Environmentalism is no more "special interest" than Capitalism

The world is rapidly plummeting to a state of Total War and the reason is centralized around First World energy resources. At the core of these issues is of course oil and gas and the insatiable need to keep our combustion engines cranking so that we might get to work everyday. Most of us drive to and from our jobs by ourselves and loathe the idea of a crowded (although warm and ultimately nap-able) bus ride. Many of us live only a few miles from our workplaces and given the amount of high traffic in warm climate areas like California or urban Arizona, it's interesting few people commute by bicycle. This is also reflected in the 80% obesity rate we enjoy in the US, but that's another editorial for another day. There's also a select number of us, which seems to be growing despite reports that cite a decline in sales, who drive SUV's, jeeps and even more ludicrous vehicles like those new pick-up trucks that are larger than the average Abrams tank. In fact, it seems that we have entered a new age of American trend-setting in which the suburban commando is the new image of tempered, rebel conservatism and lovable yahoo-ism. Bob might be a weenie desk jockey and wage slave father of three, but by dammit – he's ALL MAN on his commute when he hops in his Dodge Mega-Cab 4 x 4 pickum-up! Hell to the deficit and all time low employment rate!

The problem with this new wartime dichotomy is that we have abandoned our survival instincts in lieu of our personal material ambitions and politics. An environmental activist will rattle off thousands of reasons why a work-a-day capitalist shouldn't drive their Hummer to work everyday. Big automobiles use gallons of gas and oil, increase demand which requires increased supply, the Oil Ministry of Iraq gets mad at the US for decades of sanctions and bombings and don't want us to own their only valuable world-market resource and bam – we go to war to take it from them. It's the same equation that leftists will argue again and again with an unconcerned right wing. Generally, the people who want their big cars and cheap gas ruffle their feathers and shout salvos of “idealist” or even “communist”, or at worst, “terrorist” at these people. They are more likely to blame crack-potism as the catalyst behind environmental thought, rather than a genuine concern for the environment. OK. Some people might really hate forests, clean water and breathable air. I don't really know.

The stoic capitalist isn't the only problem though. Many environmentalists aren't looking up which tree they are barking. Buttoned down right wingers do not need to be made into enemies unnecessarily (at this point the author would like to note that he's being objective – believe it, there are many extreme solutions that shouldn't be over looked as well...). One can hope that all humans want relatively the same thing, which is to thrive and survive. Capitalists do not need to be shown they are wrong – they need to be educated to the fact that without a sustainable environment, their offspring's offspring may very well be doomed to being the last generation of people on this planet. They need to understand that the market they hold so dear can and will collapse again if the resources traded on it are squandered and lost forever. Above all, they need to take note that like our RVs and semi trucks, the planet needs oil to run and we can not take all of it.

For starters, oil exploration in Alaska's North Slope (which currently provides 20% of domestic oil reserves) has already caused seismic disturbances that have driven migrations of bowhead whales further away from the shores. This has brought a famine on many of the indigenous tribes who rely on whale migration as a primary source of food and oil during the winter. Yes, that's right, they eat and use the blubber of whales, and as much as that can be argued as barbaric or callous, think about how much fois gras and veal the average American restaurant plows through in a year. In fact, the bowheads need to be near the hunters in order to feed themselves and the hunters are incredibly self-regulatory. This is called an ecosystem – one that successfully includes humans. The aboriginals of the Arctic coast have been hunting bowheads for centuries, but they have only become endangered when commercial whalers were allowed to harvest them in the 1600's (driving them near extinction till 1946, when commercial harvest was ceased).

Beyond the bowhead there have been environmental changes both positive and negative. Increased revenue to the area has given way to improved schools, jobs, health care and housing services, yet conversely alcoholism has risen and an overpopulation of predators such as bears and wolves has become apparent, mainly because they can feed on the increased amount of refuse produced by humans. This has of course led to the demise of many species of small mammal and bird in the area as well.

The expansion of road networks in the North Slope have left considerable scars on the land itself. Change in the tundra, erosion, floods and damage to vegetation have altered animal behavior and populations. Even that ever-present “greenhouse effect” that capitalists are so prone to write off as “paranoia without credibility” has been in evidence. The climate has been warming at an “unusually rapid” rate and scientists predict that if it continues to decline, the very ice roads the oil industry depends on will be gone, which would render their drilling technology useless. It seems that environmental damage benefits no one, after all.

Fortunately, the Senate had the gall to stop drilling in the ANWR the last time by a thin margin of votes. A surprising number of Republican senators (25, mostly from the Northeast US) were included in a filibuster. Shortly afterward, Alaskan senator Ted Stevens made a very sneaky move by attaching the drilling provision to a defense appropriations bill. It seems that Stevens is more interested in the 400 trillion cubic feet of natural gas his state is sitting on than promoting the vast ecological harmony of the Outer Continental Shelf. After all, destination tourism is also a major state revenue generator – it just doesn't directly profit the United States of Bushica. Because Stevens included the drilling provision to a defense bill, it forced the senate to choose between troop support or the environment. Apparently Mr. Stevens, in his tunnel vision view of how to work over democracy, truly thought that he could undermine what the Wall Street Journal referred to as “the interests of a handful of radical green groups...”. He was wrong, but with this kind of aggressive policy making being carried out by a democratic government, it's only a matter of time before wrong wins out.

There is much to blame for the siege of the ANWR, which by the way if you search for online you will notice that ANWR.org is a pro-drilling outfit. At the core of it is the gas industry of course, but peripherally it is our own increasing lack of survival instinct. We know our planet is in danger, we know our species depends on the continuing survival of the ecosystem and we know that extinction of other species damages the natural order of life, which is ultimately bigger and more important than us. Detractors of continued human existence, such as the econo-centrist editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal will cite these issues as “enviro griping” or “so much political blather”. People actually read this stuff, more than they read scientific evidence to the contrary, and deduce that environmentalism is nothing more than the ideals of a few focus groups. Where does this anti-planet hostility come from? How can conservatives wear the title, when they seem to be uninterested in conserving much of anything? After all, it was one of their own cherished Republican presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, who felt a kind of stewardship over the nation's untamed wilderness and implemented the National Parks. If the right wanted to prove once and for all that it is the moral, upright majority that it boasts it should demonstrate that preserving true beauty in the world is not Democratic or extremist utopianism, but a charge on all forward-thinking members of the human race. Set some fucking standards for everyone, not just themselves. If they actually even do that...