Heinz Kerry has an ecology agenda

PITTSBURGH -- Teresa Heinz was in a potentially awkward position when she became an outspoken environmental activist nearly two decades ago. She served as a board member of Environmental Defense at the same time that her husband, Senator John Heinz, was supported by the United Mine Workers. A clash seemed likely when the environmental group began pushing for clean air legislation opposed by many coal workers in Pennsylvania.

But behind the scenes, Teresa Heinz helped persuade her husband to support a clean air provision proposed by Environmental Defense, enabling polluters to trade so-called ''emission credits" with companies that reduced pollutants more than the law required, and her husband became one of the most important Republican votes for passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act. Then, just before John Heinz died in a plane crash in 1991, one of his last conversations with his wife concerned their plan to use part of the family fortune on environmental efforts. Her foundations have since poured nearly $200 million into an array of environmental causes, including large sums to help Pittsburgh become an environmental model for the nation.

Now, with her second husband, Senator John F. Kerry, running for president, Teresa Heinz Kerry again is asserting herself on environmental issues, partly because of her belief that the Bush administration is undoing the clean air law that her first husband -- and the first President Bush -- helped pass. In a series of speeches, including one earlier this month, Heinz Kerry has said it is ''a sin against humankind" that the current Bush administration has rolled back environmental policy on clean air and water.

In a statement to the Globe, Heinz Kerry sought to explain that view by providing a contrast between her work in cooperation with President George H. W. Bush on the Clean Air Act and the Kyoto accord on global warming, and her belief that President George W. Bush is undercutting both efforts. ''A sin against humankind is allowing something that no person or community or even a country can protect itself against by acting alone," said Heinz Kerry, who plans to continue overseeing her charitable foundations if her husband is elected president.

She said George H. W. Bush ''endorsed the need for a community of nations to act in concert to address global environmental issues. But his son did not even bother to engage the Kyoto protocol. . . . Our country has enjoyed a long history of bipartisan support for the environment, but this administration has cynically undercut that, offering proposal after proposal that pretends to protect the environment while actually rolling back safeguards."

Heinz Kerry's criticism also deals with a clean air policy of the Bush administration known as new source review. Critics say the policy allows too many older, polluting power plants to stay in operation, while the Bush administration says the policy helps eliminate court battles and would reduce harmful emissions by 70 percent over the next 15 years.

A White House spokesman said she was stunned by Heinz Kerry's comments about sinful policies. ''Those comments are irresponsible and are not borne out by the facts of what President Bush has accomplished," said Dana Perino, spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

While Heinz Kerry has spoken out on many issues, including childhood health and education, her statements on the environment lead some to draw comparisons to the way Hillary Rodham Clinton made herself a key player on health care during her husband's administration. Heinz Kerry has made clear she would not take an overt policy role as Clinton did, but even friends say she is expected to have a deep influence on her husband's far-ranging plans for everything from a reduction in global warming to a proposal to end US reliance on Mideast oil.

''She will certainly always have a prominent role in the environmental agenda," said Thomas Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, a Washington-based organization that is partly funded by Heinz Kerry's charities. ''That is one of the things she will really be recognized as doing."

That is precisely what concerns some of Heinz Kerry's critics. The $200 million in environmental grants distributed by Heinz Kerry charities over the past 13 years includes millions given for cleanup projects in western Pennsylvania, such as money for a riverfront park in Pittsburgh and the city's new convention center. But Heinz Kerry also has supported groups that have taken on administrations of both political parties. Heinz Kerry's charities have given $2.7 million to Environmental Defense, which is about half of 1 percent of the organization's operating budget since she joined the board in 1987. (She is on a leave of absence from the board.)

Environmental Defense has filed suit against the Bush administration over a variety of environmental issues. In one case, it battled the Environmental Protection Agency over the legal requirement that the government designate areas that did not meet clean air standards. As a result, those areas should become cleaner, according to Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp. He noted that the group also has defended some Bush policies, such as pollution rules to protect national parks from haze.

The Capital Research Center, which describes itself as a conservative watchdog of philanthropies, has expressed concern about Heinz Kerry's assertion that she plans to continue to oversee her foundations if her husband is elected president -- and presumably give large sums to environmental causes -- at the same time that her husband would be overseeing US environmental policy.

''She would have a huge impact. There would be a big swing to the left" on environmental issues, said Terrence Scanlon, president of the Capital Research Center.

Heinz Kerry's friends and allies said concern about her impact on environmental policy is overstated. Despite her tough language about Bush's policies, friends said, Heinz Kerry's method is usually to try to bring together environmentalists, scientists, and industry leaders in an effort to develop a market-oriented compromise, such as her enthusiasm for the emissions trading program in the 1990 Clean Air Act.

Andrew McElwaine, who was Senator Heinz's environmental aide at the time, recalled that Heinz was endorsed by the United Mine Workers and concerned about the loss of mining jobs in Pennsylvania. The senator's wife, through her board membership at Environmental Defense, grew to support the organization's idea of allowing companies to trade emission credits if they cut pollutants more than the law required. That would encourage overall pollution to be cut by the least expensive methods. ''Her role, as I remember it, was putting Senator [Heinz] in touch with a new way of thinking" about clean air legislation, McElwaine said. ''She never said, 'You have to do this.' That is not the way she works."

While growing up in the savannahs of Africa, Heinz Kerry says, she felt a bond to the land. After marrying John Heinz, an heir to the ketchup fortune who became a Republican senator, she moved to Pittsburgh and learned firsthand about the impact of pollution from steel mills and other sources on a densely populated area. And she watched as Pittsburgh gradually changed its image, becoming a greener, cleaner metropolis.

Teresa Heinz's relationship to Kerry was formed in the crucible of environmentalism. The two first met at an Earth Day event in 1990, introduced by John Heinz. Then, a year after John Heinz died, Teresa Heinz and Kerry met at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil, where she was a nongovernmental appointee of President George H. W. Bush and Kerry represented a Senate delegation.

''The nature of the relationship between John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry is that these are two people who met early on through the environment," said Jeffrey R. Lewis, who was a staff director to Senator Heinz and now is the Washington-based president of the Heinz Family Philanthropies, which is Heinz Kerry's personal philanthropy. Having watched Heinz Kerry and John Kerry work together in recent years, Lewis said that ''the nexus between the two of them is the environment."

Maxwell King, president of the Heinz Endowments, sees the same connection. King, who went to St. Paul's School with Kerry four decades ago, said in an interview in Pittsburgh that he could imagine the senator's wife ''having a real impact on his thinking about energy use and global warming."

Kerry had a strong environmental record before he met Teresa Heinz, and he has a lifetime rating of 96 percent from the League of Conservation Voters. The group has given President Bush the equivalent of a zero because of what it calls his efforts to roll back environmental regulations. In January, before the crucial New Hampshire primary, the league endorsed Kerry, breaking with its tradition of waiting until after a candidate becomes the likely party nominee. League officials said the endorsement was not influenced by Heinz Kerry's financial support for environmental causes.

Heinz Kerry's statement at a New York City speech on May 8 that the Bush administration's environmental policies are ''a sin against humankind" was reported in The New York Times and confirmed by a transcript provided by one of her aides. She was repeating a theme she delivered in April 2003 upon receiving the World Ecology Award at the University of Missouri. In that speech, she singled out George H. W. Bush for praise for signing the Clean Air Act. But she left no doubt that she does not appreciate the current Bush administration's policies.

Michael Kranish can be reached at kranish@globe.com.