This thread reminded me of a post I read a while back on one of the blogs I frequent, Environmental Economics, that demonstrates what Shodan and MGibson are talking about. The post is a reply to a paper published by the Sierra Club–the quote that seems the most appropriate for the thread:
My emphasis. As mentioned previously, there is the feeling that environmentalists don’t want to count conservatives amongst their ranks, and declare this by disapproving (and sometimes being outright hostile) to ideas such as the ability of economists and markets to be helpful to the environmental cause. This seems to only generate animosity between the two sides.
Let’s see, existence of an entire species vs. economic welfare of any one of the six billion human beings that currently inhabit the planet. An entire species!!!
Easy choice for you, eh, Shodan? :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
There are quite a few conservative environmentalists. There are a number of them over at the National Review. They call themselves ‘crunchy cons’ (granola-eating conservatives).
And an interesting coincidence with the start of this thread is that today Al Gore showed up at Grover Norquist’s very conservative weekly breakfast meeting and gave a powerpoint presentation about his environmental agenda. The reports I’ve read say that he got a very warm reception, and that people were highly impressed by his presentation (one commentater at NR said it was the best powerpoint presentation he had ever seen), and that Gore was charming, personable, and not at all like the Gore you see in front of the cameras. High marks all around, although most thought his Q&A session afterwards wasn’t as strong and that he didn’t have good answers for some of the more difficult questions.
Too many environmentalists are also radical leftists, and that makes it very difficult for conservatives to embrace their agenda. And when they do, the environmentalists are often overtly hostile to conservative’s ideas, which generally involve using the market and working within the laws of supoly and demand rather than having the government regulate and control everything.
Lot’s of conservatives are stepping up these days to make it known that the environoment is a conservative (and even Christian) issue. Here’s a couple:
What about several hundred people? Or a million? At what point does it become worthwhile to endanger some useless weed so people don’t have to live in poverty? Do you think they cut down rainforest because they don’t like trees?
Smells like an attempt by conservatives to co-opt an issue the Dems always beat them senseless with. Unlikely to succeed unless conservatives make some real attempts to save the environment, and stand up to Big Biz when necessary. Which is real unlikely to happen. Still Rovian fact-twisting has worked in terms of elections (see Swift Boat Veterans Who Lie Their Fucking Asses Off) maybe it can work over the long haul, too.
**Evil Captor ** – My response to your original post in this thread was pretty negative, because I was enjoying the thoughtful responses to what was, for me, an interesting question. It is interesting to me mainly because I am a conservative who is also an environmentalist. I was particularly happy that posters on both sides of the political spectrum had opted to post thoughtful responses without resorting to gross generalizations and misrepresentations. Your post broke that trend. I’m torn between avoiding further derailing this interesting thread and trying to explain something to you. I’ll try once more and then drop it.
I think that you don’t understand why people with high earning potential work. You seem to think that everyone who could possibly achieve wealth would do so, and that achieving wealth is the goal of everyone who works. You also seem to equate conservatism with business ownership or wealth.
You asked if people want to work and be poor. You also seem to think that everyone who has the potential to be rich wants to do what it would take to be rich. I don’t think that many people want to be poor. But many people with high earning potential make far less than they are capable of by choice. My own choices provide a modest example. I am a technical employee in a software firm. I make slightly over $100K annually. I have been offered promotions by my company that would have immediately increased my salary by 35%, which I refused. I don’t want to supervise people, and that matters to me more than the additional money. There are consulting positions in my field for which I am qualified which pay more than $200K annually. I don’t want those jobs because they involve a lot a travel, and I would rather be with my wife. I believe, with some evidence, that I have the ability to be wealthy by most people’s standards. I know that I will never achieve that wealth because I am not willing to make the sacrifices in other areas that achieving wealth would require. I am sure that people with far higher potential than me make similar decisions. I am sure of this because I know such people, and because there are people in the public eye whose decisions make it apparent that some things are more important than wealth to them. I think that there are things about wealth, earning potential and motivations that you do not understand.
There are many wealthy capitalists who are liberal politically. This thread is about the issue of the environment as it relates to conservatives and liberals, not wealthy people or poor people. You seem to think that the mountains of West Virginia are an environmental wasteland and that no wealthy oil people live in Houston, which has horrible air quality. The mountains of West Virginia are beautiful, and I have seen vacation homes there that I will never be able to afford, but which look like “almost heaven” to me. I don’t know where any coal mine owners live, but I do know that many wealthy oil men live and work in Houston, breathing what they have helped create. I don’t know their politics, and neither do you.
