As they say, it is easier to criticize then to make policy proposals yourself. I don't think many Democrats want a truly honest interpretation of their environmental records in their leadership—beyond what a few Washington interest groups consider the environmental.

The problem with politics, is few look that deeply into the issue. Democrats often invoke a deep conservatism when it comes to environmental issues: instead of forging new policy, they're just trying to keep the line where it is now. This may be because they feel they are being attacked full face. Of course the accusation that the Democrats are just stalemating the process is standard Republican rhetoric, but like all rhetoric there is some truth in it.

So what fundamentally is the environmental? We talk about environmental policies all the time, yet what qualifies as an environmental policy is often contradictory and fuzzy.

I see environmental issues being a loose network of human health, aestetics, social issues, and occassionally ecological issues. It is often pared together with technical recommendations provided by science ('rationalism'), which tries to provide a legititimation of environmental policy. Below is a table that attempts to map the correlation between reason for policy (x-axis) to field of environmentalism (y-axis).

Factors of Environmentalism

X Axis: Reason for Policy

Instrumental Reason - Means-ends rational, particularly when the ends trump the ends in such a way that the means effects of the means are all but ignored. When the ends look particularly bad, we often overlook all the bad that means actually creates. Think panic mentality.

Protecting the Irrational - Protecting what is beyond human's bureaucratic/rational control. The irrational is the fundamentally unpredictable, the uncontrolled, the undominated by humankind. Be it animals, forests, or many other different natural resources.

Consideration of the Means - How carefully to we consider our impact on other parts of the environment, and greater society? An example would be how a new hunting regulations would impact hunters and other species in the woods.

Latent Interests - Are things benifiting besides those claimed by the field of environmentalism? The obvious benifits here are economic, and pyschological (it makes you feel good).

Y Axis: Field of Environmentalism

Human Gain - Does it make us happier in someway, improve our social relations, somehow benifit humans above and beyond health issues or just for the heck of it? Most environmentalists don't openly subscribe to this doctrine of environmentalism, but it plays an important function latently, in other fields of environmentalism.

Human Health - Are we doing it just for the sake of preserving life, and no other reason? This is suppost to be in the pure sense, direct physical well being. Health is a question of the of the nature, but it also is an issue of personal (smoke) and societal choices (particulate matter in the air). You can't control if you get cancer or not. A rational dimension, although grounded in people's fears and prejudices. People on the right have particularly critical of such 'medical' science that attempts to predict the results of exposure to certain chemicals or certain other actions, which often is based on fuzzy evidence. Science has found it nearly impossible to follow people's actions day to day, and study the results: the process is too long term, it is morally wrong to purposely hurt other humans (and increasingly animals), and you don't know who is worth studying until it's too late.

Aesthetics - It's beuatiful, it makes something to us appealing. It's the irrational dimension, as such it often takes place in a domain that is the anti-thesis to the rational, that often decides environmental policy. As such, it is often played down as a factor in environmentalism, but is essential to consider.

Nature Conservation - This is what environmentalists claim that their priority is to do. Any good thinker must also consider other latent factors such as economic gain, emotional feelings, among others. This catagory specifically applies to actions taken to protect plants and non-human animals, including protecting biodiversity (although not for human benifit). Protecting this category on it's own has little value to us humans, so we typically do it for other latent reasons, such as those previously mentioned.

What is the Scope of the Environmental?

Now that I've defined what I think the branches of environmentalism are, and what there is latent functions, I want to consider the bigger question: what should be considered under the title of environmentalism.

Environmental policy extends beyond the limited scope of what is traditionally considered environmental—a housing policy can destroy open space, an economic policy can create hundreds of tons more solid waste, etc. The greens (and many environmentalists) get one thing right: the environmental and the political are the same time. But science can't drive policy, instead people making decisions based on the risks and their potential outcomes should make them, the old fashion way through deliberation, without extreme polarization that dominates environmental issues.

So where does this leave us? We should be conscience of all technical recommendations, and take them at a critical value (but not beyond a reasonable standard like some libertarians like to do—you can't reject everything as it's fuzzy). Environmentalists should focus on protecting open space (which begs smart development) and traditional cultures. Health professionals should consider risks critically and decide if actions are needed, and way them against the real costs—not just narrow health costs or specific social costs, but the effect on the whole environment, including the aesthetic.

Republicans and the Issue of Economic Identity

The Republicans are always blamed for being the party of the corporates. And I'm sure the Republicans enjoy the convient fact that there ideology tends to be more friendly to business decisions and people in a variety of industries. But remember we are talking about everything from job to culture to lifestyle tied up in somebody's work—especially in small town / blue collar America.

