SierraScape October - November 2002
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By MacNeer Dillon - Political Committee Chair

The political campaigns for the General Election began in August after the Primary results were known. Federal, state, and local candidates began seeking public attention in hope of being elected. To help educate voters, the EMG Political Committee sends out a questionnaire to all local candidates to ascertain their views on important environmental issues. Those whose views correspond to the positions of the Sierra Club are further considered for endorsement. The questionnaire for this election asked candidates to state their views or positions on the following Missouri issues:

• Controlling operations of timber strippers and high speed chip mills
• Regulating environmental impacts of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)
• Allowing environmental enforcement limits in Missouri that are stricter than federal EPA regulations.
• Opposing letting industries police their own pollution
• Funding public transportation and light electric rail service to reduce the need for highways and reduce automotive air pollution
• Revitalizing declining and decaying urban areas
• Reducing urban sprawl to restrain taxes for expanding infrastructure and preserve habitat
• Reforming the tax increment financing law (TIF) to prevent its use in promoting commercial development of wetlands and bottom lands and destroying wildlife habitat, and to directing its use to urban revitalization
• Requiring more rigorous testing of genetically engineered foods
• Supporting a law to allow property owners who invest in windmills and photo-voltaic solar cells to sell their surplus energy to the power grid at reasonable rates
• Improving the enforcement power of the MO DNR to prevent industries from producing long term pollution, such as we now see in Herculaneum, MO
• Protecting natural resources in state forests, parks, and conservation areas
• Preventing damaging and illegal recreations in state parks and conservation areas

In every instance above, the environment cannot be protected unless there is a specific law. The honor system has rarely served to protect the environment. The only chance we have to protect the environment is to elect a majority in both houses who care enough about the environment to defend it. We must find, support, and elect environmentally considerate candidates.