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POLITICS & COMMUNITY by Steve Mencher April 15, 1996 WEB RESOURCES Congress In A Nutshell: "An environmental consumer-awareness guide for the current Congress." Rainforest Action Network: A well-designed and informative site with an emphasis on activism. Environmental Law Around the World: Pick a country and then follow the links to learn about its environmental legislation (or lack thereof). Earthwatch: A non-profit organization that enables concerned citizens to spend one to three weeks helping scientists and scholars search for environmental solutions. Rainforest Wildlife? And the Senators said they were examining environmental issues. Sure.	The check is in the mail. Really, Uncle Sam. This week, my wife transferred about 75% of our life savings into our checking account, in order to pay our 1995 Federal taxes. We were victims of "success disaster:" having our best year yet, we paid the legal amount of estimated taxes, based on the previous year's (1994) mediocre earnings-- unfortunately, that sum was $4,500 shy of what the IRS wants today. I was thinking about this impending catastrophe during the first week in April, when I ran across five United States Senators at a tropical forestry and conservation field station in the Costa Rican rain forest. The Senators were on a scientific fact-finding trip. In a press release that was prepared by the office of Senator Alan Simpson (but not released until a phone call from me) the trip is described as a visit to "South America to examine natural resource development, trade and various environmental issues."
Senator Howell Heflin, AL-D	Except for the shaky grasp of geography (isn't Costa Rica in *Central* America?) it sounds perfectly reasonable. Until you look at the list of Senators, and realize that four out of five of them have something in common: Senator Howell Heflin, Democrat, Alabama Senator Al Simpson, Republican, Wyoming Senator Claiborne Pell, Democrat, Rhode Island Senator Mark Hatfield, Republican, Oregon Senator Frank Murkowski, Republican, Alaska If you don't get the connection, don't feel bad. Neither did I. But when I got to the Costa Rican field station, run by the Organization of Tropical Studies, one of the senior staffers there was going ballistic. He told me: "It's a friggin' waste of time. Four out of the five members who are coming are retiring at the end of the year [eds. note: all but Murkowski]. It's just a nice trip for them and their wives to the tropics. It's a friggin' waste of the taxpayers' money." He didn't say "friggin."
Al Simpson, WY-R	Knowing I was about to be $4,500 in the hole on my taxes, my mind started to race. What if I shot the Senators with my video camera, sold the tapes to Hard Copy or Nightline, or Dateline or 60 Minutes?? (delusions of grandeur, there). I could be exposing this major scandal, peg the story for tax day, April 15th (!), and recoup my losses, while doing good in the tradition of the great muckrakers of an earlier generation, like Woodward and Bernstein. I began to ask the senators some questions, giving them ample rope to hang themselves. Howell Heflin must have seen the look in my eye when I asked about the purpose of the trip: "In nature, we're finding many things that can help mankind: help with our diseases, with food, many aspects of life," he said. "This is an interesting trip we're going on. No really plush places. No junkets, you might say." When he said no plush places, he wasn't kidding. At their next stop apparently, the Senators would be sleeping in a Smithsonian field station near Manaus, Brazil, in hammocks, under a tent. There was a lot of joking among the Senators and their wives about this upcoming visit to the Amazon. But Heflin himself had brought up the idea of "junkets," not me. And in fact, as we crossed the bridge over the Sarapiquí River, Heflin shouted out, from his motorized golf cart "Junketeers Ho!" So much for fear of the Fourth Estate.
Claiborne Pell, RI-D	I moved on to talk with Senator Mark Hatfield, a hero of mine since the days he stood up on the Senate floor and opposed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which dragged us into the Vietnam War. In his thirty years in the Senate, he told me, he's seen a lot of badly organized trips for which there was not really a lot of justification. Given the chance to go on the record, and blow the whistle on his fellow Senators and their junketeering, he demurred. I'm no "Bill Bradley, who just wants to bash the Senate." "I think when you go on trips abroad...you have to be more than a sightseer talking to the chief politicians of other countries. I think we have a real mission here in our environmental, ecological thrust." I moved in for the kill, asking whether he plans to pursue these issues after his retirement. He feinted, "Yes, but, I think I'll turn that problem over to others." So why are we paying for your trip?, I wanted to ask him, but didn't have the courage. I mulled over these issues in the next few days, even going so far as to do a televised "stand-up" introduction to the story. But something nagged at my conscience. Claiborne Pell. He came to Washington in 1961 with Jack Kennedy, and carried on Kennedy's work long after JFK was gone. No Senator has done more for the environment or the arts (two things I care about) than Pell. Doesn't he deserve to see how people are now using the money he helped appropriate -- beginning to do the difficult scientific work that's going to be necessary to save the planet?
Mark Hatfield, OR-R and Frank Murkowski, AK-R	And the whole concept. Junket. Scandal. In fact, I realized that I agree with the impetus behind bringing these Senators to the rain forests of Costa Rica and Brazil, and to the coast of Chile, their final stop. There's a revolution underway in our understanding of how global ecosystems are tied together by the oceans and the atmosphere. There will be less and less talk in the next few years about "saving" the rain forests, and more about human-centered scientific and economic solutions to problems that cut across national boundaries. I can see nothing more important than giving these elders the best quality environmental education, so they can see with their own eyes that what happens in Costa Rica, or Brazil, or Chile is going to have an effect on what happens back home in Wyoming or Oregon, Alabama and Rhode Island. And let's hope they and their wives had some fun too. These old guys won't be returning to Washington next year. All the better. There's really nothing that can be done inside the haze of the Washington Beltway to attack the world's environmental stresses. In a few months, these four senior citizens will be back in their home states explaining to people that worrying about the fate of the world's rain forests isn't just meaningless do-good Liberal nonsense. I'm glad to pay for that. Aren't you? Steve Mencher is a former producer for National Public Radio, and a charter member of the Acme Content Providers of Washington, D.C.