Since Emergence Of Environment As Issue, Never More Political Polarization Than Today - NOTP

[hatrack]

EDIT

Forty-two years since Earth Day was founded by Sen. Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin Democrat, to harness Americans’ dawning environmental consciousness — and two years since Louisiana and the Gulf suffered through arguably the worst environmental disaster in the nation’s history — environmentalism has never been a more polarizing, partisan issue.

The organized environmental movement is largely viewed as a project of the left. It is mostly Democratic politicians who sound environmental themes. If you want to hear a thundering denunciation of the heedless, profit-squeezing negligence of BP and other oil companies, try Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, the ranking Democrat on Natural Resources.

But for most Republicans, as epitomized by the Louisiana delegation, environmentalism is a kind of bugaboo, climate science is suspect at best, alternative energy is mostly pie-in-the-sky craving the a la mode of a federal subsidy, and electric cars are a joke. The EPA — the agency founded by Richard Nixon the same year Nelson created Earth Day — is a symbol of tyranny and anti-competitive interference, and the Gulf oil spill was, in the end, a more lasting economic disaster than an environmental one.

The power and breadth of support for the original Earth Day is hard to imagine today. “You can’t get a Republican politician today to speak on Earth Day, but in 1970, every member of Congress, Republican and Democrat, wanted to speak,” said Adam Rome, an environmental historian at the University of Delaware who is writing a book on the original Earth Day and how it led to sweeping changes and spawned a generation of environmental activists.

EDIT

http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2012/04/earth_day_points_up_divide_bet.html

[RobertEarl]

1. Its easy to explain

The republicans have lost the ability to be concerned about anything but money. Back in the days of the first Earth Day, most republicans still had that ability.

And republicans have a hard time facing the truth, while Democrats are notorious for facing up to the truth. The truth being that the world has been significantly harmed by humans wasteful consumption.

[Nihil]

2. "All pigs fuelled up and ready for take-off sir!"

> The republicans have lost the ability to be concerned about anything but money.
> Back in the days of the first Earth Day, most republicans still had that ability.
>
> And republicans have a hard time facing the truth, while Democrats are notorious
> for facing up to the truth. The truth being that the world has been significantly
> harmed by humans wasteful consumption.

I agree with an entire post of yours!



(Memo to self: Quick, buy a lottery ticket)