Do you think Gore has lived up to his reputation as an environmentalist?

The Clinton administration was worse than the Republicans regarding the auto industry. When they were running in 1992, they said they were going to push the auto industry to forty miles per gallon by the year 2000. But they cut a deal. Clinton and Gore had a press conference in September 1993 with three big domestic auto companies, and here's the deal they announced: We'll appropriate a billion dollars in taxpayer money to help you develop a clean engine, and in return, no antitrust enforcement against collusion – which means they don't have to compete the way Honda and Toyota do now over hybrids. And no increase in the CAFE [antipollution] standards. So eight years go by, and there's not even a proposal to increase the CAFE standard. Could Reagan have done worse? Could Bush have done worse? The average fuel efficiency for all motor vehicles has slid back to 24.5 miles per gallon, which is where it was in 1980.

And yet the Sierra Club has endorsed Gore for president.

The Sierra Club has had an internal debate on whether to endorse Gore. I saw a memo from the people who don't want to endorse him, and they list ten areas where he has betrayed the environmental movement and his own book. Solar energy, he hasn't pushed. Fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies, he hasn't fought or criticized. Pesticides, he's beyond disgrace. Indoor pollution, they've done nothing. Global warming and ozone depletion, all talk. He supported WTO and NAFTA, which subordinate environmental and labor concerns to corporate interest by mandate of their charters. All the little things that they promised in '92 and didn't do, like saving the Everglades, like the incinerator in northeast Ohio that they said would never open [but did]. The 1872 Mining Act gives our minerals away for free, literally for free, and lets the corporate predators escape without cleaning up their mess, so we have exhausted gold mines that are full of cyanide all over the West. Clinton and Gore never stood up and said it should be repealed.

Just before I went to Hawaii recently, Clinton issued a well-timed executive order to preserve the coral reefs, of which there are more than a few deteriorating in Hawaii. I asked the governor, who's a Democrat, what he thought of it. "All talk," he said. Let me tell you something: I'd rather have a provocateur than an anesthetizer in the White House. Remember what James Watt [Reagan's Secretary of Interior] did for the environmental movement? He galvanized it. Gore and his buddy Clinton are anesthetizers. They give you the rhetoric, they set aside a few monuments, they set aside a few reserves by executive order, which has no statutory authority and can easily be pushed aside. You can't even sue to hold them to it, which you can with a statute. You know what's amazing about Gore? He just rolled out his energy-efficiency plan. It's exactly what they said eight years ago. You know the old proverb, "If you're going to be a liar, you better have a good memory"? They're both liars and they both have good memories. They just don't care. They're shameless.

I have a black friend from Harlem who has progressive politics and a deep suspicion of the white power structure. He told me he voted for Mayor Giuliani. I said, "How could you vote for a lying thug like that?" He said, "Because I wanted to vote for a winner."

That's the main hurdle right there. People want to be with winners. And what they don't realize is, the more they want to be with winners in our system of concentrated power, the more losers there are going to be. It's what I call the ego use of the vote, which only legitimizes the oligarchy. The two parties know they can tell people, "You wanna be with a winner? You come with us. You've got nowhere else to go." That's what the Democrats have been telling all these citizen groups for years now. You've got nowhere to go. But we know where they're going. That's why we're drawing the line this year. It's over. It has to be.

We may be the last generation that has to give up so little to achieve so much.

 

Further information on Nader's campaign can be found at votenader.org.