POLITICS AND NATURE

The future of the United States and the world is tied in with the advancement of environmental knowledge and the pursuit of increased technological abilities which take account of industrial failures. Issues across the board rely upon nature and the human relationships surrounding it. This requires leadership in a world facing threats internationally and challenges domestically working to focus the collective vision in other areas. Drumbeats of War, economic conservatism, bloated budgets, and the lack of insurance top the national agenda.

Never Ending Warfare

Taking each of these in order, we learn the connection surrounding them relating to environmental politics. Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, told an interviewer yesterday on National Public Radio, this war is a war without end. The United States, according to Graham, will be fighting this war on terror for the rest of our lives, just as the nation is still in North Korea fifty years after the end of active hostilities in the Korean war, and it commands from posts in Germany sixty years after the end of WWII. So, in this view, U.S. bases will exist throughout the Middle East for decades to come.

It is hard to argue with his assessment. No matter what any Democratic candidate claims or argues, it is not so easy to pull out of a hostile conflict. Were Dick Nixon alive this question could be posed to the man who ran in 1968 as the peace with honor candidate and then failed to get the country's forces out of Viet Nam with either peace or honor. Ask Henry Kissinger and it seems he has taken the stance that it wasn't his fault and he and Nixon were stuck with a war they didn't create. True, but then it took six years from Nixon's first inauguration for Gerald Ford to finally extricate U.S. forces from a world Lyndon Johnson made his own through the arrogance and ignorance of his own administration. That, though, is another story.

The story here relates to oil. It fuels the social order, it upholds the transportation system, it gives us the mobility we like as Americans. Oil is a cornerstone of national and international policy. This is why we are in Iraq and it is why our military is unlikely to leave any time soon. You can argue we should or should not, but reality is still there and it has forced us into some untenable situations. How do we solve this problem? We will never wean ourselves away from oil. Even techno solutions like hydrogen vehicles require the dirty black crude to generate fuel. Plug in vehicles sap energy from coal and oil fired power plants.

Throughout the last seven years, there has been very little concentration on this facet of the future of the nation. It is as if the problems will simply go away. Options exist and this provides hope for the future. The reliance of the world on diminishing oil reserves is going to have to be dealt with and doing so sooner rather than later will be a great benefit for the future. We can transcend the over-dependence upon fossil fuels by focusing on the problems facing the nation.

Instability runs rampant when people are afraid and the rhetoric of fear exuding from the halls of power on Pennsylvania Avenue creates despair instead of inspiring hope and a desire to do better as a society. The terrorists will not win this supposed war because of the energy and vitality of the American system and the rewards available to those willing to work on difficult objects. There is no need to be afraid, but to govern this nation, powerful individuals need to provide guidance. Reducing U.S. reliance on foreign oil is a distinct possibility that can be done with real efforts by people and business. The effort to create a green revolution is critical to success in eliminating the need to be in the Middle East.

Right now, the Saudi government supplies the United States with over one million barrels of oil each and every day. They are second only to Canada. This is the society that wants to whip a woman and put her in jail after she was gang raped as if she asked for it just by going out of the house without her husband's permission. Strange the customs upon whom we rely. This is also the society that produced Osama Bin Laden and the vast majority of the hijackers that flew planes into the World Trade Center. But that is neither here nor there.

The danger will not go away, like the failed drug war, this need to be involved with the most ruthless dictators (such as when our nation sided with Saddam Hussein) is a ploy to advance the desires of a small but active set of ideological zealots who refuse to consider alternatives, whether solar, or wind, because these are small scale, personal actions that reduce individual reliance upon the center. An individual getting energy from solar panels and wind turbines can get by without reliance upon the man.

People are concerned about the influence of governmental authority and the growing involvement of the federal government in their lives. It is hard to see how or why imaginative solutions to massive energy problems does not benefit those individuals and society as a whole. The grid has been one of the greatest innovative ideas put into action in the twentieth century. Look at the Tennessee Valley Authority. Power for the masses. And, it helped. Imagine a future wherein the twenty-first century became dedicated to reducing the need for, and consequently the drain on, the energy grid. It will take time and effort but it can be done.

