Newspaper Page Text
Griffin Daily News Thursday, April 18,1974
Page 22
WASHINGTON - (LENS) - without any prompting from
No longer exactly the huge Public opinion to treat en
popular fashion that it briefly vironmenta policy as an
was in the early 19705, the en- urgent matter During his
vironmental movement in the brst year the Administration
United States still has subs- was content with a sparse
tantial intellectual and emo- amount of •‘P* B *™ l ®® „ a !? d
tional roots. Congress began to take the
It remains a force, but its lea a. . •
effective influence fluctuates. °P in ' on polls
Just now it is going through a started to record an ex
patch of adversity, as' was rerT \f[y sharp rise in the
shown recently when the ad- number of Americans who
m.n.strator of the Environ- Have pollution and the en
mental Protection Agency, vironment a high place
Russell Train, announced the among their interests and by
Administration’s proposals to beginning of 1970 the
amend a landmark among h r „ e r^ ,d h e " t h .'.uf,
anti-pollution measures, the fhem high on the list, the
(Mean Air Act of 1970 great question of the seven-
Train took the unusual step ties”, he called it in his State
of announcing that two of the of the Union message in that
amendments which he was year - second only to world
forwarding to Congress on peace, of course,
the Administrations behalf Benefiting m part from Mr.
did not have his support or Nixon s recognition and the
that of his agency; he did not benevolent approval of
recommend them and was Ehrl.chman and a few others
leaving it to Congress to con- m l be White House, and in
sider what was best part from the mood of a Con-
Train’s predecessor was gress alive to the agitation
William Kuckelhaus, who from the states and districts
took on the direction of the the environmental movement
EPA when .1 was set up late achieved vast legislat.ve and
in 1970, went to the Justice advances in 1970; a water
Department last year as quality improvement act, a
deputy to Elliott Richardson, dean a ,r act and a solid start
and was summarily removed ?»» the preparation of a na
with Richardson in the Satur- tional land use policy,
dav night massacre last Octo- * bus a political and a bu
reaucratic momentum were
Both men were his friends established which continued
and, in matters of public through the following year
policy, his allies. Environ- and beyond it, but President
mental policy did have an- Nixon found something else
other powerful ally in John !° think about, inflation
Ehrl.chman, then President began to go through the roof
Nixon’s chief adviser for *be balance of mterna
domestic affairs, hut Ehrlich Bonal payments through the
man, too. is gone, a Water- oor John Connally came to
gate casualty in a different Washington and the competi
sense. Environmental policy, ,lve position of the American
and Train, are short of economy in world markets
friends, and the fact shows in became a matter of prime
the clean air amendments concern,
and in the strange manner of I be voices of industry,
their presentation. alarmed bv the effec of an i-
President Nixon's own at pollution laws on its costs,
tachment to environmental an< * °* agriculture, fighting
causes, a decisive factor ... ‘he interference of the en
many a struggle inside the vironmental groups with its
Administration, has tended to level of production, began to
fluctuate with the swirling get a more sympathetic hear
political and economic cur- "ig.
|; t , nts What effect the financial
He entered office in 1969 preparations for the 1972
with a respectable record of presidential campaign had,
campaign utterances but with the horse-trading which
Sadat’s eggs
in basket
of Kissinger
CAIRO - (LENS) - I’resi
dent Anwar Sadat's swipes at
the Soviet Union underline
how strong the Egyptian
president is — or thinks he is.
Sadat's first open dig at the
Russians was on March 2i),
when he revealed that on the
first day of the October war
the Soviet ambassador in
Cairo had twice tried to
deceive him into calling for a
ceasefire by alleging that the
Syrians had already done so.
In a recent speech in Alex
andria, he pursued the theme
b y d e scribing Ku s sia n
untrustworthiness in the
period before the war: the
Soviet Union, he claimed, had
failed to send Egypt the arms
it had promised.
Sadat's reason for attack
ing the Russians is clear
enough. Russia's current
Middle East er n poll c y
threatens the Egyptian
regime. Not so much because
of this policy's longer-term
aims —about which there
are at least half a dozen con
tradictory theories — but be
cause of the immediate
repercussions of Russia's
efforts to get back into the
center of things by pulling
the rug from undersecretary
of State Henry Kissinger's
one-man peacemaking show.
The Soviet Union has been
questioning the substantive
effects of this peacemaking
in terms that echo closely the
dissent and concern that are
being expressed by many
people among the Arabs
themselves, including many
Egyptians. The Russian argu
ment that now the Americans
are once again at the receiv
ing end for Arab oil they are
under no pressure to lean on
Israel is also an Arab argu
ment.
More serious still, from
Sadat’s point of view, is
Russia's encouragement of
Syrian militancy: at worst
this could wreck the tender
beginnings of the Arab-
Israeli detente, even at best,
Syria's fighting spirit is being
compared favorably with the
Egyptian regime's compla
cency.
Yet, undeterred, Sadat
continues to affirm his confi
dence in the United States
and his disenchantment with
the Soviet Union.
