Unstoppable by Ralph Nader

Author:Ralph Nader [Nader, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781568584553
Publisher: Nation Books

23. Prioritize the protection of our environment.

The need for ecological consciousness to preserve the planet Earth and its posterity seems to be common sense. Instead, it viscerally divides Republicans and Democrats. Thank the Republicans in Congress for desiring to close out the EPA and OSHA in a corporatist-encouraged rage, an example of truly ignorant nihilism. The science and evidence of climate change and global warming are casualties of this rejectionism. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) repeatedly calls global warming one of the greatest hoaxes of the century. He does not say it’s exaggerated or partially erroneous, but a hoax—something completely made up.

Many self-described conservatives do show little care for the environment, that is, except when they are outdoors with their families as tourists. This is at least partially based in partisanship, since they insist on attaching the liberal or Democrat label to the occasional governmental initiatives to enforce the environmental laws, the ones that so anger industry.

Still, earlier conservatives often embraced environmentalism. In the appendix to his book Conservatism Revisited, written in 1974, Peter Viereck called the young people in the early seventies who were marching and acting for environmental protection “unconsciously conservative . . . even when under radical slogans,” as they protested “against what [Herman] Melville called ‘the impieties of progress.’”38 Today when we are beset by such problems as recessions, wars, bailouts, and credit crises, it may not seem to some to be a good political climate for working on ecological advancement or even for staying the course to avert us from sliding ecologically backwards for lack of public investment and regulatory compliance. But for considering the possibility of convergence in tough times, like now, a little looking backward is a good start.

If there were ever an argument to be made on the importance of historical knowledge, it could be made by looking back at the Republicans’ heritage as a way of cutting through the ideas of the present self-styled Republican conservatives in Congress and other elected officials, who stand adamantly against most environmental and consumer regulations. It’s as if they didn’t recognize that they too are breathers, drinkers, eaters, and motorists!

Our first historical lesson is to remember that the conservation movement against despoilment of land, air, and water started in a big way with President Theodore Roosevelt and his fellow Republicans. Over a hundred years ago, they were the activists who established the national forests, the great national parks, and other reserves for posterity to enjoy.

Other than through an extension of their nineteenth-century belief in the need for husbandry of our resources and from biblical wisdom, where did they get such foresight and such a sense of the necessity—not just pleasure—of the communion between nature and the human spirit? It helped, of course, that they had a lot of land and beauty available, having wrested it from the Native Americans. But critical also was the legacy of conservative philosophers, who preached a conservation ethic and had a sense of holding a public trust for those who followed them.

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