more haste in filling the post, but added that his move away from the beat and the decision not to fill it immediately are “completely exogenous to the trends” influencing reduced environmental coverage generally.

In addition, Cushman said the beat had been particularly good for him professionally, providing lots of prominent play — particularly in the Sunday Times — and lots of internal support from editors. He said his new position will give him the opportunity to consider writing a book he has in mind on environmental issues. As the beat reporter, he could not have considered doing a book on the issue because of Times policies against reporters’ writing books dealing with their beats.

“I think you’ll continue to find important environmental stories in the Times virtually every day,” Cushman said. “We are always asking ourselves here how best to cover environmental issues, and we’ll continue doing that.”

Some of the Washington-based environmental coverage from the Times Washington bureau now is being picked-up by veteran transportation and energy writer Matthew Wald, who has extensive expertise in particular on energy and transportation issues. But any additional environmental stories Wald does are expected to be in addition to, and not instead of, his existing beat assignments.

With another perspective on national news media coverage of environmental issues, CNN Executive Producer Peter Dykstra, who heads the network’s science, technology, and environment programming, said support for environmental programming at CNN is “still quite constant.” He said the network produces an environmental news story about every other day, with a weekend compilation of stories. He acknowledged that the weekend environmental programming sometimes gets preempted by more pressing news (Monica or Kosovo), but said that applies across the board and not just to environmental programming.

Dykstra said he anticipates an increasing “appetite” for environmental news at CNN in coming months as the presidential elections near and as candidates attempt to “out-environment Gore or anti-environment Gore.” He said Vice President Gore’s prominence on environmental issues and the tack taken by his political opposition could have media placing “a slightly higher value on the opinions of the players on this issue.” He said also that the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, in April 2000, might spur increased environmental coverage.

“The news climate in general,” said Dykstra pointing to The New York Times as a possible exception, features “a greater and greater single-minded focus on the big story of the day.” He pointed to the media’s “singlemindedness to chase the top story.”

Environment “very rarely is the big story issue, but it literally will be a big story practically every day for the rest of our lives,” said Dykstra, who had been with Greenpeace before joining CNN several years ago.

In addition, Dykstra said he believes environmental angles increasingly are being picked up by other beats, such as science and business.

“Environment is a bit player in lots of beats,” he said. “Is it a net gain? Probably not.”

For host and executive producer Steve Curwood of “Living on Earth,” broadcast on 230 National Public Radio stations, the picture in Washington, D.C., for the time being at least, is less rosy.

Curwood’s half-hour and full-hour weekly programming has had no Washington, D.C., outlet since WETA-FM dropped the show nearly a year ago. Washington audiences have to turn to Baltimore’s WJHU-FM, at Johns Hopkins University, as the nearest outlet for the program, but much of the D.C. area has trouble (at best) reaching that station.

Curwood’s program — which he says has long been among the top five independently produced and acquired weekly pieces reaching NPR audiences — in late 1995 and early 1996 was being aired on about 280 NPR stations each week. Now the total is down to about 230, although he says direct comparisons are complicated by the program’s having changed to a 30-minute and 60-minute format, and by its now charging stations airing it. He said he hopes ongoing nego-tiations will lead to a Washington public station’s again airing the program.

Another round of clean air regulations has begun. Are we in for another press release war-by-fax, another bout of dueling scientific studies, and more industry attacks on the EPA?

Not necessarily. In the case of the clean air emissions standards for vehicles, proposed by the Clinton Administration last month, the environmental benefits seemed almost indisputable. The proposed regulations for the first time would require sport utility vehicles and light trucks to meet the same tailpipe emission standards as cars, and reduce the amount of sulfur in gasoline.

What remains to be resolved is who will win the battle between the titan auto and oil industries, neither of whom wants to bear primary responsibility for the cost of complying with the regulations, referred to as Tier II, or the second phase of the Clean Air Act of 1990’s plan to cut automobile emissions.

Journalists convincingly reported the environmental impact of the proposals, as well as the thorny issues and adversaries that may block the path to final regulations. Here’s how it played in several reports across the country:

• Associated Press: “President Clinton on Saturday endorsed federal standards aimed at making popular sport utility vehicles and cars run 80 percent cleaner, saying auto pollution can be cut dramatically at modest cost .... [EPA Administrator Carol Browner] said the proposal was tantamount to removing 166 million cars from the road ....

  “Although 97 percent cleaner than they were 30 years ago, automobiles, including SUVs and light trucks, account for one-third to one-half of smog-causing nitrogen oxide pollution in urban areas and about 22 percent nationwide. They also are major sources of toxic chemicals and microscopic soot in the air.”

