Celebrating Earth Day
Week. If any readers have not yet taken sides in the great global
warming vs. Al Gore-is-a-hypocrite debate, because you feel you
don’t yet have enough information, this is your chance to get some
valid insight. I have studied the issue for years, have read the
reports from the right and the left, and am ready to give you my
highly informed opinion about climate change: happening, not
happening, if happening caused by humans, not caused by humans. My
opinion is:
Who the flora/fauna knows?
All I can do is tell you
what is true for me.
I think it is significant
that I became an environmentalist (definition, caring about the
planet I live on and its atmosphere that I breathe) at exactly the
same time I became a libertarian. I suspect that New England
libertarians are often environmentalists, because of their roots
with the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Sometime in the early
’70s, I ordered a beautiful drawing of Henry’s head, merged with
roots, branches, the produce of the earth itself.
I picked up more of this
attitude from Salem’s Wiccan community, which has a centuries-old
ability to prove its interest in the subject, long before this
became politically correct. High Priestess Laurie Cabot, in her 1994
book, “Celebrate the Earth,” was urging shoppers to “bring your own
bag to carry groceries.” Interestingly, that quote ended with “or
ask for plastic.” One of the first goals of true environmentalists
was to argue against killing trees to make wood pulp/paper in
factories that polluted air and water. I’ve never chosen paper over
plastic and am appalled that the new trend to ban plastic urges
shoppers to choose paper. I try to remember to bring my own bag, or
stuff the groceries in my large purse.
Though the word
environmentalist entered my life as an adult, I clearly remember
learning in grade-school that thrift was a virtue, that we should
“waste not, want not,” so I came to associate this attitude with
“conservatism.” I learned about Teddy Roosevelt and his national
parks. So when I became involved in politics, I was surprised to
find Republicans/conservatives sometimes in denial about the
possibility that human beings could be having a negative impact on
the earth’s environment.
Having grown up near a
dying Lake Erie and lived in Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Athens at
a height of their air pollution, I knew people were impacting water
and air: how could they not? I’ve also watched as the technology
promoted by Republican/conservative mindsets began to solve many of
these problems, and the new ones that keep arising. But why the
denial?
Because ... At some point
the environmental movement was taken over by those who would use it
to enhance Big Government, which is responsible for much of the
pollution itself either directly or by failing to do its
bureaucratic oversight job. Even I with my poster of Thoreau and my
cloth shopping bags am reluctant to be associated with the liberals
(looking for a cause), hypocrites (Al Gore getting rich flying
around in his private jet preaching carbon taxes), and current
politicians (afraid to appear an enemy of Mother Earth). Al Gore
says, “the earth has a fever” and I, one little earthling, feel like
throwing up.
This is what I know: Big
Government, Big Business, Big Labor, not to be trusted on this
issue.
Statists want to use
“climate change” to enhance the power of government, its control
over us. I’m old enough to remember
the warning about the coming Ice
Age turning to global warming then climate change: whatever works to
frighten people into electing the power-hungry to “fix it.”
Big Business will abuse
the environment for short-term profit, even though when caught they
have to pay enormous fines and suffer really bad public relations.
One proper role of government is to oversee Big Business — but we’ll
talk about campaign finance another time. Big Labor doesn’t care as
long as it gets jobs digging holes, laying pipes, things that for
some reason, some Republicans call “growth.”
The March edition of my
National Geographic magazine has a
section on climate change,
which it has, over the year of my subscription, shown some evidence
of around the world. However, in an otherwise excellent cover story
about “The
War on Science,” National Geographic makes more of the influence
the fossil fuel industry has on anti-climate change reports than it
does of the fact much of the pro-climate change reports come from
government-funded think tanks.
Even those of us who
revere “science” need to understand the pressure felt by scientists,
like non-scientists, to fit in with what is politically correct at
the time — and government schools, creators of government-leaning
media, make sure the population is moving in the correct direction,
to enhance government power.
So, what I know. My
Christmas cactus just bloomed on Easter Sunday! The climate is
changing, as it has throughout time. Reading a sad article in the
Monday Salem News about a WW I hero who won the 1914 Boston
Marathon, I noted the reference to “another sweltering day” that
April 20th. There wasn’t much snow in the Sierra Nevada for my son
and grandson to ski last winter; not far away, in 1846, the Donner
Party starved while snowbound.
I know liberals worry
about the effect of climate change, as fiscal conservatives worry
about the effect of the national debt, on their children and
grandchildren. I don’t know too many people who worry about both,
which is a mystery. I of course fear a coming fiscal meltdown and
can’t imagine the already-dysfunctional world dealing with another
billion people by 2025.
Despite our political
differences, my son and I share a favorite book, which I now highly
recommend to you: “A
Friend of the Earth,” by T.C. Boyle. It was first published in
2000 and can still be ordered, for laughter, for tears, for balance.
Barbara Anderson of
Marblehead is president of Citizens for Limited Taxation and a Salem
News columnist.
