The industrialized world screws the developing world—but it's okay: the greens are doing it, and they have good intentions.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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is not a contradiction in terms.

Melissa Clouthier, over at my new weekend gig, discusses right-wing participation in those "strange bedfellows" ads regarding global warming.

This is a delicate issue, because no one I know (um, that is, among my political homies) wants to (1) join the stampede toward the "majority vote" approach to science; (2) concede that global warming is anthropogenic, without just a bit more evidence; (3) specify that an increase in the earth's temperature would necessarily be A Bad Thing.

And yet, like Ms. Clouthier, a lot of us are saddened by the idea of ceding all environmental issues to the left. Remember in the 1970s, when there were two approaches to what we now call environmentalism? There were ecologists on the left, and conservationists on the right.

Now we have the magic of ever-evolving language (no word means anything from decade to decade any more: that would be like sticking with one tie width for 20 years; don't be silly). And the term "environmentalism" means left-wing resource management. And there is no term for right-wing stewardship of Planet Earth. Mostly because many of us suspect that the Third Rock from the Sun is hardier than we've been led to believe. But also because we tend to recoil from the puritanism we see in the modern "environmental" movement.

And yet most of us recycle, and most of us try not to waste resources. Most of us support alternative fuels (if only for foreign policy reasons).

It is not, in short, that we disagree with the goal of keeping the ecosystems running: it is more that we have different ideas of what the tactics should be, and that we still think humans aren't an unmitigated scourge upon the Earth—nor is science and technology any particular enemy.

Like that.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 11:36 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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