You have no idea what most conservatives think or feel about the environment. I only know what the conservatives I know and those who make public statements think about it.
To the thoughtful and interesting posters in this thread, I am sorry for this distraction.
I agree completely. Sort of like Hillary saying now that there’s nothing wrong with believing in God, and that people who oppose abortion may hold their views legitimately and honestly.
When I joined the environmental movement I was dirt poor (E3 in Navy a take home of less than $10,000 in 1986). My family was lower middle class.
I am now upper middle class and the group I am most active in has people of all economic backgrounds from the edge of poverty to rich. We have members of all educational backgrounds also, High school drop outs through Doctorates.
We do lack diversity in race but I think that is a symptom of being founded by Folk Musicians and running a Folk festival that plays mainly Folk and Blues Rock.
(Monmouth County Friends of Clearwater (Founded by Folk Singer Bob Killian) and Clearwater (Founded by Folk Legend Pete Seeger)).
I already mentioned we are of all different religious backgrounds and from Atheist to Devout and almost everything in between.
Green Peace is a group I only contribute money to, they have a fairly leftist orientation but they to are made up of all people, classes and educational backgrounds.
Probably not, simply because they were being reviewed for a very long time. I think Buhs would have folded quickly if that as the actual reason. The furor went on for a good while (over 2 months, IIRC) but the regs were not approved for some time thereafter.
That’s not a sufficient argument since Bush is (a) not privy to Clinton’s approval process and (b) not likely to agree with him. It doesn’t matter whether CLinton or his staff thought they were a good idea; they need to be shown good to Bush’s satisfaction, even if only because they were 11th-hour amendments.
That’s an awfully snarky response.
I try to pay attention to what goes on. I even tried to find exactly what the real impact of the proposal was. I am still not sure what impact it actually had on anyone.
That’s possible, but they never told the public why they might be a good idea, and no environmentalist proponent actually explained it to my satisfaction. it was pure hack jobbery from one end to the other. And I don’t respect that.
And this is bad…why? If an issue is so popular that everyone agrees with you on it, even people who usually disagree with you on other issues, why exactly are you upset?
If you have evidence that any of those groups are facades or not committed to conservation, that evidence would be a better submission that one more attempt to poison the well with The people I don’t like are not sincere-type accusations.
Similarly, if you have evidence that Senator Clinton has ever expressed the idea that there was a problem with believing in God or that people who opposed abortion had no right to their views, you might have posted that information. (I suspect that your attempt at irony is going to be missed by its target(s).)
Both of these posts are more likely to send us spinning off into more rancorous (and unproductive) chants of you guys are bad rather than actually addressing the question. Why don’t we stick to discussiong the issue based on evidence, rather than claiming that one side is trying to “co-opt” the issue?
A large part of preserving the rain forest is to preserve the Oxygen cycle.
Clear cutting and burning usually result in land that is not particularly fertile for crops. The Amazon was being burnt out at an alarming rate before it became a huge issue. One of the triggers was the NASA pictures of the all the burnings from space. It raised people’s awareness.
Preserving wild spaces for endangered animals is beneficial to the human race. The world is a lot worse off when entire species die off.
You specifically mentioned saving weeds, in many cases there has been some almost silly fights. (This is made up to simulate some real debates)
This is the last location in North West jersey where the purple Mugwort grows wild, meanwhile the Purple Mugwort is a pernicious pest to most of Virginia and the Carolinas. It is fights like these that actually damage the overall environmental movement.
… Saving the last of the old growth in the Pacific North West however and preserving the environment for endangered Owls and other critters that live no where else is a worthwhile act. It is also in exchange of displacing a few thousand human jobs to other areas where tree farming is being done.
We still have much to learn from these habitats.
Clean Water for both drinking and swimming should be a no brainer. The people who don’t treat this more seriously amaze me. Same for Clean Air.
Now issues like Nuclear power, Coal burning and Dam building are a lot more debatable and people can make good argument for and against.
Fuel and electrical efficiency should be simple concepts and would reduce our reliance on foreign oil which feeds terrorism (the Hawk in me highly approves). It will also reduce pollution and smog. Big wins all the way around.
Absolute bollocks. Rainforest is essentially oxygen neutral and most evidence suggests it is a net oxygen user. We could cut down all the rainforest in the world, indeed all the forests in the world, and the effect on the oxygen cycle wouldn’t even be measurable.
Unfortunately you have bought into the whole ‘lungs of the Earth’ myth. That’s nothing but pseudoscientific nonsense based on a junior high understanding of plant physiology.
