Clark says environment plan would prevent 100,000 deaths
When he presents his environmental plan today, retired Army General Wesley K. Clark will cast his goals in unusual terms for a political campaign: not emissions reduced, but lives saved.
By 2020, Clark says, his environmental plan would prevent the deaths of 100,000 people who would otherwise have died from cancer or respiratory ailments.
Clark aides say those figures are based on a study done by Save the Clean Air Act, an environmental advocacy group. The study took figures the Environmental Protection Agency uses to evaluate risks from pollutants and compared lower levels of emissions, such as those Clark advocates, to what the Bush administration allows.
Most of the other Democratic presidential candidates call for similar emissions standards -- which, Clark aides concede, would affect a similar number of lives. But they say describing environmental policies in terms of lives saved, not tons of pollutants stopped, fits into the "turnaround plan" theme Clark is using this week to present a string of domestic policies.
"The idea of the turnaround plan is to make people understand that General Clark believes leaders should be accountable, and part of accountability is setting easy-to-understand, easy-to-measure goals," said Clark's communications director, Matt Bennett. Changes in emissions standards, Bennett said, are "neither easy to understand nor easy to explain."
Also yesterday, Clark announced a plan to increase the median American family income by $3,000, with median income defined as $51,800.
Clark's environmental plan, which he will outline today in New Castle, N.H., calls for "strong limits" on power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and carbon dioxide. Clark would encourage the Environmental Protection Agency to promote greater enforcement of the Clean Air Act, and seek a bill to double fines for repeat environmental offenders.
Clark would use money from the increased fines to create an "Environmental Compensation Fund" that would be distributed to local communities, for use in monitoring pollution and boosting local enforcement efforts.
He also would require expanding plants to use modern pollution-control equipment, and would work to develop new pollution-control technologies, in part by expanding the testing process, and in part by creating tax incentives to make pollution-control equipment financially feasible for companies.
And his policy papers say he would "tell the truth about air pollution," criticizing the Bush administration for allegedly withholding information about the air quality at Ground Zero after Sept. 11, 2001.
Every Democratic presidential candidate has criticized the Bush administration's environmental policies. Most oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and blast Bush for proposing to limit authority of the Clean Water Act. Clark's proposed standards for air pollutants are similar to those in a bill pending in Congress known as the Clean Power Act, which has been cosponsored by Senators John F. Kerry, Joseph I. Lieberman, and John Edwards.
The League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group that has compiled data on the candidates, issued a news release yesterday giving its highest accolades to Kerry and Lieberman. The group said it endorsed any Democratic candidate over Bush, and said Clark -- who has never held public office, and has no political environmental record -- "has staked out a series of solidly progressive positions on a wide range of environmental issues."
The group said it disagrees with Clark and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean for proposing to renegotiate the Kyoto treaty on global warming to include developing nations.
Among the Democrats, Kerry -- who, in some polls, is battling Clark for a distant second place behind Dean in the New Hampshire primary -- has cast himself as an environmental champion.
Patrick Healy of the Globe staff contributed to this article. 
