Earth Day 2011

This article sums up a lot of what a lot of us have thought over the years. Like the author I am also conservative but I am also someone who considers herself a conservationist only because the word 'environmentalist' has such a negative connotation in Republican circles today. Admit to using green products in my home to clean because frankly they are better for my allergies and do a better job without the harsh chemical or perfume smells you get. When it comes to light bulbs, I am less than impressed with a light bulb that I have to be careful with because it contains mercury. What was wrong with the old fashioned light bulb that was around forever and did very well?  Light bulbs is one area where the environmentalists went nuts trying to dictate how we live.

There was an article yesterday making its rounds about how you could save so much energy by turning off your cable box, computer, TV, etc. Don't know about anyone else but if you turn the cable box here, it is going to take at least 10 minutes to get the signal back and sometimes it takes calling the cable company. So to save a few pennies I am going to go through the hassle of rebooting every day -- not going to happen. My computer goes into suspend mode when I am not using it but I do not intend to turn it off every night. Only time I shut down everything is when I am gone for a few days or a severe electrical storm is in the area.

Don't understand why Republicans don't speak out more on how the environment can be improved. Do you want clean air and water? I certainly do. When President Bush did his 'Clean Air Initiative,' some conservatives made all kinds of sarcastic remarks which made no sense.

There has to be a happy medium between the environmentalist who want to put people last in their mission to make it better for the animals like little spiders then for humans and the people on the right who want to be able to do anything with the land and air as it is their right to litter or pollute. Common sense would go a long way in this discussion.

How about every Earth Day plant a bush, a tree, a vegetable plant, herbs, etc. to celebrate Earth Day. Spend a lot of time outdoors -- have a vegetable garden, roses, bushes, trees and various flowers around my home. This year I am going to plant a dwarf sour cherry tree as my contribution to the environment not to mention I love pie cherries. 

We were given this earth to take care so each of us needs to do our part without going over the edge like some environmentalists. Use 'Common Sense' and the place we live will be a better place for today's children as they grow.

Happy Earth Day (Final Installment)April 23, 2011 Posted by Steven Hayward at 10:16 AM

A commenter on a previous installment of my Earth Day series here offers a challenge that I hear a lot in various forms:

I've been a social and fiscal conservative for as long as I can remember. One thing I don't understand about my fellow conservatives is their contempt for environmental protection and those that support such protections. It seems to me that conserving the environment would be a significant part of the conservative ideology. When will conservatives put forth a realistic environmental policy of their own? Why concede the issue to the liberals? Something better than "we don't hurt anything" or "it'll grow back" is desperately needed!

As it happens, this is a subject I've written quite a lot about, including a lecture entitled "Is 'Conservative Environmentalist' an Oxymoron?" The short answer is "No," but in the spirit of Mark Twain's comment (or was it Groucho Marx?) that he'd never belong to any club that would have him as a member, I don't call myself an environmentalist because of the company I'd have to keep. (Actually I recently joined the board of an environmental organization that does real honest to goodness, hands-on conservation work, but no political lobbying.)

It is forgotten today that, for example, Barry Goldwater was a member of the Sierra Club, but the fact that not even Goldwater's maverick, pro-environment successor, John McCain, could conceivably belong to the Sierra Club today (they probably wouldn't accept him anyway) tells the whole story in a nutshell. The environmental movement, like the civil rights movement before it whose natural home for a long time was the Republican Party, moved sharply and swiftly to the left in the early 1970s, and is today a wholly-owned adjunct of the Democratic Party. After an early bipartisan start, the movement got taken over by people like New Republic columnist James Ridgeway, who wrote around 1973: "Ecology offered liberal-minded people what they had longed for, a safe, rational and above all peaceful way of remaking society...[and] developing a more coherent central state..."

As I mentioned in a short squib in the New York Times "Room for Debate" blog on Thursday, "It is all but forgotten today that the Endangered Species Act had considerable conservative support in the 1970s; one of its chief co-sponsors was conservative Senator James Buckley (William F. Buckley's brother); Newt Gingrich still defends the act, but gets no credit for it whatsoever from environmentalists." Another data point: the first President Bush made passage of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 a major legislative priority, securing the last significant bipartisan environmental legislation we've seen, and also attended the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, committing the U.S. to the whole UN global warming process. And how many environmental groups endorsed Bush for re-election? That's right: zero. To the contrary, most environmental groups boycotted the Clean Air Act signing ceremony in 1990 because it wasn't extreme enough for them.

The League of Conservation Voters deliberately crafts its vote-rating scorecards to make Democrats look good and Republicans look bad. I have to say I'm enjoying the irony that if McCain (LCV score: zero) had won the 2008 election instead of Obama (who scored perfectly with the LCV--when he showed up to vote), we'd surely have passed a cap and trade bill, as McCain, who'd co-sponsored earlier cap and trade bills with Joe Lieberman, would have made it a higher priority than health care reform, and would have brought some Republicans along.

It is finally starting to occur to a few environmentalists and journalists who cover the beat like the New Republic's Brad Plumer that their extreme partisanship and ideological rigidly has hurt them, but the environmental establishment's response to their internal critics like Matt Nisbet and the dynamic duo of Shellenberger and Nordhaus has been to stomp their feet and yell louder. Who are the "denialists" now?

Special Earth Day bonus: Don't miss Charles Lane's takedown of China's high speed rail in today's Washington Post. Prediction: this won't make Tom Friedman stop talking nonsense about how awesome China is.

Powerline Blog

We decided to pursue the Special Earth Day Bonus about the High Speed Trains of China. We discovered the system Obama holds up as an example of how the United States should have more high speed trains is in deep trouble. How many business' that Obama's and his Administration took over or are telling what to do will have the same thing said in the months ahead starting with Chrysler:

China’s train wreck


Video: Is China’s high-speed rail a model for U.S. transportation? Based on his travels in China, Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane thinks not.
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By CHARLES LANE, Friday, April 22, 8:05 PM

For the past eight years, Liu Zhijun was one of the most influential people in China. As minister of railways, Liu ran China’s $300 billion high-speed rail project. U.S., European and Japanese contractors jostled for a piece of the business while foreign journalists gushed over China’s latest high-tech marvel.

Today, Liu Zhijun is ruined, and his high-speed rail project is in trouble. On Feb. 25, he was fired for “severe violations of discipline” — code for embezzling tens of millions of dollars. Seems his ministry has run up $271 billion in debt — roughly five times the level that bankrupted General Motors. But ticket sales can’t cover debt service that will total $27.7 billion in 2011 alone. Safety concerns also are cropping up.

Faced with a financial and public relations disaster, China put the brakes on Liu’s program. On April 13, the government cut bullet-train speeds 30 mph to improve safety, energy efficiency and affordability. The Railway Ministry’s tangled finances are being audited. Construction plans, too, are being reviewed.

Liu’s legacy, in short, is a system that could drain China’s economic resources for years. So much for the grand project that Thomas Friedman of the New York Times likened to a “moon shot” and that President Obama held up as a model for the United States.

Rather than demonstrating the advantages of centrally planned long-term investment, as its foreign admirers sometimes suggested, China’s bullet-train experience shows what can go wrong when an unelected elite, influenced by corrupt opportunists, gives orders that all must follow — without the robust public discussion we would have in the states.