My ongoing, borderline-obsessive series about how %$@! awful this Washington Post piece is continues. In this episode, we focus on Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense. I’ve tried to give Krupp the benefit of the doubt. The green movement needs somebody sucking up to corporations. (I say that with total sincerity.)
But it seems pretty clear that Krupp has, like so many people involved in the Beltway clusterfuck, become more interested in ingratiating himself with Serious People than in speaking truth to power. He’s addicted to access, and throughout Baker’s godawful piece he aids and abets White House spin.
It begins this way:
Among those who trekked to Texas while Bush prepared to run for president in 2000 was Krupp, who has been a pioneer in collaborating with business to forge market-based solutions to pollution. During a 1 1/2 -hour discussion at the governor’s mansion, Krupp described working with Bush’s father on sulfur dioxide emission trading and said a similar system would make sense with carbon dioxide. "He said if we were to go ahead with regulation, that is how we would do it," Krupp recalled. "But the ‘if’ was a big if."
Yeah, you could say that.
I give Krupp all credit for talking to Bush in 2000. It’s great that Bush was around a friendly environmentalist, someone who could reach him and speak his language. It was an effort absolutely worth making.
But it failed. Bush pulled Krupp’s chain — lied to his face. He then proceeded to defecate on everything Krupp purports to hold dear, over and over again, lying to his face all the while. There can no longer be any doubt about Bush’s agenda.
By mid-2006, Krupp was still giving the C Student in Chief second chances:
Krupp saw Bush in the same period [mid-2006] at an environmental documentary screening at the White House. "He was definitely in a different place," Krupp said. "He was saying, ‘Just because I didn’t go forward with Kyoto doesn’t mean I don’t want to do something.’ That’s when I detected there really was an evolution going on."
"Really an evolution"? Here we are at the end of 2007, and Bush has still done nothing but block other people’s efforts to address the problem in a serious way. Surely by now Krupp is fed up, right? He’s got some dignity. He’s tired of being played.
Guess not. Here we are in Dec. 2007:
"They are more engaged in thinking about this in a way they were not before," said Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group, who talks with White House officials. "That leads me to think things are still fluid there. The current public position is not what it needs to be, but I don’t have the sense that it’s cemented into place."
Seriously? We’re seven years into an eight-year administration. Bush climate policy has been entirely consistent, despite occasional rhetorical shifts and rare tactical retreats. Policy is "still fluid"? It’s not "cemented"?
When would it count as cemented? If Bush had a week left in office? A day? Maybe not. Maybe he’ll ride a climate pony down Pennsylvania Ave. just as Hillary’s being sworn in. Maybe he’ll go back in a time machine, to 2001 when he broke Christie Whitman’s heart.
What would it take for Krupp to stop providing this shameful administration with “this time they’re really going green!” PR cover?
Krupp "talks with White House officials." That’s what he stands to lose. What about the rest of us, though?
