Gore picks up environmental group's endorsement

Bush decries military's state of readiness

May 30, 2000
Web posted at: 4:12 p.m. EDT (2012 GMT)

MILWAUKEE (CNN) -- Vice President Al Gore accepted Tuesday the endorsement of the influential League of Conservation Voters, saying in a speech before the group that the United States must create products and worldwide markets for the use of alternative energy sources.

"Who is going to sell [foreign nations] the new technologies needed to improve life and reduce pollution?" Gore asked his audience. "I have a candidate. The United States of America should sell these products all over the world, but we have to make a commitment to do so."

Though he has mentioned several of his environmentally friendly aspirations earlier -- including his consultations with Detroit's Big Three automakers aimed at the creation of new lines of alternatively fueled vehicles -- some of the items mentioned Tuesday afternoon were relatively new.

Chief among those was a pledge to provide $2 billion in tax incentives and other enticements to shield wilderness areas now threatened by rapid development, and to ensure that Americans have increased access to national parks and other so-called green areas.

A broad strategy for global environmental renewal, Gore said, would have to begin in the United States with the declaration of an "environmental decade" that he said would bring continued economic prosperity at home, and advanced technologies as well as cleaner air and water supplies to the areas of the world that need them most.

In this decade, Gore said, "we must aggressively pursue the global market for new energy technology."

In addition, Gore continued, the rise of global warming -- a phenomenon that he said most U.S. citizens were only now beginning to take seriously -- must be countered with the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty designed to reduce global warming that calls for a sharp reduction in the creation and use of a variety of greenhouse gases.

The United States has not signed the treaty.

"We must ratify the Kyoto agreement and give it the force of law to stop global warming," the vice president said. Domestically, he added, air quality standards must be boosted in a "realistic and achievable" way, and should be enforced strictly enough to turn back steady increases in cases of childhood asthma.

Gore's appearance before the group was timed as part of a weeklong campaign swing to highlight various segments of his biography, and the issues in which he has taken a personal interest. On Monday, he addressed an audience of veterans in central Pennsylvania about his tour of duty as an Army journalist in Vietnam.

The delivery of his environmental address was deftly timed for another pressing reason. The vice president is beginning to feel the breath of Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the back of his neck.

Nader, who is running on a predominantly environmentalist platform, said last week that Gore had "turned his back" on his own call for environmental action, the 1992 book "Earth in the Balance."

Some political analysts have speculated that Nader could lure a significant portion of the Democratic vote away from Gore come November, perhaps as much as 5 to 8 percent.

"To my critics, I say this," Gore responded Tuesday. "I am proud I wrote that book, and I stand by every word I wrote in that book."

Bush holds military readiness forum

The Republican Party's White House hopeful, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, spent the early part of Tuesday acting as the moderator of a panel on the state of the U.S. military. Talking points ranged from morale and quality-of-life issues for U.S. personnel, to the readiness levels of military units that, at least on paper, should be ready for combat at a moment's notice.

"We have to be mindful of some facts," Bush said in his opening remarks. "Defense spending as a percentage of the gross national product is at its lowest point since Pearl Harbor."

"Sixty-five percent of the Air Force's combat units are operating at full readiness, and two out of 10 Army divisions are unprepared for war."

The blame for the state of the American military, according to Bush and the Republican members of Congress in attendance, can be laid squarely at the feet of the Clinton-Gore Administration.

"We have increased by 400 percent [since 1992] the amount of military exercises and deployments, and cut [the military] by 40 percent," said Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colorado). "That does not represent an administration that respects our military."

Bush, who has drawn significant criticism from the Gore camp for his recently revealed plan to downsize the U.S. nuclear arsenal while implementing an anti-ballistic missile defense system, said Tuesday that he envisioned a conventional military force of the near future "that is going to be lighter, harder to find, and more lethal."

The role of the United States, he said, should be to prevent war by acting as "peacemakers," and displaying a strong military force capable of frightening any potential enemies into reconsidering any offensive or menacing actions.

That role, Bush intimated, would mean the U.S. would likely significantly cut back on its willingness to dispatch troops to various international hot spots to act as peacekeepers, where they could become bogged down in local politics and circumstances, and end up having to stay long past their original mandate.

"I will remind our allies that ultimately, the U.S. does not want to be peacekeepers. We want to be peacemakers."