Soapbox Derby: Environmentalism

Are you an environmentalist?

Sean Faircloth:

Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture concluded that because Rachel Carson was unmarried in her 40s, she was probably Communist. Kennedy reacted differently. JFK referenced Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (and its warnings about pesticides) in a 1962 press conference. Kennedy established a presidential commission to examine chlorinated insecticides, including DDT. The commission recommended that DDT and related insecticides be taken off the market.

Carson, who spent much of her life in Maine, is often viewed as the mother of the environmental movement.

If Carson was the mother of the modern environmental movement, Edmund Muskie was its father. In 1963 Muskie sought creation of the Air and Water Pollution Committee in the U.S. Senate. This led to many pieces of legislation, including Muskie’s crowning achievement: The Clean Air Act of 1970.

More so than any other state, Maine has a heritage of environmental leadership that spread worldwide, remarkable given our tiny population. I see economic development opportunities in environmentalism. I sponsored bills in Augusta to spark environmental and wildlife-viewing tourism. This has been lucrative in other states. Rep. Bob Duchesne is a Maine expert on these issues. Mainers should follow his lead.

Theodore Roosevelt, the only president to climb Katahdin, was an avid outdoorsman, who loved Maine. TR, the 20th century’s greatest Republican president, brought those values to Washington, establishing our first national parks. TR said, “The conservation of natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life.” TR created 150 national forests, protecting 230 million acres of land, radical moves at that time.

This great Republican said, “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.” TR, having a vision that seemed to anticipate climate change, said, “Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”

My parents supported JFK from the day he announced. I hadn’t the same success in picking a winner I believed in. Democratic candidates I supported rarely won the nomination and, if so, didn’t win in November. Then, in January 2008, I saw Obama’s concession speech losing New Hampshire. The speech, with the then-fresh “Yes We Can” refrain, struck me as unique. The ideas in that speech, combined with Obama’s stance on Iraq, meant I had to support Obama.

The “hope bubble” could burst, but I’m glad I backed Obama early. After November, Obama gave a speech to a group of global warming scientists and advocates. Usually, once elected, politicians become noncommittal. Obama, contrastingly, came out full force for addressing climate change. Obama said we must listen to scientists even when it’s inconvenient. Scientists have long been clear about the need for environmental action. The far-right move to stigmatize environmentalism was nothing more than a way for those with vested interests to sucker us into ignoring science.

I’m proud to support Obama. I’m proud to call myself an environmentalist. I’m proud to do so in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, Rachel Carson, and Ed Muskie.

Sean Faircloth gave our hometown welcome for Barack Obama’s rally at the Bangor Auditorium on February 9, 2008. Faircloth is the former Majority Whip of the Maine House.

Scott K Fish:

This month’s Soapbox question is a natural fit for this green issue.

Am I an environmentalist? That’s a question much like, When did you stop beating your wife? Environmentalism is so overdone—a religion to many people—that saying, “No, I am not an environmentalist” could be heresy. Answering “yes” to the question also risks giving readers the wrong impression.

Growing up, my father, Chester B. Fish Jr., was an editor for several outdoor magazines: Boy’s Life, Sports Afield, and, finally, editor-in-chief of Outdoor Life magazine. My grandfather, Chester B. Fish Sr., owned and operated a 100-acre tree nursery/landscaping business he inherited from my great-grandfather, Charles R. Fish, who started his business by selling trees in Maine. Our family always went camping on family vacations. I spent a few years in the Cub Scouts/Boy Scouts. Modern environmentalists have taught me nothing about good stewardship I had not learned already from my family and the Scouts.

I remember taking part in the first Earth Day celebration by picking up litter. That’s what the day was about. Today’s elite environmentalists use green issues to push a leftist political agenda—central planning and social engineering marketed as caring for the planet. That’s where we part company. In Maine, and other states, the green battle is primarily urban vs. rural. Tax-exempt environmental groups, using multimillions of state and federal tax dollars, are relentless in pushing public policies enabling urban centers to grow and rural economies to stagnate or die. These policies are always masked as protecting, preserving, or saving something—except rural jobs.

With our tax dollars we flip private land forever into government hands, often through or in partnership with environmental groups. This, we are told, is the only way to “protect” the land and creatures living on the land. Yet, when green groups entrusted to “protect” said land/creatures allow them to be destroyed by, say, wildfires, the enviros and their policies are never held accountable. We are told fire is good and natural, and logging diseased trees and fallen trees to prevent wildfires is bad.

I dislike environmentalist “Do as I say, not as I do” hypocrisy. Example: Al Gore lectures us on our energy consumption while he lives in a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Tennessee, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Virginia.

Environmentalism is itself an invasive species! Even the new Preparation H radio ad features a father at his child’s grade school “global warming” play. We hear dad complaining of rectal itch while children onstage chant, “Burning! Burning! Burning!”

I hate environmentalism scaring schoolchildren. If I jumped out of hiding every day and scared kids in a classroom I’d be arrested. Yet kids who haven’t reached the age of reason are indoctrinated every day with claims like, “We only have 10 years to save the earth.” That’s child abuse. Parents should end it.

Environmental solutions should be based on politics-free science, common sense, and individual freedom. Environmentalism as religion, as socialism, as fear mongering, is killing us.

Scott K Fish is owner/editor of the political web forum www.asmainegoes.com.