Ed Hopkins acknowledges the war in Iraq coupled with the domestic jobless rate in the past year has pushed environmental concerns off the front pages.

"These have been very challenging times in terms of getting our message out," said the national director of the environmental quality program for the Sierra Club. "We are in a war. And the economy in large parts of the country isn’t that good.

"People tend to focus on those things over environmental issues," he added.

But Hopkins, who has been working on environmental issues for more than 30 years, says help is coming from an unlikely source.

"If the Bush administration were to take a subtler approach, or do half measures or compromises, it would be a lot more difficult to convince the public to be concerned," he said during a stop in Medford Wednesday while touring the Pacific Northwest. "But these are not subtle approaches. These are huge changes in environmental laws."

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The Bush administration is removing environmental laws that have been in place for some 30 years, he said.

"Rules that have been in place since the 1970s to protect clean air have been scrapped," he said. "And now they are proposing to weaken the laws regarding mercury standards, allowing a lot more mercury to be emitted from coal-fired power plants."

The issue is not Republican versus Democrat, said Hopkins, whose job focuses on national clean air and water and hazardous waste issues.

He noted that President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, signed the Clean Air Act as well as the National Environmental Policy Act in 1970.

When the Superfund law was reauthorized in 1986, President Ronald Reagan, another Republican, signed what amounts to a "polluter pay tax," Hopkins said.

When the Clean Air Act was last amended in 1990, President George H.W. Bush, the current president’s father and a Republican, signed those amendments, he said.

"Until now, there has been a bipartisan tradition of support for clean air and clean water because politicians know the public wants that," he said. "This president is making the most radical changes in environmental laws that we have ever seen."

The reason, he said, is industry support for those changes that curb or cut environmental laws.

"A lot of special interests — the chemical industry, mining industry, development industry, livestock industry — are very supportive of the administration," he said. "They are making these changes in concert with the Bush administration."

Hopkins would tell you he also represents a special interest, but counters that interest for a healthy environment is in the interest of the nation.

"People have assumed that the value of protecting our environment and the public health is something that is commonly shared throughout the country," he said. "They find it very surprising the Bush administration is quietly changing the rules that support those shared values."

The Sierra Club, which was founded by Scottish immigrant and naturalist John Muir in 1892, is the nation’s largest and oldest environmental group with an annual budget of $100 million. It now has about 750,000 members, up 50 percent in the last decade.

"If John Muir were watching today, he would say the Bush administration’s agenda is by far the most radical effort to reverse environmental laws that we’ve had in this country," Hopkins said.

"And that includes both Republican and Democratic presidents," he added. "Ronald Reagan is not remembered as an environmentalist but when I look back on his administration, I think, ‘Gee, that wasn’t so bad, compared to what we have today.’ "

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com