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The last several years have brought more conflict and more debate in the area of environmentalism and climate change than the rest of America’s history combined. The money being poured into climate change denialism has caused many otherwise reasonable Americans to doubt the scientific findings regarding the harm being done to our environment and our climate from fossil fuel consumption. But why is this only a recent controversy? Why isn’t environmentalism addressed in the Constitution like many of our other societal issues?
HISTORY
When the Constitution of the U.S. was written, conservation of the environment was the last thing on anyone’s mind. The early settlers of America had an entire continent laid out in front of them, rich with natural resources. They could not conceive of ever using up or damaging the land, air and water that seemed so plentiful. Virginia planters even had a policy of growing their tobacco, depleting the soil, and just moving west to plant more crops on new, rich soil. It wasn’t until the late 1880’s when large forests in the Great Lakes region were cut down, resulting in raging wildfires, that conservation began to enter the consciousness of the American people.
Theodore Roosevelt was known as our first, and best, environmental president. He believed that “the preservation of our forests in an imperative business necessity”…revealing that his support of conservation was for the purposes of economic prosperity. He knew that ensuring a continuing supply of timber and setting aside areas of America for vacationing was good business sense.
PUBLIC AWARENESS and BIG BUSINESS PUSH BACK
But harmful effects of business practices to human beings did not start coming to the public’s attention until the exposure of the damaging effects of DDT in the early 1960’s and the publication of books such as “The Limits of Growth” in 1972 which argued that the Earth would eventually no longer be able to support a rapidly growing population. And in 1969, several environmental disasters, including a Santa Barbara oil spill and scary Los Angeles smog alerts, led to the establishment of Earth Day and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, signed into law by President Nixon, but with bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats.
In the 1970’s, a group of Western politicians, including Ronald Reagan, James Watt, and Dick Cheney, formed the “Sagebrush Rebellion”, a group who believed that conservation efforts regarding western lands were an attack on Big Business profits. They cited Ayn Rand in support of their position…“Now observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for ‘harmony with nature’—there is no discussion of man’s needs and the requirements of his survival.” This group immediately began fighting conservation efforts with the argument that the needs of business and commerce were more important than efforts to conserve resources and reduce pollution.
AL GORE
Roger Revelle was an early researcher on global climate change (he coined the phrase “greenhouse effect”) and Al Gore was one of his students at Harvard. As a result of their connection, Gore became increasingly educated and concerned about man’s effect on the environment. Gore conducted some of the first Congressional hearings on environmental issues and climate change and authored several books on the issue, eventually winning the Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC. Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” brought the topic of man-made climate change to a wide audience and he has continued his environmental activism to this day.
BUSH/CHENEY ADMINISTRATION
When George W. Bush became president, he immediately began shutting down government research and scientific opinions on climate change and worked hard to skew all policies toward the energy business. Vice President Cheney’s “secret” energy policy meetings were attended by numerous energy company representatives, while environmental groups were excluded. Scientists who participating in research and reports on man-made climate change were purged from governmental jobs and their research and findings were suppressed as much as possible. Exxon Mobile literally wrote letters telling the Bush/Cheney Administration who to fire and who to put in positions of influence. The EPA under Bush refused to do anything to regulate pollution and set standards…even resulting in the Supreme Court getting involved. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, funded by Big Oil, had a remarkable amount of influence and collaboration with the Bush/Cheney Administration, leading to conservation groups filing lawsuits and publicly exposing such ties.
As a result of suppression and deliberate distortion of scientific data, there has been little legislation to curb carbon pollutants and move our society forward toward alternative energy and independence from oil. Big Oil and Big Business interests have strong lobbying influence in Congress and have managed to stop almost all progressive energy initiatives.
SUMMARY
Obviously, environmental issues and politics have become inextricably intertwined. There have been a few environmental issues brought before the Supreme Court in the last and they have almost all been decided in favor of Big Business. The evidence of man-made climate change is growing each year, while the amount of money and influence being poured in climate change denial is also growing each year. It is one of our most divisive issues, but it shouldn’t be. We should all be able to agree that we want our planet to survive and thrive, while also allowing business and the economy to survive and thrive. This shouldn’t be an “either/or” issue…but as long as politics, instead of science, is the basis of our decision-making in this area, we will all lose…including future generations. After all, the Constitution does mention, right there in the preamble, our posterity.