Do not be fooled though. There are entrenched interests that want nothing to do with alternative energy sources. U.S. citizens spend an awful lot of money on energy needs. An increase of cafe standards to 45 mpg, which could be done if the political will existed, which it doesn't, would substantially reduce the profits and the power of a strong minority in America run by folks sitting in boardrooms deciding the fate of not only this nation but others as well. These people have run this country for a good long time and their decisions affect millions of Americans. This is not to say they don't deserve to make a profit and that the work they do is easy. Oil companies employ many people with incredible skills that know where to drill and how to drill and they provide the goods that we want. However, the influence and power they have can be seen as disproportionate at best. Which brings us to private industry.

Business is Business

Industry produces benefits to every American, some more than others. Large industry has to take the initiative to move this society in a cleaner, better direction. It is so immensely frustrating to hear conservatives equating liberty with license in the world of business. The same conservatives that want to keep government out of the boardrooms of Exxon-Mobile and Bechtel want to give the feds the right to invade the privacy rights in the name of social purity. It is very bizarre, and yet the industry propels an ideology of greed and carelessness that puts regular people, nature, and the future in jeopardy.

Future opportunities promote endeavors in green technologies. Corporatism can corrupt the American spirit and may cause the failure of new ideas. People cling to worn ideas because they worked in the past. However, this society needs to look to the future. The nice part is business has an opportunity to make a difference in individual lives and in the course of society as a whole. Reality can be cruel or uplifting, it depends on those who wish to make a difference and to chart new pathways. The only way to reduce government and get it off the backs of industry is for business leaders to take the effort to make change part of the operating plan.

Congress is currently working to change the cafe standards, perhaps up to 35 mpg but imagine a nation where instead of being dragged kicking and screaming out to the woodshed, automotive icons lead the way. Democracy is key and the people can lead if they so choose. But it wouldn't be bad to get some help.

Spendthrifts at the Helm

Ross Perot made a big difference in America. He was a lunatic little man that would have done some insane things had his penchant for power been anything more than a shrill call for reform using charts and graphs showing how the U.S. could pay for educational initiatives of every child in America with the money being spent on interest on the debt and a funny, albeit patriotic, little admiral in the VP spot. What he did do was call Americans to action and force the two presidential rivals to focus on economic realities. The results were a paying off the debt and leaving the nation on a solid financial footing. Of course, the financial security of the U.S. has entered another phase over the last few years.

The government spends too much money. Of course, deficit hawks avail themselves to the all to awful abuses such as governmental funding of student research, which they claim to be a waste of resources, instead of the massive amounts of cash funnelled into private hands through military spending and governmental projects based on war. But, Perot proved that a third party candidate can make a difference in the priorities leaders make. Fiscal restraint likely will prove important in the coming election and the work that goes on after the election. With such conservativism working at federal levels, it is possible that conservation will take a new turn for the better.

Insuring the Masses

What could be more beneficial than insurance for the people of the United States. It has been proven that the more informed, and the better off people are, the more environmental issues take precedence. Nobody cared in the bleak, gray nights of East Berlin about the water or the effects of industrialism through the Soviet Union. Two hundred years worth of industrial pollution built with no fear of the sanctity of the land has left its scars on our own society. Efforts to assure the future of society have been based, in the past, upon keeping land protected from development through the NPS, the Forest Service, or the BLM, in the future, more emphasis will need to be taken to educate people about the importance of their actions.

In the End, Saving Nature Means Saving Ourselves

Quixotic campaigns fuel reactions from staunch defenders of the status quo. Conservation needs are important in the coming election and politics and nature are inextricably intertwined. Conservation need not be anti business unless business men and women make it that way. There is an ignorance perpetuated by the ostrich mentality that makes people hide their heads in the sand while believing, somehow, that six billion people can not alter the natural fiber that makes the Earth.

Look at the largest cities. Concrete and pollution do not need to be the legacy left to future generations by our own. There is a connection between all issues facing the nation and its relationship with nature. People looking for who to vote for or what to pay attention to will do well to look to environmental politics and how it will affect us in both the short and the long term.