At home his regime moves
jerkily rightwards. Soviet
Foreign Minister Andrei Gro
myko's visits to Damascus
and Cairo early in March,
which lj?d to the daily gun
battles on the Golan front,
had adverse effects in Egypt:
Sadat went out of his way to
emphasize his belief in the
Americans' good intentions.
The environment is short of friends
particularly by his insistence,
in the face of strong opposi
tion, that the oil boycott
should be ended.
If, in the end, Kissinger is
unable to deliver the goods
that Sadat expects of him the
Egyptian president will be
landed in great difficulties.
Presidents Sadat and
Assad of Syria are both gam
bling; the Egyptian gamble
may turn out the bolder even
if tiie Syrian one is the more
immedi a t e 1 y pre ea riou s.
Syrian policy, like the Rus
sian policy that may be
behind it, is open to varying
interpretations.
Probably Assad’s renewed
militancy, both the gun bat
tles and the tougher diplo
matic line, is aimed not at
wrecking but at threatening
to wreck the peace initiative
unless the Israelis are
obliged to concede more than
they are at present prepared
to do. It is a nice but risky dis
tinction.
And the calculation is
probably less than cool: the
Syrians are believed to have
felt themselves deceived by
Kissinger into handing over
the prisoner-of-war lists on
the understanding, or mis
understanding, that he had
some sort of Israeli concur
rence that the initial with
drawal would take Israel’s
army back past Quneitra and
not, as it turned out, be con
fined to the land captured in
October.
The risk is that the Israelis
will sharply increase their
level of retaliation, above all
by bringing in their air force,
and so end the hopes of an
agreement this time round.
But note the relative
serenity of Israeli Defense
Minister Moshe Dayan's com
ments on the situation after
his talks with Kissinger in
Washington. There is one
clue: Dayan, like other
Israelis, is not particularly
concerned by the “foreign
legion" in Syria, and this in
cludes the Cubans who are
believed to be serving in a
Syrian armored brigade and
who may be helping out while
new Syrian tank crews are
being trained.
But, he said, the situation
would change if another
Arab state allied itself
militarily with Syria. This
pints to Iraq — arid places it
in an uncomfortably key posi
tion. And since the Soviet
Union has a degree of control
over both Iraq and Syria,
what now happens between
these two may go some way
towards revealing Russia’s
true intentions in the region.
<C> 1974 The Economist Newspaper of Lon
don
they seem to have involved
for concessions to the eco
nomic interests in return for
campaign contributions, is a
matter of speculation still.
Similarly it is possible to
speculate on the implications
of ‘.he present threat of im
peachment of the President,
which may well be forcing
him to show more considera
tion than he might normally
show for the interests associ
ated with the right-wing
Senators, both Republican and
Democratic, whose votes he
may need desperately before
the year is out.
The solid anti-environmen
tal event of the past winter
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has been, however, the
energy scare, which can ac
count alone and unaided for a
mood of enhanced deference
to the interests of petroleum
refiners, developers of oil
shale deposits, offshore
drillers, coal mining en
terprises, nuclear power
engineers and gas and
electric corporations gener
ally.
Enterprises of all these
types are among the
presumptive beneficiaries of
the relaxations of the clean
air amendments that are now
being proposed. It is not on|y
the Administration that is
vulnerable. Congress is by its
nature even more open to
such pressures than the ex
ecutive branch.
What the environmen
talists fear is that the Presi
dency, the natural protector
of the general interest
against particular interests,
has been weakened in its will
or ability to play its proper
part.
When the Clean Air Act
was passed the Administra
tion would have preferred
Congress to leave the setting
of standards and the ordering
of concrete steps in pollution
prevention to the EPA's dis
cretion. Congress insisted on
putting them into the law.
with the result that the Ad
ministration now has to ask
Congress to defer from 1975
to 1977 the requirement on
the automobile industry to
produce cars with lower ex
haust emissions.
The emergency energy bill,
which President Nixon
vetoed because of its oil price
provisions, would have given
him power to order
electricity generating com
panies to change from oil
burning to coal-burning. He
now asks for the same power
in the clean air amendments,
together with power to sus
pend the air-pollution re-
quirements until 1980 for
power plants subjected to
such an order.
One of the proposed
amendments which Train
refuses to support would give
way to the resistance of the
elctric power and other in
dustries to installing scrub
bers to clean their furnance
smoke.
They would be permitted
instead to rely on tall smoke
stacks and on reducing their
operations in adverse weath
er. the so-called "intermit
tent" controls which the en
vironmentalists declare to be
practically no controls at all.
The other amendment.
even more heatedly opposed
by the environmentalists, is
intended to smooth the path
for coal and oil shale devel
opment in empty regions of
the West where the air at
present is almost totally
clean.
The Administration wants
the law relaxed so that the
long-range energy program
can go forward unhindered.
Train does not. Curiously
enough, in the heated discus
sion within the Administra
tion during the last few
weeks his opponent on this
point was not the Federal
Energy Office.