Yet despite having allegedly been burned out at alarming rate for centuries 85% remains intact. I would hardly call that alarming.
Preserving wild spaces for endangered animals is also detrimental to the human race.
Uh huh. And how do you figure the world is a “lot” worse off because some nematode that is only known by two zoologists dies off? How can that possibly be considered a lot worse?
… Saving the last of the old growth in the Pacific North West however and preserving the environment for endangered Owls and other critters that live no where else is a worthwhile act.
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Only if the cost-benefit analysis pans out. Your idea that it is a worthwhile act regardless of the cost, IOW that the ends always justify the means, is reprehensible.
Why does it amaze you that people don’t treat this more seriously? Are you saying that the current state of US air and water quality (which are rapidly improving BTW), are so intolerable that everyone should be out there pushing for more serious restrictions? At what level and rate of improvement would you cease to be amazed by people not taking it more seriously?
Of course it will be big wins all round only of nobody loses. If increasing efficiency becomes prohibitive then of course there will be losers.
Jfranchii you have a history of this sort of behaviour in any thread concerning the environment. You make numerous claims that are outright incorrect or simply baseless opinion presented as fact. And then when someone calls you on it you claim that you propagated such ignorance simply to stimulate debate or some other equaly weak excuse. I’m not buying it myself.
Ask for references for any claim that I make. I will happily provide, as you know from experience.
I wouldn’t say that everything you have said is wrong. Some of it certainly is, like your claim that the Amazon is important for its role in the oxygen cycle. Much of what you say is simply meaningless hyperbole, like your claim that the extinction of an unknown fungus will make the world much worse off. That’s not actually wrong as such, it’s simply meaningless and over-exagerated. The extinction of a minor species with no major ecological role will not even make the world noticably worse off, much less much worse off.
And of course I contend that everyhting I say is correct. If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t have posted it. As i said, if you believe anyhting I have said is incorect then specify what. If it was statement of fact then I will provide references. If it was a statement of opinion then I will explain the reasoning that led me to that conclusion.
I believe that your total inability to understand how preserving wild spaces for endangered animals is also detrimental to the human race really highlights how blinkered your viewpoint is. Do you have no idea of the effect of tigers on the people who are forced to live beside the wild places preserved for them? Did you even stop to consider why people are destroying these wild places? If there is no detriment at all in preserving them then how can anyone gain a benefit from destroying them? Perhaps you believe people destroy them for fun? Did you stop to ask yourself why all the wealthiest nations with the highest standards of living have limited areas of wild spaces for preserving endangered animals outsideof deserts or tundra regions?
I am quite frankly amazed that even after giving it thought you couldn’t come up with any affects of conservation reserves that are detrimental. Not one apparently. Conservation reserves are not free, they require mainatainence, they require surveillance, they take away form more economically product uses for the land, they represent a reservior for diseases, weeds and vermin, they act as a harborage for criminal activity. All those things are detrimental to humanity.
Blake you brought up Fungus not me.
I specifically gave a scenario where the preservation of a habitat was silly.
You are putting words into my mouth and as long as you have done so I will say that Yes the last few thousand tigers left in the world are well worth preserving. There are Six Billion Plus humans on the planet. Teach Birth Control and halt the population growth already.
Please show me where preserving the Old Growth is detrimental to the Human Race and not just a smallish subset of the Human race.
The second reference is Madleine Hanks Science Project–The Rainforest Biome. FFS did you think that when you lifted it off a page headed “If you are a 7th grade humanities student in my classes, this is that you are looking for” that might have been a hint? PMSL.
The third reference is from NASA, and it’s highly reputable. Unfortunately for you it doens;t agree with you. It points out that “forest inhale tons of carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and exhale oxygen” but it never mentions what happens WRT oxygen during respiration. It does mention that WRT carbon the forests are a carbon source due to respiration. What does that tell you? This is what I meant when I said that your views, and those of some elementary schoolchildren, are shaped by a Junior High view of plant physiology. Actually I guess your view is an elementary science view of plant physiology.
Now can we please see a reputable reference from you that supports your claim that “a large part of preserving the rain forest is to preserve the Oxygen cycle”. And by reputable I mean something not written by an elementary student?
Indeed I did, but as so often you are deliberately ducking the issue.
You made the ridiculous claim that the loss of any species, whether it be fungus, nematode or tiger. makes the world amuch worse place. Now can you please answer my question and explain how the loss of a nematode known only to two zoologists makes the world a much worse place? I fail to see how it would make it even