Leadership: Is Al Gore a Hero Or a Traitor?

Al Gore the Senator wrote Earth In The Balance, a warning about global warming and other looming catastrophes of "the environmental crisis." At once passionate and wonky, the book reflected years of personal study and policymaking. Larded with stirring phrases--"We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization"--and bold prescriptions, like eliminating the internal-combustion engine in 25 years, Earth in the Balance secured Gore's place in the environmentalists' pantheon as America's greenest national politician.

Al Gore the Vice President has been an influential adviser and workhorse for the Clinton Administration on many issues, including trade, with his high-profile trouncing of Ross Perot in a NAFTA debate; foreign policy, with his up-front role in the Kosovo crisis; and technology, where he has championed the multibillion-dollar effort to wire all schools to the Internet (even if he didn't create it).

But now that Gore is running for the White House and preparing to step out of Clinton's shadow, environmentalists and other voters want to know how green the Vice President really is. Does his record on the environment as Clinton's right-hand man match the exalted and ambitious rhetoric of his book, or has he, as he phrased it in Earth in the Balance, succumbed to the "tendency to put a finger to the political winds and proceed cautiously"? In other words, is Al Gore the candidate the guy who wrote the book?

His own answer is a quick and unequivocal yes, and there's plenty of evidence to back him up. Thanks to Gore, the Clinton Administration is the most pro-environment in a generation. Gore has placed staunch allies in top environmental positions, most notably his one-time Senate legislative director, Carol Browner, as boss of the Environmental Protection Agency, where she has been a tenacious pollution fighter. The next proof of that will be tough new EPA proposals, expected by the end of the month, for regulations mandating cleaner gasoline and lower limits on auto pollution, particularly from sport utility vehicles. The Administration has pushed through Congress important legislation, such as the California Desert Protection Act, which covers more public land than any other conservation law affecting the Lower 48 states. Clinton and Gore largely beat back--with some exceptions--an assault on environmental laws and regulations by Republicans when they captured the House and Senate in 1994, and have found ways around hostile legislators to implement policies favored by conservationists, like reining in the U.S. Forest Service's road-building program.

The green lobby has never had better White House access and is consulted early about legislation and regulations, following years of virtual exile under Reagan and Bush. "We're part of the process now," says Dan Weiss, the Sierra Club's political director.