REPUBLICAN CONSERVATIONISTS?

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Republicans like to point out that the first great conservationist to put his views about the environment and our will to save it into political action was Theodore Roosevelt. They neglect to mention that T.R. was detested by Mark Hanna, the Republican strategist most admired by Karl Rove. The Republican Right fought Roosevelt tooth and nail and breathed a sigh of relief when he chose not to run for re-election in 1908. They so detested him that my grandfather, a loyal Republican operative in Johnstown, Pennsylvania - was cast out for supporting T.R.'s 1912 comeback attempt. "The more things change, the more they remain the same," - today's GOP enforces ideological party loyalty against moderate and progressive Republicans and policies.

I recently ran across a textbook from 30 years ago, when I was working on an MPA degree in Environmental Management. It was the infamous "The Limits to Growth," published by the Club of Rome. The book was fiercely attacked for forecasting that global climate change would have an adverse impact on civilization, an end to limitless oil reserves and perhaps the end of oil itself, long-term problems associated with the storage of nuclear waste, and over-population. The funny thing is, all those problems are still problems, each more obvious than it was then.

Global warming is now considered a demonstrated fact by most scientists armed with the facts, yet the United States refuses to take part in any multi-national initiatives to fight this.

It is mainstream news that within a few decades, we will pump more oil than we discover replacements for. India and China - which didn't figure in the consumption statistics 30 years ago - exacerbate those figures as they compete for oil and China produces nearly as many SUVs as does the United States.

When the trans-Alaska pipeline was built, it was predicted by those defending the use of tankers to transport oil that there would be one accident in 20 years. The Exxon Valdez oil spill came almost 20 years to the day after that prediction. Prince William Sound has still not recovered, and our "national energy plan" is to increase production on the Alaskan North Slope.

We still have no storage for nuclear waste that will be dangerous for a half-life longer than recorded human history.

Last November, the head of the EPA said Bush's re-election was a mandate to implement the president's environmental policies. These include:

Revision of the Clean Air Act to rely on "voluntary" cleanup by industry, relaxing pollution limits on ozone, elimination of vehicle tailpipe inspections, lowering pollution standards for cars, SUVs and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment, end all new-source review suits against coal-fired power plants and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies.

Revision of the Clean Water Act to increase allowable pollution including a complete end to monitoring mercury.

Revision of the Endangered Species Act to make economic impacts on human activities a higher priority, making it more difficult to list a species and easier to de-list a species.

Revision of the National Environmental Policy Act to limit challenges to Environmental Impact Statements, and limiting the cases in which an EIS is required.

Changes to international audit law to allow corporations to keep information about environmental problems secret. Restriction of class-action lawsuits for asbestos claims, even as Halliburton is shown to know its W.R. Grace subsidiary hid facts about pollution from asbestos mining in Montana that had an adverse effect their workers and families, and the surrounding community.
A national energy policy opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increased drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America, as well as changes to wilderness protection regulations of the BLM which will result in the last clean air in America - in northeastern Wyoming - being dirtier than the air I breathe in Los Angeles as drilling is increased by 1,000 percent.

One has to ask, why?

Bill Moyers recently described what he sees as the major problem we face at present: "One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington... Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts."

Writing at Grist magazine online in October 2004, reporter Glenn Scherer states:

"Forty-five senators and 186 representatives in 2003 earned 80- to 100-percent approval ratings from the nation's three most influential Christian right advocacy groups -- the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Many of those same lawmakers also got flunking grades -- less than 10 percent, on average -- from the League of Conservation Voters last year."

"Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse."

"We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating or higher from the leading religious-right organizations make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. Congress. These politicians include some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. government, as well as key environmental decision makers: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Republican Conference Chair Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), Senate Republican Policy Chair Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and quite possibly President Bush."

A 2002 Time/CNN poll found 59 percent of Americans believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly 25 percent think the Bible predicted 9/11. Belief in the Apocalypse is a powerful driving force in American politics.

There are two groups to look at. The traditional dispensationalists are well-known, led by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. They believe in the End Times and that salvation is all that matters, but they see this taking place in "God's time." The Dominionists put responsibility for the return of Jesus Christ not in biblical prophesy but political activism. They believe Christ will only make his Second Coming when the world has prepared a place for Him, that the first step in readying His arrival is to "Christianize" America.

The Dominionists believe that - until Jesus' return - "the Lord will provide." A popular dominionist high-school history textbook - America's Providential History - states: "The secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "the Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's Earth. The resources are waiting to be tapped." In another passage, the writers explain: "While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people."

Individuals with the power to set national priorities with regard to conservation of the environment hold these views. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has called for "march[ing] forward with a Biblical worldview" in U.S. politics, to convert America into a "God centered" nation whose government promotes prayer, worship, and the teaching of Christian values. James Inhofe, the Senate's most outspoken environmental critic, is also unwavering in his wish to remake America as a Christian state. Both oppose the EPA, calling it "the Gestapo." DeLay has put forward legislation to gut the Clean Air and Endangered Species acts. In 2003, Inhofe invited a stacked-deck of fossil fuel-funded climate-change skeptics to testify at a Senate hearing that climaxed with him calling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Inhofe makes major decisions based on heavy corporate and theological influences, flawed science, and an apocalyptic worldview. "I trust God with my legislative goals and the issues that are important to my constituents," Inhofe has told Pentecostal Evangel magazine. He chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the single most important congressional committee dealing with environmental legislation. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Inhofe received more than $588,000 from the fossil-fuel industry, electric utilities, mining, and other natural-resource interests from 1999 to 2004. Eight of the nine Republican members of the committee received an average of $408,000 per senator from the energy and natural resource sector in the same period. In 2003, Inhofe received a perfect 100 percent rating from all three major Christian-Right groups. By contrast, the eight Democrats and one Independent on the committee received an average of $132,000 per senator from that same sector.

It might be well here to consult the Patron Saint of Right Wing Revolution - Adolf Hitler had it figured out 80 years ago:

"In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods."

This is how the Noise Machine of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy works, folks. Peer-reviewed environmental science that contradicts an End-Timer's interpretation of Holy Writ is automatically wrong, which explains the disregard for science among Christian fundamentalist lawmakers - the denial of global warming, of the damaged ozone layer, and of the poisoning caused by industrial arsenic and mercury. When God is going to take care of all things and The End Is Near, who needs to worry about such things, especially when they prove The Second Coming?

I have painted a dark picture here. When it comes to proposing an alternative, I'll let my favorite Southern Baptist, Bill Moyers, provide the necessary guidance at the conclusion of the sermon: "The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism...What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma, the science of the heart, the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does."