When Environmentalism Overdoses on America

Perhaps the environmental movement has just bitten off more than it can chew. Perhaps The Green Emperor is a bit overtaxed confronting all the "externalities" created by the American way of life.

Perhaps.

Perhaps, as my latest essay at GetUnderground.com discusses, the sustainable development and environmental justice components of the environmental "mission" should be set free. If you take sustainability and environmental justice and mix them with the organizing principle of the need to attack global warming and greenhouse gas reductions, you might well see a bit more movement on all fronts. Environmentalism can return to doing what it does best--protecting nature and fighting pollution; and the more social and economic issues of sustainability and environmental justice can be used to address the social change requirements for combatting global warming.

I would like to note here that I am highly aware of the fact that in my essay at GetUnderground, I do not offer any specifics on how this change might come about and who would lead a new movement and how we would go about educating the media that the environmental movement no longer really concerns itself with issues beyond conservation and public health. These specifics need to be worked out. I plan to provide some thoughts on these matters shortly, but I'm hoping that my essay will piss off and/or excite enough people that the failings and implications of my recommendations will get others to put their two quarters in for consideration. As I write in my essay: "Do we want to address global climate change or not? Who’s got balls here and who’s just lazy and/or greedy?"

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