• Detroit News: “Without cleaner fuels, automakers say they won’t be able to meet the lower emission rules for light trucks, which produce up to three times as much pollution per mile driven as cars and operate under looser standards .... The auto industry — joined by environmental and public health groups — wants to put the clean air onus on the oil in-dustry .... The oil industry does not want to go that far, said Marc Meteyer of the American Petroleum Institute. Instead, it’s proposing regional reductions, so that less polluted areas make do with a less dramatic cut in sulfur content ....

  “The number of cars in this country is expected to jump 40 percent by 2010 from 1993 levels. Also, growing numbers of consumers are switching to light trucks, which make up about 50 percent of vehicle sales today and emit 75 percent more smog-producing oxides of nitrogen than the average car.”

• Dow Jones News Service: “U.S. oil industry groups vowed Friday to oppose a proposed gasoline sulfur reduction rule that President Bill Clinton is expected to announce Saturday morning .... The American Petroleum Institute and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association estimate that the cost of this measure to refiners will be $3 billion to $6 billion, depending on what desulfurization technology is used. The association’s general counsel, Bob Slaughter, said he was concerned that the U.S. refining system, which is already running near capacity, would be overburdened by the investment required to comply with this measure.”

• Houston Chronicle: “The proposals will have ‘tremendous air quality benefits’ in cities like Houston, striving to cease violating federal air quality standards, and in others, like Austin, which are trying to avoid violating them, said Bill Becker, director of two national organizations representing state and local air quality officials ....

  “George Smith, a Houston Sierra Club leader who chairs the multi-county Regional Air Quality Planning Committee, said a 90 percent sulfur cut will be much more helpful here than the less stringent Texas proposal, which mirrors the oil industry’s position ...

  “While gasoline industry representatives conceded the environmental benefits of reducing sulfur, they said the EPA’s proposal is ‘unnecessarily costly’ and would not take into account regional differences in air quality.”

• Kansas City Star: “The Environmental Protection Agency proposal is aimed at assuring that progress to improve air quality is not reversed by expected growth in travel and the fast-selling sport vehicles, some of which now emit more than twice as much pollution as cars .... The EPA has argued that as people drive more, increasingly in trucklike vehicles, air quality cannot be improved without addressing pollution from such vehicles, or without imposing tough requirements not only on automakers but also on gasoline refiners to clean up the fuel ....

  “While cars today are 97 percent cleaner than models sold 30 years ago, emissions from cars and light trucks still account for one-third to one-half of the smog-causing pollution in urban areas.”

• Los Angeles Times: “President Clinton will propose a new generation of clean air rules today, closing a loophole that allows sport utility vehicles to pollute more than cars and mandating national use of cleaner gasoline similar to the fuel now required in California ....

  “In the long run, California consumers may benefit as the rest of the country adopts anti-pollution measures that mirror steps already taken or underway in the state .... Jerry Martin, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, said Californians could benefit in several ways:

  • “The introduction of advanced catalytic converters would reduce emissions from new vehicles sold in California.
  • “A nationwide shift to cleaner gasoline could potentially reduce supply bottlenecks that some have blamed for the recent price hikes in the state.
  • “Out-of-state vehicles would pollute less in the future.”

• New York Times: (May 1, 1999) “The rules are meant to address two broad trends that are threatening to reverse decades of improvements in air quality. Americans are driving more miles each year. At the same time, cars are gradually being replaced by light trucks, a category that includes sport utility vehicles, mini-vans and pickup trucks ....

  “Vehicles already on the road by then [2009] would not be affected by the emissions standards, but they would pollute less with the cleaner gasoline, which would be required starting in 2004.”

  (May 2, 1999) “Rather than fighting the Administration for less stringent emissions standards, the auto industry has allied itself with environmentalists in demanding cleaner gasoline.

  “Josephine Cooper, the president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, based in Washington, said that the industry generally supported the new rules because of the sulfur provisions, even though the rules require big sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks to start meeting car pollution rules for the first time by 2009. The auto industry wants the Administration’s help in meeting this tough requirement by forcing the oil industry to eliminate as much sulfur as possible.”

  (May 16, 1999) “An Administration plan to require cleaner gasoline and auto-mobiles that emit less pollution, described by officials as the most ambitious anti-pollution initiative of the Clinton Presidency, is drawing heavy lobbying by environmentalists and industry and strong interest by politicians eyeing next year’s Presidential campaign ....

  “Emboldened by a Federal appeals court ruling on Friday rejecting the Administration’s plans for tighter national air quality standards in the future, oil industry lawyers warned that the gasoline and auto initiative may not hold up in court. But an EPA official said the appellate court ruling would not stop the agency’s plans.”

• Star-Tribune (Minneapolis): “The auto industry’s criticism of the admini-stration plan has been muted by Detroit’s delight at the prospect of deep cuts in the sulfur in gasoline. This will make it much easier for Detroit to meet future emissions standards, at least for a while ....

