The Green Conundrum

Right outside of this one church town,
There’s a gold dirt road to a whole lot of nothing.
Got a deed to the land but it ain’t my ground.
This is God’s country.

God’s Country – Blake Shelton

…..

Sometime in the early 1990s, I remember hearing about a meeting of environmentalists in, where else, Northern California. They had a problem. They wanted to serve the group something to drink. Clearly Styrofoam or plastic cups were out. Paper cups were discussed but they involve the destruction of trees and so were a no go. Perhaps people could bring their own reusable cups. But, the reusable cups would have to be washed which uses water, a resource stored behind evil dams and needed by endangered fish. Furthermore, soap is often used to wash cups and many soaps are considered to be pollutants by the group. So, the only sensible environmentally correct decision… was to not have any drinks available at all. 

 This is emblematic of the new “green” environmental radical left. The needs or wants of people are subjugated to the control and dictates of the “elites” who know what is best for us. 

I grew up in the smog-choked city of Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s. Smog was so bad then that as a kid I could not go outside to play most summer afternoons without spending much of the next day trying to get breath back in my lungs. I have always considered myself an environmentalist. I want clean air and clean water. I want protection for genuine indigenous endangered species. I want open spaces for people to experience nature. 

But my environmentalism bears no relationship to the new “green” movement that has co-opted that term. The reason is clear. Today’s radical environmental left want to preserve the environment from people. I want to preserve the environment for people. As the above example shows, they see people as the enemy of the environment and the greatest danger to it. I see the environment as existing for the benefit and enjoyment of people. 

The distinction is huge when it comes to policy. When I was in the California State legislature, I represented a coastal district. I was very interested in seeing that pollutants which had been flowing into the ocean would be cleaned up. Surfers and swimmers were getting sick from being in the ocean, particularly right after a rain. These pollutants came from the land in the form of water runoff. But the pollutants didn’t fly into the water. They could only get there in any significant amount through a stream. There were a finite number of streams that ran in to the ocean so the sensible solution to me was to have filters and other systems to purify the water at each stream before it went into the ocean. To me, the only other solution was to try to get literally millions of people in an urban area to not put garbage or pollutants anywhere that might run off into any stream. That is impossible. Hence my solution. Logical huh?

Well, then I ran into the green left. They were not interested in my proposal. They wanted to ban everything throughout the state that might ever pollute anything and control behavior and stop people from watering lawns or washing cars and any number of things. That was the only solution they would accept. 

You all see the same thing happening in energy now. In order to save the planet from climate change, stop all production of carbon-based fuels. But do not use nuclear either because the waste is toxic and accidents can happen. And don’t use hydroelectric (which is as clean as energy comes) because it requires damming a river and all rivers should be untouched. So, we are left with only wind and solar, which by the way have their own environmental damage and can never provide reliable energy for society to operate as it does.

I complained about a taxpayer funded park in California that had very little parking because, I was told, people would “damage” the park if they were allowed in it. I said I thought the park was there for people. I have so many similar examples that I could make quite a long tome on the subject. 

But they all end the same way as the opening story of this missive. If you want to preserve the environment from and in spite of people, the best way would be to reduce the population. A few of the most radical enviros actually admit this. Most don’t however. Instead, they simply resort to the next best solution, which is to control  the population.

If you genuinely believe that life for all of us will be extinguished within ten years due to human caused climate change, then no action to prevent that result is too radical. Assuming that terminating the lives of billions of people may be going a bit too far, totalitarian control is clearly the next best place to go. 

I have two major messages here. The first is that the climate change/green movement can only achieve their stated goals through totalitarian control of the population. These radicals believe that is a small price to pay to achieve their ends, particulary because they will not be the ones paying that price since they will be in control. That is reason enough for reasonable people to oppose their every step.  

The second message however is that they should not own the issue of the environment. The rest of us who want to save the environment for people should be seen as the sensible ones. We have lots of solutions that move the cause of real environmentalism forward without sacrificing people or our lifestyles or our economy and we won’t have to install a dictatorial government to accomplish them.

For 40 years, Republicans have been trying to wrestle the education issue from Democrats and have failed. But in the last year, the Democrats have handed it to us by pushing their agenda too far wanting to have government schools raise children instead of their parents. The green left is pushing things too far as well. We should be ready to be the real defenders of the environment. 

I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive fast & live free