Jackson Takes Militant Stand on Environmental Protection

MENDOCINO, Calif. — With the crashing surf of California’s rugged North Coast as a backdrop, the Rev. Jesse Jackson went stumping Saturday for the environmental vote.

Dressed in jeans and a casual sweater before a rally of about 500 people atop a wind-swept bluff strewn with wildflowers, Jackson issued a series of campaign pledges in which he aligned himself with almost every established environmental cause.

“It is unnecessary to destroy the Earth to save the Earth. There are other ways out,” he said to a cheering crowd. “I love this Earth.”

Jackson’s speech drew together a number of ideas he has put forward before, to form what his staff billed as a major statement of environmental policy. It was, by any measure, the most militant offered by any presidential candidate this year.

Questions Oil Leasing

With an eye on California’s June 7 primary, Jackson contended that any further sale of offshore leases for oil and gas exploration is unnecessary for the nation’s energy security.

“There will be no drilling for oil on the North Coast (of California) under a Jackson presidency,” he promised and added that he strongly supported a measure sponsored by Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) and Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston to establish a marine sanctuary in offshore coastal areas that the Reagan Administration has sought to lease.

A Jackson energy policy that stresses conservation, and the formation of a Pan American Energy and Environmental Alliance with the nation’s hemispheric neighbors, would “make every other lease sale that despoils our coastline--from Alaska to Florida to Massachusetts--obsolete,” he maintained.

Equal to Arms Control

Putting environmental issues on an equal plane with arms control, he called for a “world environmental summit,” and said it was as “important as a world arms control congress.”

Jackson said his environmental policies also would include:

--Phasing out nuclear energy.

--Redirecting industry to “manufacture products using less toxic materials.”

--Mandatory recycling to prevent the incineration of wastes.

--Encouraging farmers to shift to “organic farming and other safe production methods.”

--Reduction of smog by manufacturing cars “which don’t create it.”

--Measures to restore timberlands and wetlands, protect wilderness areas, protect the Earth’s ozone layer and stop acid rain.

Painting a vision of an environmental utopia, Jackson offered little insight into the methods he would use to achieve it. But he insisted that all of this could be accomplished without a loss of employment.

Urging the creation of a new Civilian Conservation Corps, he said: “My Administration will put our unemployed people to work at the very best job I can think of--restoring the planet.”

Pollution, Jackson said as small children romped in the grass and one spectator wandered through the crowd in an antelope costume, is a variant of “chemical warfare.”

Opposes Chemical Companies

But he emphasized that his fight was not with small farmers, loggers and miners whose labor results in pollution, but against “chemical companies and research bodies and government agencies” that employ and regulate them.

“All of us on spaceship Earth are victims of chemical warfare,” he said.

“If a foreign power poisoned our air with acid rain, dumped toxic wastes in our water supply, left dioxin in our earth and threatened the ozone layer, we’d see this as a threat to national security. We would be right.

“But we are doing this to ourselves. And no matter who does it, it’s chemical warfare, and it must end. We oppose nuclear war, and we must oppose environmental war. The environment is a national security issue.”

Turning his cadenced rhetoric again to arms control, Jackson described nuclear weapons researchers as “scientific hostages.”

‘Dismantle the Bombs’

His voice rising to a gravelly cry that boomed across the steep coastal bluffs, he said: “It’s time to dismantle the bombs.

“Turn over our scientists, our researcher labs to the environment,” he said. “Free our scientists and engineers. Free our scientists. Release them. Let them create and not destroy.”

As the rally ended and the crowd dispersed, a green 1974 Volvo drove up and its driver offered Jackson the microphone of a radio tuned to maritime frequencies monitored by the salmon fleet.

“Let us fish together and vote together,” he radioed.

“Go get ‘em, Jesse,” an unidentified fisherman called back.