  “Seeking a greener image, Ford Motor Company has begun voluntarily building all of its SUVs to be as clean as current cars. But even Ford executives have expressed worries about the new standards in 2009 for large SUVs and pickup trucks. Ford and other automakers want a mandatory review of the new rules in 2004.”

• Wall Street Journal: “The Clinton Administration’s plan to reduce tailpipe pollution sets up a battle in Congress between the oil and auto industries .... Oil and auto companies, which have been waging a lobbying battle over the details of the plan for months, said they wanted changes in some aspects of the plan. Environmental groups, while supporting the proposal, said they hoped for a tougher plan that would give car companies less time to clean up the biggest trucks and sport utility vehicles.

  “The next venue for the issue might well be Congress. Twin bills in the Senate and House, introduced by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York and Michigan Rep. Dale Kildee, both Democrats, support the EPA’s push for cleaner fuel nationwide, an auto-industry goal. But Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma is drafting an opposing bill, which would give oil companies more flexibility than the EPA’s plan.”

June 4 Application Deadline

“Experienced and aggressive.”

Those are two qualities — along with daily newspaper reporting experience — the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is looking for in an environment reporter who will be hired as part of the paper’s newly formed science team.

“We want someone whose incisive thinking cuts through the complicated and the bureaucratic to tell stories that matter,” the paper says. “We want someone who is versatile at covering subjects as varied as hazardous waste, urban sprawl and wildlife.” Above all else, the paper says, “we want someone who is creative, confident and who has the ability to work with a team.”

Interested applicants should submit their qualifications, six clips and “a one-page statement of how you would approach the job” to Todd Duncan, Community Senior Editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 900 N. Tucker Blvd. St Louis, MO 63101. They should also move quickly: the official application deadline is June 4.

1997 Chemical Releases Increase

The 1997 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Public Data Release Report, which shows that overall releases of toxic chemicals increased by 2.2 percent from 1996, is now available on the Internet and from EPA.

Although toxic air emissions declined in 1997, overall releases increased largely due to a shift by facilities that did not send metal wastes to recycling facilities, but used other disposal methods such as landfills, according to EPA.

The 1997 TRI Public Data Release Report is available on the Internet at http:www.epa.gov/opptintr/tri. Hard copies of the report are available from the National Service Center for Environmental Publications at (800) 490-9198.

Last month’s proposed clean air standards for cars and trucks elicited not only some of the usual responses, but some unexpected ones as well.

In this round of regulations, the auto industry supports the White House, but is at odds with the oil industry. Environmentalists and the auto industry agree on key components of the proposal. The oil industry disagrees with everyone.

Match the quotes about the “new generation of clean air rules.”

The Quotes:

1. “The so-called Tier II regulations represent the biggest technological hurdles for the auto industry since the early 1970s, when the catalytic converter and unleaded gasoline were introduced to cut tailpipe emissions.”
2. “The case for a national approach has yet to be made, and an approach that does not recognize regional differences in air quality means that consumers will pay more than necessary, and refiners will be hard pressed to make the reductions on schedule.”
3. “The news from Detroit was heartening this week — robust automobile sales, driven mainly by purchases of sport utility vehicles, minivans and a lot of those fancy pickup trucks that are beginning to look as comfortable as luxury cars. The news from Washington was equally heartening — a set of tough new Federal regulations that, for the first time, will subject those very same vehicles to the strict pollution standards that apply to ordinary cars .... Ever since the original Clean Air Act of 1970, industry has routinely overestimated the costs of new rules, while underestimating the ability of its own engineers to deliver cleaner products at an affordable price.”
4. “If light truck loopholes had never existed, it would be like taking 40 million cars off the road today. It’s time emission standards caught up with engineering capabilities.”
5. “Americans love to drive, and we’re driving more. But the emissions from our cars, particularly from the larger, less-efficient vehicles, threaten to erode many of the air quality gains America has achieved. As a result, many of our cities and states are no longer on course to meet our vital air quality goals.”
6. “Clean air initiatives will stay focused on vehicles because they remain the largest source of pollution along the Front Range and are responsible for about 70 percent of what goes into the Brown Cloud .... Through national clean air laws, better fuels and vehicles, and successful local programs, the Denver area has made outstanding air quality progress without punitive measures.”
7. “If we do not reduce sulfur in gasoline nationwide, the economic consequences may result in lost facilities, jobs, and opportunities in many communities as these areas try to meet tougher clean air standards set by EPA.”
8. “EPA’s proposed phase-in schedule is already stretched out too far to accommodate the industry. Automakers and the oil industry have shown they can meet California’s strict air quality requirements. It is preposterous to give them more time to do something we already know they can do.”

The Quoted:

The Answers:

1. B
2. G
3. F
4. E
5. A
6. H
7. D
8. C

Note: Formerly published by the National Safety Council. Reprinted with permission.