This week marks the 34th anniversary of the first Earth Day. But for the 43th President of the United States, every day is Flat-Earth Day when it comes to the environmental challenges facing our country. Aside from remaining in denial about the reality of global climate change, the president also remains committed to the industrial-age myth that a clean environment is incompatible with a prosperous economy.

It's simply not true that dirty air and water are essential elements of a good business climate. Just ask the many seaside communities that need sewage-free beaches to ensure a constant flow of tourism revenue. Or ask America's commercial fishers, who heard the FDA tell them "Sorry, Charlie," when it warned mothers and young children about that extra helping of mercury slathered on tuna salad sandwiches.

Economic growth and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand. That's the Earth Day message of Sen. John Kerry, who took the occasion to propose a new era of pollution reduction measures that would simultaneously promote business and industry.

Kerry said that as president he would restore many Clinton administration initiatives Bush had reversed or simply let languish. For example, the Cal-Fed Bay Delta program, which sets out strong, clear federal goals for clean water standards, but encourages California communities, farmers, fishing interests, and environmental groups to work out home-grown solutions to promote ample supplies of clean water.

But more broadly, Kerry aims at the kind of second-generation environmental policies that the Progressive Policy Institute has proposed for years -- tough on goals, but flexible on means, and sensitive to local community and business needs.

This week Kerry proposed four new second-generation initiatives that will link environmental improvements to improvements in economic development opportunities and basic "quality of life" standards for communities: (1) better testing standards for public water (like the lead-laden stuff in Washington, D.C., that has boosted bottled water sales in the nation's capital); (2) reducing mercury and other harmful emissions from power plants that eventually find their way into fish tissue and makes some species unsafe to eat; (3) decreasing pollution runoff from farms, factories and residential neighborhoods that can shut down beaches; and (4) devoting more resources to create marine preserves to protect the dolphins, coral, and seabirds that live just off our shores.

Along the same lines, Kerry earlier proposed to create 500,000 new green jobs over the next decade as part of a broader goal of producing 20 percent of U.S. energy from renewable fuels by 2020.

While the president is inflexibly mired way off on the Right side of the "green wars" that have long pitted business groups against environmentalists, Kerry is clearly trying to reach out beyond his strong base of support in the environmental community. While he has consistently opposed new oil drilling off Florida, he supports drilling where it already has been approved. Likewise, he's "all for" development, though it should be "smarter." And while he has pushed for higher emissions standards for auto manufacturers, he says: "I'm going to work with the industry. We don't want to lose jobs. We don't want jobs to go overseas."

"The same old, tired arguments keep coming at us," Kerry said this week, "that if you want a strong economy you have to stop doing some of these things that they call extreme. I have always believed in reasonableness. And so do you."

So do we. And we sincerely hope the president leaves the Flat-Earth faction and joins the Earth Day consensus aimed at reasonable solutions to America's environmental and economic challenges.