Environmentalists have made it clear they will be heard in the upcoming national elections, and this is considered a plus for candidate Al Gore. A close look at Gore's actions and philosophy, however, indicates he may not be the champion environmentalists have in mind. Steven Zak is an attorney and writer. He has written about ethics and the environment for many publications including The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times.

LOS ANGELES -- From Humane Society demonstrations on Seattle streets to Sierra Club TV spots, environmentalism seems to be on the rise. But it would be a serious mistake to think this favors presidential hopeful Al Gore, the self-described environmental champion. It's fair to say that at least part of Gore's role in the original Clinton presidential campaign was to appeal to the green sympathies of the boomer generation. He had the credentials; he'd written a book. These environmentally-aware voters could not have foreseen that Gore would become the only "environmentalist" ever to fight to bring whaling back to America.

The federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, which prohibits harming whales in American waters, and the International Whaling Commission ban on commercial whaling around the globe, are among environmentalists' proudest accomplishments.

But Gore and Clinton have changed that. Thanks to their efforts, a migrating Pacific gray whale was killed this year with a spear and a high-powered rifle off the coast of Washington state. Despite considerable legal obstacles, the Clinton-Gore administration represented an American Indian group before the IWC in 1996 and 1997 and negotiated an exemption to the whaling ban. The effect has been to encourage whalers worldwide.

What sort of environmental philosophy allows killing of the creature most singularly associated with the green movement since the first Earth Day nearly 30 years ago? And why is the Sierra Club -- so concerned with pollution in George Bush's state of Texas -- silent about the presidential contender who worked to spill the blood of the environmental movement's most conspicuous symbol?

One thing is clear: There's environmentalism and there's environmentalism. More precisely, there's true environmentalism and there's conservationism.

The latter began around 1900 with forester Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt -- both avid hunters concerned with the depletion of "game." They saw wildlife as a "resource" to be "used wisely."

At the same time, John Muir emerged, leading a movement with very different motivations. What Pinchot saw as unwise use was for Muir a desecration.

"Nature's object in making animals," Muir wrote, "might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them."

Many of today's environmentalists hold more closely to Muir's ethic of respect than to Pinchot's ideas. For instance, efforts to save sea mammals seem motivated less by a notion that the animals are useful -- even in terms of the ocean's ecology -- than by a conviction that each is valuable for its own sake.

This ethic is alien to Gore, as the title to his 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance" makes clear.

Though he writes in pious tones about nature and "the sacredness of creation," Gore shows little concern for individual creatures. On the contrary, he speaks of "a new reverence for the environment as a whole -- not just its parts."

Like Pinchot, Gore is focused on human needs, not the intrinsic worth of nature. He wants to conserve species of animals for "their possible uses in medicine, agriculture, and the like." Dead dolphins on the beach do not stir empathy but concern "that the shores of our familiar world are fast eroding."

Eco-philosophers contrast "deep" and "shallow" ecologists -- and Gore has no use for the former. He dismisses the deep ecologists as "dangerously wrong," accusing Dave Forman of Earth First!, for example, of "actually advocating a kind of war on the human race."

A true environmentalist might like to say to Gore: I knew John Muir, and you, sir, are no John Muir.

Muir, of course, was the founder of the Sierra Club. Embracing Gore's brand of environmentalism would be a dishonor to the memory of the grandfather of the Greens.