🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <43n0h3$9bj@superb.csc.ti.com>,
Dwight U. Bartholomew <dwight@infrared.csc.ti.com> wrote:
>>Dan Ferber <Dan_Ferber@qms1.life.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>>>....the (often losing) fight against the "dirty water bill", the EPA ax 
>>>job, attacks on National Biological Service and other anti-environmental 
>>>bills in this Congress.  

DB>It's also the same rhetoric used by the Nature Conservancy,
DB>the Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation and probably
DB>many more: those are the only ones I get magazines from.  You've got
DB>to wonder if all of these organizations are so worried about the
DB>same thing than perhaps the 104th Congress IS "bad" for
DB>the environment.

I haven't picked up an Audubon in a while, but the Nature Conservancy
doesn't use this rhetoric and the NWF is quite a bit more moderate. Just 
to add to the list, however, the Issak Walton League is pissed, but
they say "Congress" rather than "Republican." Some columnists in a few bird
hunting mags I get are wildly upset too, but they're primarily concerned 
with the Conservation Reserve Program getting cut. In fact, everyone thinks
*their* favorite program (which is always the most valuable one) is going
to get unjustly cut.

I don't know what the "dirty water bill" is but I recall reading about 
some communities who were pretty upset that the EPA was requiring them
to meet its "one size fits all" water standards, including expensive
filtering methods that was thought by the communities to be unnecessary
and requiring them filter out contaminants that don't exist in their 
region. I suspect the "dirty water bill" is something like the "starve
the schoolchildren bill," in which the Republicans wanted to move school
lunch programs back to state control with block grants.

The use of "dirty water bill," "war on the environment," "polluter's 
bill of rights," "attack on the [fill in the blank]" etc., is uninformative
at best, and is typically misleading and shamelessly political. When I
come across the chants and slogans of the aging counterculture, I stop
reading, and I certainly would not want to be seen as endorsing it.
   
DB>I'd be interested in a distinction between "being conscientious wrt 
DB>the environment and being an environmentalist."

I associate the term "environmentalist" with the left, who I believe
adopted the environment to further a leftist agenda, rather than 
adopting leftism to further an environmental agenda. I read somewhere 
recently that the genesis of the big anti-nuclear movement in this 
country was Tom Hayden's belief that the left needed a new unifying
cause once the Vietnam War ended. Lucky for him, out popped Three Mile
Island.

This particular anecdote may or may not be true, but I have always
believed what it illustrates is true. The phoney issue of "environmental
racism" is another example. The environment is foremost an issue of
individual behavior, and yet the "environmentalists" slinging most of
the rhetoric are completely consumed with politicians and "multinational 
corporate polluters." BTW, based on what Dan said earlier, "corporate 
polluter" may be an environmentalist code word for "Jew."

Dan Ferber <Dan_Ferber@qms1.life.uiuc.edu> wrote:
 
DF>I call 'em like I see 'em, and the bills I mentioned are
DF>anti-environmental crap.  If there was a more moderate bill offered, I'd
DF>have a more moderate response.  So would SC, probably.  Sorry I nudged you
DF>off board so easily, but I don't think you were ever on board.  Dan

You`re right --  I'm certainly not on board whatever board you`re on.

Mark Gahler
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"Everybody wants to save the world; nobody wants to help Mom with 
the dishes."  -- P.J. O'Rourke