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Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that the environmental movement is dead and we need some new kinda something else, which they don’t much get into. Milstine tries to point how worthless we are and wasn’t it much better during the glory days of the Wilderness Act, The Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Moyers, on the other hand, seems to be saying that the Bible Thumpers have taken over the country and are trying to take over the world, so what the rest of us think doesn’t matter. All three pieces have on thing in common; we suck and we are losing. And they all have another thing in common. They are stupid. Please read Captain Paul Watson’s response elsewhere on this site if you need any further proof. The reason they are stupid is it ignores the one basic problem with human beings. People can hold two conflicting ideas in their heads at the same time. While one side of our heads watch the Discovery Channel and see dinosaurs, Neanderthals and black holes, the other side of our brains believes the Pope talks to God; we are the reincarnation of Cleopatra’s dress designer and that space aliens are buying up all the good Florida real estate. This is rooted in our separation of reality into the natural and the supernatural. Everybody believes in something weird that nobody else can either disprove or verify. Personally I believe there is a little bit of the real Elvis in every Elvis impersonator, but I can’t prove it. The point is I don’t really care what is going on the inside of someone’s brain. That’s how wars get started. Moyers seems to think that all of the Christians are apocalyptical, millennial universalists, and therefore don’t care about the environment. He sites the much-quoted James Watt line that Jesus will come back when we cut the last tree, and that that is the view of every conservative Christian, from Aunt Betty all the way up to the White House. Well, I had dinner with James Watt a few years back and he told me that he never said that. He considers himself a conservationist and is an avid river runner, and definitely not the wimp he was portrayed to be by the news media. His real belief is in property rights and making money of public resources, hardly a fringe ideology. Many heathen Democrats and more than a few godless liberals feel the same way. I think Moyers talking about Christians in this way is about as stupid as Bill O’Riley talking about how them Muslims think. The real problem with all of this thinking is that it is based on polling data. Polling data, of course, is like information, except that it is useless and expensive. If you ask a stupid question you will get a stupid answer. I’ll just bet Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t spend a lot of time going over polling data in his segregated The other problem with all this hooey is that both Shellenberger and Milstine look at the bunch of suites we got in While it is easy to criticize the Big Ten groups for being an ineffective bureaucracy, or a bunch of wimps, if you will, we have to keep things in perspective. We are up against a big enemy and there has never been that many of us. We are the thin green line. But we cannot be as narrowly defined as Shellenberger and Milstine portray. Environmentalists come from a broad-based, multicultural movement from all over this planet, from the frozen tundra of I can hardly believe that it is big news that environmentalists are losing the fight to save the Earth and are in the political minority. And these pundits talk about it like we are just another organized special interest group, like people who suffer from psoriasis or were victimized by bad cable-television service. It’s really not our fault that most people are stupid. We didn’t make them stupid and the stupidest thing about all of this is that somehow it’s now our responsibility to change the course of human history simply because we are stupid enough to point out that we are wrecking this planet with our greed and self-centered behavior. And I don’t think it would be very hard to find a Baptist Minister, a Priest, a Rabbi, Imam or Rastafari who would agree with us on this. We can’t blame the environmentalists and we can’t blame the Christians, so how about placing the blame where it belongs; corporate power; corruption; poverty; an absence of the rule of law and the lack of justice. And, of course, the fact most people think when it comes to the Earth, that there is a free lunch, no matter which religion they belong to. You can’t blame Carl Pope for everything. If I took all the crap I’ve read from these whining, sniveling nobodies seriously, I’d stay in bed and drink Nyquil and watch NASCAR all day. To say that the environmental movement lacks vision, courage, decent strategies or effectiveness is just wrong. Collectively, we have made major changes in the way people think about our world. And we may even be on the cusp of a fundamental reordering of the way we act. The Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and even the Industrial Revolution were neither predicted by pollsters nor coordinated by Foundation Program Officers. Yet they changed the way the modern societies see themselves and obliterated many long cherished beliefs and practices. If I have faith in anything, it’s that people are more capable of reading the writing on the wall then what’s passing for writing on the environment these days. Sure we have a rat’s ass of a chance of winning our battles. That’s not news and neither is the fact that we will never stop trying. And if we lose, like my buddy Floyd says, “Come back in a Million Years and no one will ever know we were here”. Tune in next week as Mike Roselle delivers another well-deserved tongue lashing to a bunch of urban suits in Blue States who think they used to be environmentalists. Here in the Red States environmentalism is very much alive. |
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