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ECO-MOUTHS ARE NO LONGER LIBERAL

By Carroll Cox

Today's environmental movement isn't liberal, you know. It is narrow, provincial and intolerant, close-minded and unreceptive to new information.

Like the traditional definition of a conservative.

The term 'liberal' has been turned topsy-turvy. Webster's New World Dictionary defines liberal as: "generous, ample, abundant. Not literal or strict. Tolerant, broad-minded. Favoring reform or progress."

But 21st-Century Eco-Mouths aren't tolerant. Or generous.

They don't appear to favor progress.

They cling tenaciously to the methods and successes of twenty years ago and refuse to unbend from beliefs and agendas cast in cracking concrete. They have a horror of facing the fact that they have outlived their time and floated into the realm of la-la land excesses and Hollywood fiction. They have been given endless media space to perpetuate myths to a gullible public.

That's how you train dogs. And parrots. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Environmentalist activists today favor litigation over results, jobs, communities or needs. Litigation doesn't require proven results. It doesn't care about needs or justice. It doesn't require knowledge, experience, common sense or responsibility. It just requires lawyers. And we have plenty. About 900,000, according to the last count.

Here are just a few ways activists could have been truly reform-minded and avoided their loss of credibility among thinking people over the last decade:

They could have followed the lead of the Japanese people and set an example of frugality in their own lives, thus influencing their willing minions. Less travel, less paper and clothes and fewer electronic gadgets and motorized vehicles. Fewer and smaller houses. They could have used less water and returned their food scraps to make organic earth and feed countless creatures rather than whisking scraps down the garbage disposal. During the '90s, with environmental vocalism at its height, American consumers pigged out on frills and trappings and dropped over the precipice of debt liability.

That kind of consumption definitely impacts the environment.

Name brand environmentalists could have been leaders in the use of alternative energy. The dollars and time spent advocating the destruction of dams and stopping the construction of power plants would have made a much worthier statement if the same resources had been invested in personal renewable energy infrastructure. A normal home can be powered by solar or wind with an investment of $10,000 to $12,000. Of course such a move requires sacrifice and ongoing capacity-consciousness, i.e., you don't run your vacuum cleaner and washing machine at the same time. You remember to switch off lights. Imagine a million environmentalists foregoing instant convenience and setting the same lofty standards for themselves, as they demand from 'greedy corporations!'

If environmental and government leaders had been truly liberal and progressive and learned more about the requirements for a healthy recycling of nature in the arid (or brittle) climates of the West, perhaps a few of the 7 million acres of public land charred last year could have been saved. Scientists have calculated that the emissions every second from a forest fire covering 1.5 acres is equivalent to the carbon monoxide emissions produced per second by 3,694 cars!

I sure will be glad when environmental leaders become generous, tolerant and broad-minded.

When they become honest liberals again, maybe we'll see some real reform and progress!

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