Bush to air anti-pollution message

? President Bush is looking to polish his environmental image by marking Earth Day with a pitch for his air pollution-reduction strategy in New York state’s Adirondack Mountains, which are threatened by acid rain. In Tennessee, Al Gore is delivering a sharp critique of the Bush administration’s environmental policies.

Bush is taking the offensive today on the environment, an issue that has become a political liability, by spotlighting a market-based proposal he has promised will deliver “dramatic progress” in air quality. He was making his pitch at Lake Everest, near a dam on the Au Sable River in Wilmington, N.Y.

The president has asked Congress to approve mandatory limits on total industry output of three kinds of pollutants, and to let companies work out how to achieve them through a system of earning and trading credits. The targeted pollutants are acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide, smog-causing nitrogen oxide and mercury, a toxic chemical that contaminates waterways and goes up the food chain through fish to people.

Under Bush’s “Clear Skies” plan, each would be reduced by about 70 percent by 2018. Congress has yet to vote on his proposal, which he has also referred to as “Clean Skies.”

The Adirondack Council and some other environmental groups in upstate New York have embraced his plan, which was modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency’s program for reducing acid rain, because it would reduce emissions that cause acid rain.

But some environmental groups complain that the plan would be a step back from goals set by Clean Air Act regulations already on the books.

Acid rain is caused when pollutants are carried east on winds from Midwest smokestacks and mix with water vapor in clouds over the Adirondacks.

Democrats have been searching for an issue on which Bush is vulnerable during a wartime period when he enjoys high approval ratings. Polls show that the public regards Democrats as more likely than Republicans by 20 to 30 percentage points to give domestic issues such as the environment a high priority.

Gore, Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign rival and potential 2004 opponent, wrote a blistering attack on Bush’s environmental policies on the op-ed page of Sunday’s New York Times.

“This administration’s so-called Clean Skies initiative actually increases air pollution levels by allowing more toxic mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur emissions than does current law,” Gore wrote. “Put simply, on the environment, this administration has consistently sold out America’s future in return for short-term political gains.”

Aides said Gore’s speech today at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., would mirror the Times article.