Environmentalists Launch Earth Legacy Campaign

SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 8, 2004 (ENS) - A nonpartisan group of environmental and foreign policy luminaries have joined with U.S. nongovernmental organizations to announce the Earth Legacy Campaign.

The centerpiece of the campaign is a call for Congress to reassert U.S. global environmental leadership by establishing a commission to review the state of the global environment, its effect on U.S. interests, and current efforts to protect it.

The campaign's declaration states in part, "World population expected to grow from six to nine billion by mid-century, spreading industrialization, increasing urbanization, and rising consumption are creating enormous pressures on the air, water, and land of our small planet."

"Without urgent action to reverse current trends," the declaration states, "the degradation of the Earth's environment will undermine our public health, national security, and economic interests."

The campaign was announced Friday at a luncheon where San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and the United Nations launched plans for a major celebration of World Environment Day on June 5, 2005, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations.

"We need a new consensus and foundation upon which to build a renewed U.S. commitment to protect the global environment," the campaign declared.

The Earth Legacy campaign is backed by a coalition of 19 environmental and foreign affairs groups, including Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Worldwatch Institute, Defenders of Wildlife, and Citizens for Global Solution.

The campaign is co-chaired by Jacob Scherr, director of the International Program at the NRDC, and Harry Blaney, president of the Coalition for American Leadership Abroad.

"The dramatic decline in U.S. leadership on global environmental issues is not only an environmental issue, but it is now clearly an acute concern for the foreign policy community," said Blaney.

The goal of the campaign, Scherr explained, is "to stimulate a national discussion about what sort of planet we want to leave to our children.”