{"id":145,"date":"2012-08-01T18:57:53","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T23:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=145"},"modified":"2013-07-07T13:52:29","modified_gmt":"2013-07-07T18:52:29","slug":"bummer-dude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=145","title":{"rendered":"Bummer, Dude"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buried in the penultimate paragraph of an Elizabeth Kolbert piece<\/a> in the July 23rd<\/sup> New Yorker \u2013 which starts out with the somewhat enticing line \u201cCorn sex is difficult\u201d \u2013 is a comment that deserves its own New Yorker article. (I\u2019ll take suggestions for its opening line so long as they\u2019re not X-rated.)<\/p>\n

Kolbert writes \u201cBoth President Obama and Mitt Romney have chosen to remain silent on the issue [of climate change], presumably because they see it as just too big a bummer.\u201d That summation is perfect evidence of the need to communicate EcoOptimism. What if climate change, along with the rest of our environmental issues, was seen as a great and patriotic opportunity to improve the bedraggled economy and simultaneously further the \u201cAmerican Way of Life?\u201d<\/p>\n

What if political races were competitions to see who could propose the equivalent of a war effort, as we discussed here<\/a>?\u00a0 We had a taste of that in the 60s, when on the left, Robert Kennedy said<\/p>\n

[Gross National Product] measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And on the right, or what used to be the right, Richard Nixon said<\/p>\n

“the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debts to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its water, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whether he really meant this and whether he should be considered an environmental hero is debatable. (Though he signed the Clean Air Act Extension, the Clean Water Act was passed only over his veto.) But the point is he felt it politically valuable to at least give lip service to environmentalism.<\/p>\n

In 1992, many of us were overjoyed that Al Gore, having just that year authored Earth in the Balance<\/em>, was elected with Bill Clinton. Finally we had a knowledgeable and devoted advocate in the White House. But the topic of environmentalism virtually disappeared from the campaign and from the eight years of the Clinton\/Gore administration. Even more disappointing, Gore rarely spoke of environmental topics in his 2000 presidential campaign. He was advised not to because it wasn\u2019t a popular enough topic \u2013 it was a bummer. It was only when he was safely freed from polls \u2013 or perhaps from pollsters \u2013 that An Inconvenient Truth<\/em> resurrected his reputation with us greenies.<\/p>\n

And, of course, Kolbert is correct; you won\u2019t find a significant environmental statement from either of the current presidential candidates. It was the Santa Barbara oil spill that, in part, prompted the 1972 Clean Water Act. No such advocacy or leadership emerged out of the Gulf of Mexico spill.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The usual explanation for this is that the environment is a low priority in the public\u2019s list compared to the economy, the war and health. This raises a couple of topics. The first is that the public lack of support is, in part, a Catch-22. Politicians don\u2019t put it on their agendas because they are told people aren\u2019t interested. Then people think it\u2019s not important because no one is talking about it. This is what\u2019s known as a positive feedback loop. Too bad its effect isn\u2019t so positive.<\/p>\n

But what if the environment was seen as integrally tied to our other, more highly prioritized issues? That a solution to the Great Recession is tuning our economy \u2013 our consumption and materialism \u2013 to reflect what things actually cost and what things actually benefit us. That diminished expenses in the military and on health care would directly result from renewable energy and energy efficiency.<\/p>\n

In response to my recent post Bouncing Back<\/a>, a friend wrote \u201cWithout a carbon tax, you’re in fantasyland.\u201d He\u2019s probably right, but this doesn\u2019t address how we get there. The source problem, I think, is not that we don\u2019t have carbon pricing (I\u2019d settle, by the way, for cap and dividend), but that carbon pricing is seen as an evil, a punishment, and a drag on the economy. THAT is the picture we need to change, and it\u2019s what EcoOptimism is about.<\/p>\n

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