Protections for the environment-- for our clean air and clean water and natural resources-- are under concerted attack by the Republican right. Again. In the Florida legislature and Congress, Republicans appear determined to carry out on behalf of major campaign contributors the evisceration of budgets and rules governing regulations that environmentalists have struggled to improve.
Ever since a Republican president, Richard Nixon, promoted and helped pass the nation's premier environmental laws, an industry has grown up to tear them down. Opposition started in the west in the 1980s, where wealthy timber, mine extraction, oil, gas and ranching interests were alarmed that public subsidies supporting private profits might be reversed.
The roots of today's full-on assault by the GOP of environmental agencies and budgets trace straight back to the Wise Use Movement. The corporations behind the Tea Party pushing hard right have been empowered by Citizens United, the US Supreme Court decision in 2010 that blew the barn doors off any restrictions of corporate giving to political campaigns. Although the mainstream media has focused on public anxiety against health care reform and taxes, the big corporate interests are far more motivated to use this moment in history to drive a stake through the heart of environmental protection.
Environmentalists are, once again, on the defensive. In Florida, a concerted effort has been launched by groups like Sierra Club and 1000 Friends of Florida to explain the economic benefits of protecting our air and water. There's nothing new in this defensive posture either: none of the pro-environment arguments have changed in the past thirty years. If anything, Americans are more attuned to the many ways in which we depend on a safe, stable environment.
But environmentalists don't have marketing budgets, as polluters do, or profits from extraction industries to plow into lobbyists and political campaigns and television commercials. It is open season on the environment in Tallahassee, where a Republican governor and a Republican legislature are playing bad cop/good cop to no positive end on environmental protections. In Washington, the Florida GOP congressional delegation is planning its pincer movement against the U.S. EPA. Poor America.
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3 comments:
In modern times, it's IMPOSSIBLE to be a committed environmentalist and a Republican!
A funny thing is happening here at Eye on Miami, Republican rants from roving crusaders spewing the talking points -- from other cities -- are going to our spam folder. I think I am going to stop looking at the folder, it is working pretty well in my view.
If there were only a 'human spam' folder for said Republican politicians. Empty folder!
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