Enviromentalsists in retreat

[Hingle McCringleberry]

The collapsing crusade for legislation to combat climate change raises a question: Has ever a political movement made so little of so many advantages? Its implosion has continued since "the Cluster of Copenhagen, when world leaders assembled for the single most unproductive and chaotic global gathering ever held." So says Walter Russell Mead, who has an explanation: Bambi became Godzilla.

 

That is, a small band of skeptics became the dogmatic establishment. In his Via Meadia blog, Mead, a professor of politics at Bard College and Yale, notes that "the greenest president in American history had the largest congressional majority of any president since Lyndon Johnson," but the environmentalists' legislation foundered because they got "on the wrong side of doubt."

 

Environmentalists, Mead argues, have forgotten their origins, which were in skeptical "reaction against Big Science, Big Government and Experts." Environmentalists once were intellectual cousins of economic libertarians who heed the arguments of Friedrich Hayek and other students of spontaneous order -- in society or nature. Such libertarians caution against trying to impose big, simple plans on complex systems. They warn that governmental interventions in such systems inevitably have large unintended, because unforeseeable, consequences.

 

In the middle of the 20th century, Americans, impressed by the government's mobilization of society for victory in World War II, were, Mead says, "intoxicated with social and environmental engineering of all kinds." They had, for example, serene confidence that "urban renewal" would produce "model cities." Back then, environmentalism was skepticism.

 

It was akin to the dissent of Jane Jacobs, author of the 1961 book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." She argued that ambitious social engineers such as New York's Robert Moses were, by their ten-thumbed interventions in complex organisms such as cities, disrupting social ecosystems. The apotheosis of technocratic experts such as McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara gave us "nation-building" in conjunction with a war of attrition -- the crucial metric supposedly was body counts -- in a Southeast Asian peasant society. Over time, Mead says, "experts lost their mystique":

 

"An increasingly skeptical public started to notice that 'experts' weren't angels descending immaculately from heaven bearing infallible revelations from God. They were fallible human beings with mortgages to pay and funds to raise. They disagreed with one another and they colluded with their friends and supporters like everyone else."

 

And expertise was annoyingly changeable. Experts said margarine was the healthy alternative to butter -- until they said its trans fats made it harmful.

 

Environmentalism began as Bambi doing battle with Godzillas, such as the Army Corps of Engineers. Then, says Mead, environmentalism became Godzilla, an advocate of "a big and simple fix for all that ails us: a global carbon cap. One big problem, one big fix." Mead continues:

 

"Never mind that the leading green political strategy (to stop global warming by a treaty that gains unanimous consent among 190-plus countries and is then ratified by 67 votes in a Senate that rejected Kyoto 95 to 0) is and always has been so cluelessly unrealistic as to be clinically insane. The experts decree and we rubes are not to think but to honor and obey."

 

The essence of progressivism, of which environmentalism has become an appendage, is the faith that all will be well once we have concentrated enough power in Washington and have concentrated enough Washington power in the executive branch and have concentrated enough "experts" in that branch. Hence the Environmental Protection Agency proposes to do what the elected representatives of the rubes refuse to do in limiting greenhouse gases. Mead says of today's environmental movement:

 

"It proposes big economic and social interventions and denies that unintended consequences and new information could vitiate the power of its recommendations. It knows what is good for us, and its knowledge is backed up by the awesome power and majesty of the peer review process. The political, cultural, business and scientific establishments stand firmly behind global warming today -- just as they once stood firmly behind Robert Moses, urban renewal and big dams. They tell us it's a sin to question the consensus, the sign of bad moral character to doubt. Bambi, look in the mirror. You will see Godzilla looking back."

 

Mead, who says that he is a skeptic about climate policy rather than climate science, says that the environmental movement has "become the voice of the establishment, of the tenured, of the technocrats." This is the wrong thing to be in "Recovery Summer" while the nation wonders about the whereabouts of the robust recovery the experts forecast.

 

 

 

 

 

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I like the parts about the little guy becoming the big guy... David becomes Goliath, Al "Sweaty shirt" Gore was crowned the king of the environment a few years back, now he cant be found. Reid had to gut the new environmental legislation or risk losing even more Democratic seats in the Senate and House. It is truly shocking how little has gotten done in the last few months, and it cant be blamed on Republicans being "the party of no". The same thing happened a few years ago under Bush. Granted the margins were smaller, but they got into in-fighting and stalled out.

 

In the end what really strikes me is that these guys can sit around and think they can pass laws to solve any issue. Obama always says we will make sure this will never happen again, whether is be banking issues, leaking oil wells etc. I'm sorry that just isn't reasonable, and dont think I'm picking on Obama, he just happens to be the man in the chair at the moment. The sheer arrogance that we can use a "one shot one kill" style of leadership is killing us. 1000 pages bills that go most unread and rammed through, health care, "stimulus" etc. I find it funny that Obama bitched about this under Bush and now laughs it off, as he praises these bills.

 

In the end I find myself gravitating more towards the Libertarian life. I dont know if I am sliding to the right, or if they are slowly coming left to meet me. I can not get my head around legalizing all drugs etc, but I can see decriminalizing them for personal use, and just going after the big guys (The Netherlands had done this and it seems to work). I think this is how the Founders wanted things, personal freedom, and keep the government out of my day to day life... Anyway, my thoughts have go astray on this sorry if I rambled to much.

 

 

 

 

 

[74Hunter]

The think about "evironmentalists" that I find humorous is that they really have no idea about anything "environmental." They also fail to take into consideration that man and his existence are also a part of the environment.

 

They lost their way when they went overly radical.

[Manhattan]

It's a shame, because more things do need to be done in regards to environmental protection and conservation, but the environmentalist movement has concerned itself with lofty and irrelevant political goals. If you do some research into the New York Aqueduct, for example, our neglect of our environmental infrastructure is going to play itself out in a scary future for my beloved city. But it isn't a sexy topic because water is something we take for granted, it would cost a lot of money, and nobody wants to raise and spend this money on their watch. Meanwhile, environmentalists are trying to get India and China to stop burning coal.. Which isn't going to happen. Might as well focus attention to regional problems here in the States.

[74Hunter]

Might as well focus attention to regional problems here in the States.

 

Sounds good, if they don't go enviro-wacko (big if). The major problem is that almost anything they want will end up being fiscally not feasible, and will put whichever region (or the US) behind the proverbial 8-ball.

[Hingle McCringleberry]

Trying to solve big problems with one big solution is not the way to go. We (they) need to just back down and look at issues and solve small things over time. The thing is that type of leadership has been replaced withthe fancy sweeping reform. Something huge to point at and say "Look at what I did", to bad most times what they have done is make things worse.