Hawaii Democrats in Tune with Kerry, Dean on Environment

By Sunny Lewis

HONOLULU, Hawaii, May 31, 2004 (ENS) - This is the season when state political parties gather to choose the delegates they will send to the national political conventions - to the Democratic convention July 26 to 29 in Boston, or to the Republican convention August 30 to September 2 in New York. Since the choice of Presidential contenders already has been decided, it falls to the stars of each party to energize the party faithful who will get out the vote for the November 2 election.

At the Hawaii Democratic Convention on Saturday, former governor of Vermont Howard Dean, M.D., got the delegates up on their feet and applauding time and time again - against the Iraq war, for veterans' benefits, for universal health insurance, and for environmental protection linked to fair trade.

Dean lost the Democratic presidential nomination to John Kerry earlier this year, but he is out on the campaign trail raising support for Kerry now.

"Who do you think is going to stand up for ordinary working people in this country? George Bush or John Kerry? My vote's with John Kerry," he declared, to a standing ovation.

"We need to strengthen the hand of organized labor in this country so that organized labor can stand up for their people and make work pay again," said Dean, tying organized labor to environmental protection.

Howard Dean addresses the Hawaii Democratic convention. (Photo by Jan Welda Fleetham)

To Dean, fair trade means that "you can't dump your industrial byproducts in the river in one country if you can't do it in the United States."

"Right now," he said, "we're essentially paying a subsidy to businesses to move offshore because they know they don't have to comply with environmental regulations. That isn't good for America. It's not good for our workers, it's not good for Mexican workers, it's not good for Chinese workers."

Calling the capitalist system, "the greatest system that man has ever designed in order to take advantage of all our energies to be productive," Dean said the role of government is to make sure that "the excesses" of capitalism "are controlled and contained so that all of us benefit."

His example was environmental - the mad cow disease crisis that erupted last December when a single cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, was discovered in Washington state in a cow believed to be non-ambulatory - a downer. Some 50 countries banned beef imports from the United States, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is still struggling to reopen those markets and reassure the world that U.S. beef is safe to eat.

"Three months before the mad cow disease was discovered," Dean told the crowd, "the beef industry prevailed on the President to kill an amendment by Senator [Tom] Harkin from Iowa, that said there wouldn't be any downer cows allowed in the food supply."

The beef industry fought it on that basis that the amendment was unnecessary regulation, which they saw as a big problem," Dean explained. "The price they paid was $4.5 billion in profits. The price their employees paid is their work weeks went from 60 hours a week to 15. The price that small beef farmers paid is that they couldn't sell their products any more. It was a disaster," he said.

Dean made it clear that Democrats stand for some governmental regulation, but not "too much."

"We understand that too much regulation's a bad thing, but that doesn't mean we ought not to have any," he said. "Some regulation helps save workers lives, helps the working people make their fair share, and most importantly of all, it sends a strong message that the government's job is to make sure that everybody benefits from the extraordinary success of capitalism, not just people who make $45 million a year running those corporations."

In Hawaii, a long-time Democratic state that elected a Republican governor, Linda Lingle, in 2002, rousing the party faithful is what it will take to keep the state in the Democrat camp.

Mazie Hirono, the former Democratic Lieutenant Governor who Lingle defeated for the governorship, told ENS that both Hawaii and the United States need a more environmentally committed President.

Hirono said she expects "an environmental ethic will permeate the White House," if Kerry is elected.

Attorney Mazie Hirono was Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii from 1994 to 2002. (Photo courtesy U.S. Census Bureau)

Under a Kerry administration, we will see a move toward energy self-sufficiency, Hirono said. "Hawaii is the most oil dependent state, with about 99 percent of our energy coming from imported fossil fuels. Kerry will focus on alternate energy sources," she said, and that would be in Hawaii's best interest.

Dean says the Democrats in the Kerry camp are enthusiastic about renewable energy. In an interview after his speech, Dean told ENS, " Renewable energy is the best environmental issue that we can talk about. It encompasses jobs, defense policy and reduction of global warming."

"Kerry has an excellent renewable energy program," Dean said. "I came to know it very well from the many debates we had. It's about a substantial increase in renewables and dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels - using wind, solar, other renewables. That creates jobs, it reduces greenhouse gases, but it also is great for defense."

"Our oil money goes to the Middle East and some of it is diverted to terrorists and terrorist groups, and that's obviously not good for the United States," said Dean. "I think the President completely doesn't get that renewable energy policy is also a good anti-terrorist policy."

Questioned about the administration's hydrogen fuel cell policy, Dean was contemptuous. "That's blather on the administration's part," he said. "I almost threw up when George Bush put that in his address a year and half ago. He knows very well that technology is not going to be marketable for the next 10 years. The only reason they put that in the speech is to avoid having to do anything else about renewable energy for the remainder of his time in office, which I hope will be confined to the next seven months."

Hawaii State Senator J. Kalani English of Maui (left) with former Vermont Governor Howard Dean at the Sheraton Waikiki, May 29, 2004. (Photo by Jan Welda Fleetham)

Dean said as governor of Vermont, he supported electric vehicles, and hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles. "Hybrids are going to be very useful and we're seeing those starting to be sold now as gas gets more expensive," he said.

Dean supports a federal renewable energy portfolio. "We have one in our state, and we ought to have one federally," he said, bringing up Kerry's 20-20 initiative - 20 percent of the energy supply would come from renewables by the year 2020.

Democrats can bring the environment more to the forefront in this election by talking more about it, Dean says.

"Kerry does talk about it. Kerry has very solid credentials in the area of the environment," said Dean, in contrast to the President, who Dean says only claims to be protecting the environment.

"The Bush administration is well acknowledged to the be the worst administration in terms of protection of the environment since the League of Conservation Voters has been keeping records," Dean said. "The first President in my lifetime that has every gotten a zero from the League of Conservation Voters."

Back on the state level, the Hawaii Democrats passed many environmental resolutions at the convention. One supports Kerry's 20-20 renewable energy initiative. It calls for research and development funding to ensure there are sufficient renewable energy sources to supply 20 percent of Hawaii's energy needs by the year 2020.

Since both the state Senate and Assembly are held by Democrats, such as resolution might pass into law in the foreseeable future.

Other resolutions would minimize municipal solid waste going to landfills, support the acquisition of undeveloped coastal lands, particularly those directly threatened by developers, and protect watersheds using the traditional integrated Hawaiian approach to the land.

One resolution calls for eradication of the Caribbean tree frog, coqui, so named for its loud croak that can exceed 70 decibels, the state's maximum permissible sound level.

Other resolutions called on county and state governments to "instruct their administrators to enforce air, water and other environmental regulations," and repeal the automatic approval of land use and environmental permits for incinerators, power plants," as well as "quarries and resorts."

Internationally, the Hawaii Democrats passed a resolution urging the U.S. Senate to ratify the Kyoto climate protocol that limits the emission of six greenhouse gases by industrialized countries in the 2008 to 2012 time period.

"Rising ocean levels, a direct outcome of climate change, is particularly devastating to the residents and inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands and the Island societies of the Pacific region," the resolution says, pointing out that Kerry, and other Democratic senators support the protocol.

The Hawaii Democrats are sending their delegates to Boston to let the National Democratic Party know they want it to "demand that the U.S. Senate take immediate action to ratify the Kyoto Protocol Treaty."