In Only His 2nd Speech, Leavitt Headlines Corporate Greenwashing Workshop

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"This morning, some 50 people powwowed in the chandeliered Ticonderoga conference room of the Hyatt Regency hotel on Capitol Hill for a conference entitled "Environmental Issues 2004: How to Get Results in an Election Year." There weren't more than a handful of environmentalists in attendance -- perhaps because the conference was hosted by the National Association of Manufacturers, known to be one of the most anti-environment industry groups in the country. The great attraction of the affair (which cost up to $150 a head) was its keynote speaker -- not an industry kingpin, not a bigwig GOP pollster like Frank Luntz, but U.S. EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt.

Leavitt's headliner status was peculiar given the focus of the conference: how to craft pro-industry environmental messages to influence the 2004 elections. And this was only Leavitt's second speaking engagement outside the EPA since he took the agency's helm. The first was his address two weeks ago to another industry group, the Edison Electric Institute, which all reporters but one were barred from attending. "Leavitt's NAM appearance reaffirms, if nothing else, that his heart is with industry -- the corporate folks are the ones he's making time for," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust.

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Frank Maisano, a spokesperson for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council and one of the most oft-quoted industry apologists in the media, spoke on a conference panel entitled "Crafting Environmental Messages." Before the event, he told Muckraker that "industry is never going to have an advantage over the enviros in the media -- the enviros are always going to be able to say 'you are killing children' or they'll play the asthma card. They'll make these highly emotionally charged claims -- claims that will get more melodramatic in an election year."

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So what did Leavitt have to say on these matters? Well, nothing. He delivered a stump speech that was totally detached from the focus of the conference. In an upbeat tone, he assured manufacturers that environmental quality in the U.S. has advanced by leaps and bounds in the past 30 years and that it's time to move beyond command-and-control regulations. "We need to do in a better way that doesn't compromise our economic competitiveness," he declared. One of the few enviros at the conference, Rob Perks of the Natural Resource Defense Council, found it troubling that audience members -- executives and flaks from companies such as Halliburton and Bristol-Myers Squibb -- seemed oblivious to the implications of the policy changes they want to spin. "Over and over people said, 'We keep hearing that this is the worst administration in history, so how do we sell our message? How do we snooker people? How do we fight back in the messaging wars?'" said Perks. "It was as if it totally didn't register in their minds that a regulatory crisis was occurring at all. The sole concern was putting a good mask on it."

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