It's a good entry, and very sad. I started out in politics my Freshman year in highschool because I was a big advocate of wetlands conservation and saw what happened with corrupt government gave corrupt developers liscences to build on places they oughtn't. And I saw the consequences first hand- mold and mildew that is inconquerable. Flooding during any tropical system. Huge ditches and retention ponds full year round even during our worst droughts. Dirty ground water from excessive run off and septic contamination. And every year the sandhill cranes came back to nest, they had a smaller and smaller place to settle.
My point is that I've always been a geek where the environment is concerned. Do you remember the jeep cherokee commercial where the son inheirits 140 acres of inhabitable swamp land and he's excited because he gets to joy ride through the swamp? I wrote a letter to Jeek Cherokee in protest because swamps are one of the most delicate ecosystems, and endangered to boot. So yeah. Big dork. It was never clear to me that the local democrats were really concerned about proper zoning and conservation, but it was always clear to me that the republicans definitely weren't. So that was when I developed an antipathy towards the party. And then when Al Gore ran my junior year, the "environmentalist whacko," I was so excited. Here was an environmentalist... someone who had traveled to Antartica and brought back a core of ice that marked the passage of the Clean Air Act by the reduction of grime and discoloration. I mean, Al Gore just understood.
Regardless what you think of Gore the man, he was irrefutably a great environmentalist and I like to imagine what it would have been like to have an environmentalist in charge of the biggest producer of pollution in the world. He talked of birth control programs for third world countries, only he didn't call them that because he thought "third world" was an insult. Global warming solutions. Softening our dependence on oil. Conservation. Species protection. Guh! I've never been so excited about a candidate, and I probably never will be again. I think it's only in youth that you can love a public figure like that. Anyway. You all know how that ended up.
Anyway, what Q's entry reminded me of was that people often consider environmentalists "whackos" because they put people last. Sort of like how Ann Coulter's thesis is that liberals put America last and demonize America. The truth about being an environmentalist and a liberal are one and the same, I think. It's sort of hard. Environmentalists see all around them evidence of the folly of civilization. Of course it becomes easy to revile their own species, because we seem to be the root of all of their problems. Liberals look around and see evidence of serious problems in America's foreign policy and the failings of our domestic policy. It's easy to resent that sunny American spirit we first encounter as kids in first-grade American History class. It breeds cynicism, I think. The more I cared about the environment, the less I liked my own species. And the more I care about politics and learn about our foreign policy, the less I like America. Is Ann Coulter's thesis right? In the end, do I hate America?
I have the mantra instilled in me by Dr. Porter... "People are the Problem. People can be the Soluton." On a good day, I believe it. On a bad day, I'm not sure I do. *troubled*
I know that liberals and environmentalists are often accused of not seeing the whole picuture- that our pov is obscured. It's all well and good to talk and talk and talk about rainforest conservation, but who are we to go to another country and tell them that they musn't cut down their trees for farmland and grazing land when we've already made the same mistakes and continue to undermine our conservation legislation. (The Healthy Forest Initiative is a pander to lumber companies if I ever saw one.) What right do we have to tell poverty stricken Africa that they ought not hunt gorillas and endangered species for desperately needed food or money when we are guilty of comparable crimes against our own wildlife when there was far less need. It's so confusing!
Dr. Porter used to tell us that for less cost than the War in Iraq, we could PAY the people of countries to work to conserve their land. And it seems so simple and yet it's all very complicated. There's such corruption and greed marring the governments of African countries. It's such a problem. We have all these problems and we can't fix them. And half the time, we don't even seem like we're trying. We're gossiping about Britney Spears and spending our money frivolously on clothing from the Gap and Old Navy made by dirt poor people who don't make enough in five years to afford a pair of the jeans that they make every day. And somewhere in Africa, there's a little kid with a rifle shooting a gorilla for meat and money, and we want to tell him no.
It just fucking sucks. Like, how can we think we're so smart and so great and so good and we can't even stop all these people from dying and starving and half the time we seem like we're more interested in the gorillas then the people and WHY they kill them. Americans almost obliterated Buffallo from the face of the earth, and for no reason so quaint as food and not in the face of starvation. This isn't just an environmental issue, you know? MOST environmental issues... No, ALL of them aren't just environmental. They're also about socio-economics and culture and politics and corruption.
And I don't know how to stand here anymore in my Nike sneakers and say what I think these people should do. I buy gas from American companies who spill oil in oceans along African coasts and don't clean it up because there are no laws that say they have to. I buy medicine from American companies that raid Africa for alternative remedies and don't pay a cent of compensation because there's no one that makes them. I wear clothes from companies that contract sub-human sweat shops that pay their workers pennies because no one said they couldn't.
Like... who am I but an American consumer? And when it comes down to it, aren't I sort of the root of all that I just lashed out against? How can I be the solution if I am the problem? Like, I can say that people suck, but what I really mean is that I suck. I know things but I don't do anything about it. I just talk about how people suck. Which makes me suck even worse.
I feel like a huge hypocrite.
Well, my. That was depressing.
Veronica Mars.
Tonight. 9PM. UPN.
You should watch it.
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caitiedidit) wrote,
