Happy Earth Day!
I consider myself an environmentalist but most of the time I feel that I am not doing jack shit. Its a sad thing that even among people that care, those that do anything are few in number, because I am probably not the only one. That said I'll make a feeble attempt at doing something by putting out this message. This is my first diary by the way so thanks for reading.
The Earth doesn't need saving
The Earth is in great shape and will be for foreseeable millions of years, and the earth too will be replete with life, human and otherwise, and will be abundant. We live in a beautiful place that if people would look around, actually is the garden of Eden.
The thing we want to save is the ability for the Earth to support human population at current levels with the same kind of comfort and security that we have now. This aspect of the Earth is under serious threat. If we look at what happens historically when populations collapse, its not an experience we want to visit on any generation, not to mention our kids or grand kids. Aside from my love of natural things, this is a major reason why I am alarmed at the state of the world today with respect to these issues.
It would be smart if we looked at economics more holistically, taking in to account the value of environmental conditions, and took the political stand that people or organizations that cause damage need to pay for it. Damage is inevitable and all of us are responsible to some degree. The people who cause the most damage though are the same people who virtually own our government and media and largely control the levers of power. What they are doing in terms of squandering the Earth's resources needs to be framed in terms of theft. They are stealing from the future and from our children.
We need strong governmental intervention to fix this
The aforementioned powers that be have put forth a great deal of effort to push Libertarian philosophy which has become widely pervasive. Aspects of this philosophy are attractive and I for a while adopted these ideas when I was younger.
A fundamental aspect of this is the idea that government is intrinsically evil. This idea needs to be pushed back on. Belief that government is evil has infected all political walks in the country. What we need is accountability. Lack of accountability from our leaders has lead to betrayal and well earned mistrust. That said though, government has been a part of civilization for the time that there has been civilization. Though there are a few good ideas to glean from it such as the government largrely staying out of the social realm, Libertarianism is a utopian philosophy and should be set aside like communism for its flaws. Government is not evil. It is a medium for power, used by people for good or evil. Thinking of it as evil is a self fulfilling prophecy, in part because people get elected who don't like or respect the institutions they work within.
In this country it is established at least on paper that government is a medium for power which ideally belongs to all citizens. This is a good foundation. The government is ours to make of as we wish. In the case of Environmentalism, we need the government to provide robust regulation to the marketplace. The marketplace is not able to take in to account the costs of damaging the environment in a fashion that is quick enough to protect security and actually keep the marketplace from collapsing along with the population. Leaving political power to the marketplace in this case is an insane idea.
Regular guys like me are busy working hard and raising families and often do not have the energy to take individual action. There are plenty of really nice things we could do to make a little difference in our carbon footprint, and we should all do these things, but they are realistically not going to happen without strong incentives that are felt in real time. The government needs to make it more inconvenient and expensive to have a wasteful carbon footprint. Government is the only entity with the power and organization to do anything about this. As the market based powers continue to deny and delay action on climate change, their window to have a market based solution to the problem is closing.
Human instinct run riot
Political debate in this country is run by human instinct. Human instinct sees human enemies that we fight against. If ISIS had a weapon that could swamp NYC by melting Greenland, our country could easily be talked in to turning itself inside out to fight this threat. Instead though, Al Gore is the enemy to many. I don't know how to fight back against this but foes of environmentalism have a great handle on psychological issues and know how to manipulate the public on a level where the facts don't matter. Perhaps they need to be fought back on on this level. Perhaps the point can be made that to freeload is un-american. We get cast as being against the use of resources. Perhaps this should be framed as being against the theft of resources. The robber barons of our times are thieves of resources, stealing them from our future.
Most republican politicians are pathologically against environmentalist causes because they have to be against team Al Gore. This is unnatural with respect to their base and the real issues at hand. Their base is conservative and therefore wants to conserve things. If they understood the depth of fealty that the Republicans had to the freeloading billionaire class they would not be for them.
No more doom and gloom
I think that vision is really important. I am a believer in the idea that we create the world around us with our ideas about it. I get pissed off when people prognosticate the end of the world, whether they be fundamentalists or environmentalists. Having a vision for people as a whole working through our current set of problems in a peaceful way gives a greater chance if it happening in such a way. Hope is really important. The Obama campaign nailed it with that one. I think that ideas to the effect that "the world is coming to an end" are a big turn off and are ineffective. No one knows what is going to happen in the future. We've got some good science telling us to change direction. Let's do that and stay happy.
Environmentalism should be framed in strong terms and backed unequivocally by Democrats
I have seen Republicans going after the environmentalist demographic, mostly looking for the anti GMO vote. While it is hypocritical to the extreme, one can get the sense that the Democrats are not in the environmentalist's corner when they are not aggressively going after these issues.
The issues can be framed in simple terms such as clean air, clean water, safety and abundance for our farmers and food for our people, protection for our coasts, and ultimately security for our borders. Robust and accountable government for the people.
Happy Earth Day! Here's to a clean, peaceful and just world.