‘I Have a Nightmare’
Posted by Joshua Claybourn on 12 March 2005 | 4 responses
I really like Nicholas Kristof’s latest column where he worries the environmental movement is in “deep trouble.” In the NYT he explains:
[E]nvironmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they’ve lost credibility with the public. Some do great work, but others can be the left’s equivalents of the neocons: brimming with moral clarity and ideological zeal, but empty of nuance.
Moreover:
The loss of credibility is tragic because reasonable environmentalists – without alarmism or exaggerations – are urgently needed.
Given the uncertainties and trade-offs, priority should go to avoiding environmental damage that is irreversible, like extinctions, climate change and loss of wilderness. And irreversible changes are precisely what are at stake with the Bush administration’s plans to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge, to allow roads in virgin wilderness and to do essentially nothing on global warming. That’s an agenda that will disgrace us before our grandchildren.
So it’s critical to have a credible, nuanced, highly respected environmental movement. And right now, I’m afraid we don’t have one.
Kristof’s piece was prompted by an essay on “The Death of Environmentalism.” The essay drew sharp responses from lots of environmentalists.
4 Responses to “‘I Have a Nightmare’”
Kristoff’s biggest failing is that he published this two days after the president’s Clean Skies Initiative, a major target of environmentalists, was effectively killed for the year. Quite an acheivement for an irrelevant, dead movement.
Anyway, although “The Death of Environmentalism” is worth considering, Kristof’s column isn’t. I’ve got more commentary here:
http://twoshotsandanolive.blogspot.com/2005/03/i-too-have-nightmare-whats-problem.html
It’s a mystery to me why the Republican party is so staunchly anti-environment. They’ve got the same (but opposite) wacky image as EarthFirst: kneejerk support of pollutors, mining companies, oil companies, timber companies, and construction contractors. The reason Bush’s plans to drill more in Alaska and minimize restrictions on air pollution keep failing is that a solid majority of the voters (including many Christian conservatives) believe that there should be at least some attention paid to environmental protection, and Congressmen know it.
In the 70s the GOP finally dropped their support of the white supremacists and got behind civil rights; now the only argument is how far civil rights protections should go. Republicans quietly dropped their fanatical defense of the tobacco industry in the last decade or so. It’s time for them to make the same shift on the environment.
My senior U.S. Senator, James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, has called the EPA a gestapo agency that should be abolished. (Of course he also once called for George McGovern to be hanged for treason.)
I do believe that conservatives and liberals should be able to come together to find some sensibile solutions that allow both for economic expansion and environmental protection.
Many conservatives favor environmentalism because they are actually philosophial descendents of Jefferson. Conservatism is a dynamic philosophy in America right now because it is a movement that can trace ancestors back to Hamilton and Jefferson alike. Can twenty first century American liberalism do the same?