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May 23, 2008

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I appreciate your opening paragraph. It does seem batcrap crazy to think of the environment as just another partisan political football. It still shocks me that I read comments here (among other places) that promote the idea that it's acceptable to dump toxins in our waters, that cleaning them up is not possible because it eats into corporate profits... We have the weird idea hereabouts that we should have zero-tolerance for individuals and their behaviour, but we need to support the corporate person in their quest for higher profits, no matter the cost to the rest of us. Sick, sad world.

BTW, I agree with this gal:
"The other day a lady said to me. 'You know, everybody says you are so liberal, but I think all you are doing is expressing common sense.'"

The environment becomes a political football in the first instance when environmental extremeists falsley accuse their political opponents of "poisoning" the environment and causing harm to humans that medical science does not support. Politics is further the main issue when environmental extremists pay no attention to cost-benefit analysis and instead say, "Clean every particle up. No matter what it costs. No matter what incremental benefit there is from cleaning up that last particle." At that point, we are no longer talking about practical public policy, but political game-playing.

By the way, besides the spokespeople for environmental activist groups, public radio reporters and academics, when was the last time that any spokesperson for industry was invited to be a Jack Lessenberry interview subject?

The extremist point that Anonymous represents (poorly): We can't clean anything up because enviro-nazis say we have to get the last particle, so we won't do anything, nyah nyah nyah!

We have to live on this orb, and fouling the place you eat, sleep and breathe because it's very profitable to a few very powerful and wealthy folks in the short run is still foolish and shortsighted.

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