By Howard Whiteman
Murray State University
What if the future of our planet depended on who we elected? It does.
You may have lots of things going through your mind when you think about candidates, and perhaps some are more important to you than others. For me, the environment has been at the top of my list for a while now.
It doesn’t matter what your politics are, or what party you are member of-or even if you are affiliated with a party. It just doesn’t matter. When it comes to the environment, people of all political persuasions need to find a way to agree on a path forward. That hasn’t happened yet, but the sooner it does the better for the environment and the people that rely on it every day. To do so will require that some of us are going to have to swallow some ideas that thus far, we have not been willing to taste.
This is true because only one political party is taking the environment seriously these days. There is also only one Presidential ticket that has a pro-environment agenda. I wish it weren’t true, but it is. Not very long ago, we could have an honest debate about the environment, but right now, there really isn’t a debate.
One party is trying to reduce our addiction to greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. The other is saying ‘drill baby drill.’ One is taking climate change seriously; the other considers it a hoax. One party has tried to strengthen the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts, while the other tries to weaken or even repeal this landmark environmental legislation. One party aims to protect our public lands. The other wants to privatize them and sell to the highest bidder. If the environment is important to you, as it is to me, it’s not even close.
Everyone is affected by environmental degradation. Air pollution, water pollution and scarcity, climate change and the storms it fuels, none of them care a bit whether you are a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. Which is why all parties should be on the same page, understand our environmental reality, and do something about it.
The irony is that the Republican Party is responsible for many of the biggest conservation wins in the history of the U.S. Not very long ago, conservatives used to champion conservation.
Theodore Roosevelt was, beyond a doubt, our greatest environmental President. As a leader in the Republican party, Roosevelt started a conservation movement whose focus was protecting and promoting wildlife and the habitat that they need to live. He used his political skills to make great strides in conservation, the legacies of which continue to this day.
Roosevelt established the United States Forest Service and 150 National Forests for them to manage. He also helped create five National Parks, 18 National Monuments, 51 bird reserves, and four game preserves. In all, he set aside 150 million acres of land for Americans to enjoy. He also signed the legislation to allow more of these lands to be protected in the future, which has provided opportunities for numerous subsequent Presidents and legislators to continue his legacy.
Roosevelt championed conservation through his writing and speeches, and today the echoes of his words pierce the heart of our current environmental concerns. He conserved wild America by convincing others, from all political persuasions, that conservation was important. In fact, during a speech entitled “Conservation as a National Duty” Roosevelt fundamentally changed the way Americans thought about nature at the time. Consider this quote from his speech:
“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.”
It is amazing that Roosevelt spoke those words at the beginning of the last Century, when we are dealing with some of the same issues today. In this one speech, Roosevelt linked conservation to themes of duty, patriotism, and morality, and helped focus America’s concern for the future of our natural, and national, resources, including wildlife. We could all learn from his example.
More recently, Richard Nixon, another Republican President, signed four consequential environmental bills into law—the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which led to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); the Clean Air Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; and perhaps most importantly, the Endangered Species Act, all of which were passed with bipartisan support. It’s both sad and ironic that today’s version of the Republican party is trying to weaken or even repeal the legislation that many of its members worked so hard to pass.
How all this changed is worth thinking about, but the more important point perhaps is that somewhere along the way, corporate interests became more important to the GOP than the environment, and the influx of money into elections made that relationship even stronger. You see that in both parties—it’s taken Democrats way too long to come along on climate as well. But the Republican party currently promotes fossil fuels and undermines climate science more than Exxon does, which is saying a lot. All of this is one reason why, years ago, I switched my party affiliation.
Candidates are different from the party they are affiliated with, and so all of us have to do our due diligence to understand how individual candidates approach the environment. It is also true, however, that the balance of power in our states and our federal government follows a party line agenda, with few members willing to go against the mainstream. In other words, no matter what your candidate’s stance, when push comes to shove on an important bill, politicians are more likely than not going to follow the party line.
What all of this means is that when it comes to the environment, there really is no choice, as much as I wish there was. If you care about the Earth, like I do, you cannot with a clear conscience vote for Republicans right now. If you choose to do so anyway, perhaps because other things weigh heavier in your mind, that is your right and I respect you for it. But I hope you at least do so with some hesitation, because your vote against the environment is hurting the planet we all share and the people, animals, and plants that are trying their best to live on it.
There are lots of reasons to vote for one candidate versus another, and I understand that not all people will prioritize the environment the way I do. But I selfishly wish they would, because supporting the environment is not only good for our states, our country, and the people that live within them, but it is also good for our future. You can think about it this way: WWTRD? That is, “What Would Teddy Roosevelt Do?” He would not be voting Republican. Neither will I.
No matter how you vote, I wish you the best of luck with your decisions. I’ll be voting for the Earth, and with Roosevelt, Nixon, and other conservative Republicans, and not looking back.
Howard Whiteman is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Murray State University and Director of the Watershed Studies Institute. He holds the Commonwalth Endowed Chair of Environmental Studies.
“Mother Nature always bats last” is a saying that says it all about the way human beings interact with the environment. the “Drill, Baby, Drill” folks will always lose in the end. In this year’s election, there is only one choice as this commentary says- vote for Democrats up and down the ballot, and that includes contested races for the KY State Legislature.