What about those people—who live in the forest, and dependend on it everyday for their survival? The farmers, the loggers, the rangers, who give their hard toil to little more then the earth, and for a meger salery of sorts. How do you explain that experience, why do people choose this? The natural is the beautiful, it is the free—except when your fighting nature and are dominated by it. But that's a different type of control. It seems that some see nature as this, and want to preserve these insitutions, even if it intails certain costs.

We regularly idenitfy people with their jobs—I am a student, she is an businesswomen, he is a mechanic, and we call it their vocation, or their calling—it's suppostly what they really want to do. A lot is tied up with jobs, cultures often surround where people work, and what they do. Destroying the 'experience' can let lose a destructive pattern (as Laing so famously suggested), which can effect the environment. People have an incentive to protect what they live for and if it involves the environment they'll protect that that. As the bumper sticker says, I'm a farmer and every day for me is earthday [paraphrased—it's been years since I saw that one].

So maybe there is a legitimate ground to oppose environmentalist's plans, even when they sound to be good for the environment. I may sound like I am legitimizing Republican environmental policy: I do not intend to do this neccessarly—many of their policies are just plain bad for a number reasons—as are many Democratic policies.

Economics and the Environmental At Play: Roxane Quimby's National Forest

The classic senario of this question in play is the question of Roxane Quimby of Bert's Bees, and her rather misguided plans for the great Maine national park. She has been buying up great pieces of land, with the aim of turning such land over to the feds, in an effort to create a huge national park, not unlike what John D. Rockefeller did with Acadia National Park.

Roxanne Quimby wants to give this land to the federal government, in an attempt to protect the are from many of the local activities that have existed for scores of years, such as logging, hunting (she's a vegetarian), 4-wheeling, fishing, snowmobiling, etc. She believes that such activities are destructive to the environment, and are destroying a beautiful area—and repudidates the people of Maine, saying:

But for Roxanne Quimby, a multimillionaire businesswoman, the worries of blue-collar families in out-of-the-way places like Millinocket should take a back seat to the global need for a sound environment.

But this is what the people of Northern Maine have been engaged in for years: it is what there lives are center around. Many people pay their bills through good paying jobs from the Timber industry, among others that use (and sustain) the forest. Dish washing, tour guiding, and the alike are perversion of people, undermine morals, not to mention piss-ant paying jobs.

Such are the passions shared by many of the 5,200 people left in this one-mill town, where the paper mill has been shuttered for a year. Nothing less is at stake, they say, than the forestry jobs and hardy outdoor life that northern Maine families have enjoyed for generations.

The Northern Forest will become a tourist destination, with all the problems of tourism, namely the lack of respect to the natural resources (tragedy of the commons + tragedy of no stake in area at all), more trash that has to be landfilled, more air pollution, more rules and regulations, and probably in the long run, more environmental degradation, then what the few locals can produce.

It's yet another story of rationalism trying to extinguish the irrational, and diminishing the quality of life for all. In other words, its Marxism living up to it's fundamental goal (destroying the idiocy of rural [or any kind of] life): the pacification and subsequent destruction of society.

"When someone comes here and wants to take that away from us, it's like thieves in the night," said Jimmy Busque, a laid-off mill-worker who owns hunting camps that he fears would be banished under national park rules. "What right do they have to come up here and tell us how to live? The arrogance..."

...For generations of Mainers, the woods have played a vital role in personal and state identity. Although most of the wilderness has been privately owned by forest-product companies for decades, Mainers have been allowed free access to the land to fish, hunt, camp, hike, and simply commune with the magnificent terrain...

...But in a national park, some access would be restricted; recreational activities such as hunting would be confined to park "preserves"; and fees would be charged. As unwelcome as those changes would be to park opponents, however, their greater concern is a dramatic loss of forest industry that would devastate the sawdust-and-lumberjack lifeblood of the economy.

Gosh, it sounds rather nice up there, right now, and it sounds like what Quinby wants to turn it into would be just terrible—it would be the destruction of the Maine woods! Somehow I doubt that is the goal of environmental policy.

Conclusions

In the end, has the Bush presidency been terrible on the environment? It depends who you ask. Certainly there are things I dislike about it, some that I hardly approve of it, but most important: his policies take risks, they realize the irrational and extra-rational in moderation is a highly desirable charteristic of policy.

No matter who is President in 2004, we can't just be polarized on environmental policy—this leads to many of the truly bad and unthought out policies that are damaging our environment or our society as a greater group. Ideology may have done the greatest damage to the environment—and it's as much a fault of the Democrats and Environmentalists as Republicans.