What can we celebrate on Earth Day?

It is less that a month until Earth Day comes again. I hope to have my Green Talk column in my local Morgan Hill Times then and have been trying to find a way to write something that is both new and positive. The more I consider the task, the harder it becomes.

The 1st Earth Day was a time of great hope. It appeared that a new future was upon us, one that promised to repair the damage we had already done to this earth. There seemed to be a determination to ensure that we would stop destroying the environment because, in the long run, that meant we would be destroying our own civilization.

In retrospect, that promise has never been fulfilled, even though some hare working legislators managed to codify it's intent. We might now have the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, but we no longer have the hope and determination. Rather than pushing forward toward a better world, we are fighting a defensive war against an activist movement that would roll back these laws and defund or eliminate the EPA. It leave me asking "What went wrong?"

America has always had a sense that it was good to live small. Many continue to find their inspiration on the edge of Thoreau's Walden Pond. Not as many know and appreciate the Sand County Almanac of Aldo Leopold and have not considered his view of a land ethic.

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for).

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.

Leopold wrote this in 1949. Between then and Earth Day, we had the chance to read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. That gave us the truth about the problems we were causing and brought about the ban on DDT. Still, within the past month, we had people testifying to Congress that Carson was wrong and that the ban on DDT caused untold deaths from Malaria.

By the time that the 1st Earth Day arrived in 1970, it was a national movement, fired up by student enthusiasm. Not partisan, like today's discussion, there were 2 co-chairs: Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson (Dem) and California Representative Pete McCloskey (Rep). But that spirit of working together soon vanished. By 2003, they were calling for a re-birth of the movement.

A letter sent March 17 to more than 4,000 student leaders urged them to help rebuild a constituency for the environment. It suggests organizing events in their schools and communities, and sending a delegate to a national student conference on politics and the environment in September.

Despite war, the sour economy, and threats of terrorism, the letter said, "There is no more terrifying legacy than a changed climate or an epidemic of extinction."

The letter was signed by Mr. Nelson. Mr. McCloskey, Mr. (Dennis) Hayes (former Stanford student body president), and Stewart Udall, a former congressman and Department of the Interior secretary.

Not much of that happened either.

So, I am asking you to tell me what went wrong. I have my own ideas. It has to do with our increased urbanization and detachment from the land. It has to do with the pace of events as we lurch from catastrophe to catastrophe, from earthquake / tsunami to civil wars in remote countries to the edge of nuclear catastrophe all in a week of 24 hr news. It may now be exacerbated by the ease with which communication takes place online and with some electronic device to show or mask you true meanings.

So, readers, tell me why you think we are where we are, fighting now to prevent an epidemic of extinction.

When will they ever learn

When I was growing up in Arizona, two of our political leaders were Steward Udall and Barry Goldwater. While they differed on most things, they both had a basic understanding of the relationship of man to nature. Goldwater was a conservative who understood the conservative and conservation have the same derivation.

Goldwater was a very conservative Republican. It was the Republican party of Pete McCloskey and Lincoln Chaffee (RI) both of whom have strong environmental credentials and both of whom have left the Republican Party. It is a very different Republican Party from the one that I new and the fact that McCloskey and Chaffee have both left is a sign of just how far it has changed.

Today, the California Republican Party is filled with the likes of Bill Maze and Tom McClintock. They are a different breed all together. They have none of the vision that earned McCloskey appointment as Co-Chair of the very first Earth Day.

I note today that Maze has been meeting with Inyo County Supervisors to urge their support for Schwarzeneggers $9 Billion dubious project for new dams, new canals and little gain. In Maze's view,

Unfortunately, the state’s current water storage systems are at capacity and simply cannot be relied upon to provide enough water to meet growing demand from increased population, industry and agriculture, he said. Only new dams and reservoirs and added groundwater recharge can add to the state’s water supplies.
“But some people just don’t get it.”

That is in stark contrast to the view of Dorothy Green in a recent LA Times Op Ed.

For all the doom and gloom about water in California, here's a surprising truth: California has enough water to meet its needs today and tomorrow without new dams, peripheral canals or catastrophic costs. But there is a rub. It will take political will and better management.

Maybe Maze is the one who just doesn't get it.

McClintock, on the other hand, appears not to "get it" about global warming. In a speech before the Western Conservative Political Action Conference in Newport Beach this month, McClintock leveled a blast at just about everyone. Then, he posted it on his own blog. The litany of accusations is pure Karl Rove. First he makes sure that his audience thinks of the as the "liberal elite who jet to environmental conferences in Gulfstream Fives". Then he goes after those who would not allow brush to be cut from around houses in fire prone areas but never mentions the fact that maybe we should not build in fire prone area, like Tahoe or the foothills East of San Diego.

The, he produces facts that no scientist has very verified and argues from that point.

And finally the third inconvenient question: If global warming is caused by YOUR SUV, why is it that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide always follow increases in global temperatures by several hundred years, indicating that CO2 is a byproduct of increasing temperatures – not a cause.

I would have expected as much from Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe but thought that McClintock was a bit more honest than that. I guess not.

With all of this coming from leading politicians who supposedly have the interests of their constituents at heart, it is little wonder that we find results of polls like that conducted by the Antelope Valley Press and blogged at Aquafornia.

Recently, the Antelope Valley Press did an unofficial survey, and asked its readers if they were willing to curb their water usage in order to save the smelt. The results were 26% yes, 74% no.

McClintock will leave the State Senate this year, having reached his term limit. It is not too soon. Maybe this is his attempt to maintain some relevance in the Conservative movement, he does end it with a call for a return to a past that never was.

And at that moment, we will see a new political awakening and a new political realignment in California, and before you know it, we’ll be living once again in Reagan Country.

The California Green Party has a lot to do in re-educating a public that has listened to too much Tom McClintock and Michael Savage, who has been presented with "Don" Perata as the alternative while the Don is only selling protection.

I keep coming back to the idea that the only way to work through these problems is the Green way. We need all to be speaking out, now and continuously against the likes of McClintock and his pseudo science, against the 19th Century exploitation of nature that Maze calls for. The only good thought is that with leaders like McClintock, so out of touch with reality, the California Republican Party is not likely to ever return to Reagan Country.