{"id":6121,"date":"2011-07-08T00:58:27","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T00:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=6121"},"modified":"2011-07-08T01:13:26","modified_gmt":"2011-07-08T01:13:26","slug":"environmentalism-merely-a-fashion-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/environmentalism-merely-a-fashion-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmentalism: Merely a fashion statement?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any pundit, such as the New York Times\u2019 Thomas Friedman, who continues to advocate an elevated\u00a0gas tax as a solution to foreign oil dependency or global warming is fundamentally unserious.\u00a0 When Hillary Clinton called for releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve during the 2008 election, it became blindingly obvious\u2014yet again–that no politician is willing to deliberately raise gas prices on the American consumer, however valid such a policy might be.\u00a0 Obama\u2019s decision at the end of June to release 60 billion barrels of crude oil from\u00a0 the Reserve <\/a>further confirms that Democrats are just as determined as Republicans to cushion Americans from pump price shock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This political reality suggests that environmentalism is also a fundamentally unserious movement.\u00a0 Environmentalists (and I consider myself one) pretend to embrace the virtues of self-abnegation, but do so only up to the borders of their consumption comfort zone.\u00a0 If truly \u201ccaring for the environment\u201d required anyone to give up his core lifestyle, the response would be: \u201cSorry, no can do.\u201d\u00a0 The lifestyle changes that people are willing to embrace\u2014recycling; driving a cool Prius; possibly, in a few cases, taking one\u2019s own bags to the farmer\u2019s market\u2014are things that we are already willing to do.\u00a0 If saving the planet required us to turn off our computers and wireless devices, or running the electricity just 8 hours a day, no one would do it.\u00a0\u00a0 The backlash against the upcoming fluorescent bulb rule <\/a>among undoubtedly leftie designers and other members of the cultural elite\u00a0\u00a0illustrates the exact location of the sacrifice line that people will not cross: the one that asks them to give up what they value.\u00a0 (\u201cI have a light-enough carbon footprint in the other aspects of the design, so I can allow myself a lighting splurge,\u201d explains a Washington restaurateur\u00a0in justifying his use of traditional bulbs–a completely ungrounded assertion: how does he know his “carbon footprint” and what it allows for?)\u00a0 The breathtaking hypocrisy of an Al Gore and the entire Hollywood elite, voracious consumers of every energy-hogging transportation, communication, and labor-saving device evolved by human ingenuity, or the wealthy’s resistance to unsightly \u201crenewable energy\u201d infrastructure in such prized backyards as Nantucket Island,\u00a0 are simply larger-than-life examples of the gap between rhetoric and conduct which we all suffer from.\u00a0 The difference between the carbon footprint of Ford Expedition-driving, NASCAR-attending, Rush Limbaugh-cheering, enviro-hating Red-Blooded Americans and the staffers of the Natural Resources Defense Council is only at the margins, at best.\u00a0\u00a0 NRDC and Sierra Club staffers are just as reliant on an entire web of energy production and delivery for their 21st century lifestyles, their homes have been just as carved out from pristine nature, as any of the yahoos they despise.\u00a0 Putting a solar panel on your roof or occupying a \u201cgreen\u201d building can\u2019t begin to restore the massive alterations of nature that our civilized life, with its asphalt roads, power lines, and dams, has already exacted and continues to exact.<\/p>\n

The alternative Democratic technique for showing sensitivity to the environment when it come to global warming\u2014imposing higher fuel efficiency standards on the car industry\u2014is a coward\u2019s strategy.\u00a0 Obama\u2019s proposed new CAFE \u00a0standards<\/a> are a highly inefficient way to lower gas consumption; the most efficient way would in fact be a gas tax.\u00a0 But since that would require asking Americans to sacrifice up front, it is far more politically palatable to pretend that the real villains are corporations who are somehow forcing Americans to buy cars that they don\u2019t want, as the NRDC\u2019s Roland Hwang preposterously argued <\/a>on Warren Olney\u2019s To the Point today, and to make the costs of lowering gas use presently invisible to the consumer and voter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a California nature buff, I\u00a0 am horrified by (what I would deem) unnecessary electricity and water use: leaving appliances, including computers, on when you are not using them; running your air conditioning when you are not home, or, frankly, even when you are; and the worst: letting precious water run unused in showers and taps.\u00a0\u00a0 And yet if someone told me that I had to give up swimming in order to be conservationist when it comes to water or energy–that swimming is an unnecessary frill–I would rebel.\u00a0 We conserve only what we are prepared to do.\u00a0 Does that make the instinct useless?\u00a0 Perhaps.\u00a0 And yet it feels like a salutary virtue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any pundit, such as the New York Times\u2019 Thomas Friedman, who continues to advocate an elevated\u00a0gas tax as a solution to foreign oil dependency or global warming is fundamentally unserious.\u00a0 When Hillary Clinton called for releases from the Strategic Petroleum … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[210,815],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6121"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6128,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6121\/revisions\/6128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}