I learned about the liberal disconnect in accountability (that liberals identify success as a matter of installing liberal policies, rather than in terms of the results they produce) while I was involved in a collaborative effort to resolve the long standing war over predators that has had ranchers and environmentalists at odds for more than a century. The particular get-together that provided the learning opportunity involved a “conflict resolution” facilitator. The facilitator of this meeting was a woman, Tommie Martin, who came from a ranching background and had considerable experience and success in this line of work. The technique Tommie used (identifying shared interests among the parties to the conflict) is a common one, I have since learned, but Tommie used this technique in a way that, I believe, remains unique and revealing.
What is unique about Ms. Martin’s approach became apparent whenever one of us said something like: “I want all the cows off public lands.” or ” I want higher grazing fees,” or when a rancher said, “I want fewer regulations and fewer meetings like this to go to.” Whenever a demand like this was made, Tommie would ask the demander what he or she hoped to achieve by such an action. How we would expect the land to change as a result? How would it look? How would it make us feel? What would we want to change? And she would keep asking questions like this until we answered in terms of real world results: that we wanted less bare dirt. More plants. Healthier populations of wildlife, and so forth.
The result was that, whenever Tommie used this technique, in almost every case, ranchers and environmentalists ended up affirming that they wanted the same results. Everyone wanted green mountainsides and more vital plant communities and populations of wildlife appropriate for the type of land it was.
Realizing that we wanted so many of the same things made a huge change in the tone of the meeting. We had started the meeting by making the same demands ranchers and environmentalists always made in situations like this, and the mood had been typically confrontational. Each side cheered for their side and hooted at the demands made by the other side. But, the first time Tommie Martin’s facilitation led one of the ranchers to say he wanted something that was considered “environmental,” I remember that we all sat in stunned silence. At least I know I did. And as this happened a second and third time the meeting became more friendly. We joked. We laughed. Some people even hugged.
I remember being extremely impressed by what had happened, and very puzzled. After I thought about it, I decided that Tommie’s facilitation had revealed that there are two kinds of goals, and I labeled them: “Goals that Incite” and “Goals that Unite.” I also labeled these different kinds of goals “prescriptive” and “descriptive.”
Prescriptive goals involve prescribing (or demanding) that a certain process or policy be adopted —”Get the cows off.” or (getting back to Obama) forcing energy companies to use wind power and solar rather than drill for more oil or develop cleaner ways to burn coal.
Descriptive goals involve achieving certain results—greener rangelands, less dependence on foreign oil, or greater prosperity.
Prescriptive goals are “Goals that Incite” because no one, not even a two-year-old likes to be told what to do.
Descriptive goals are more likely to be Goals that Unite, as they were at the meeting I described above, because, when you get right down to it, most of us really do want the same things. This is especially true with regard to the environment. Who doesn’t want clean air and clean water and healthy ecosystems?
So, why do people who want the same things fight?
The best way to answer that question was given to me at a small get-together with a couple of friends at which I was showing my slides and talking about what I had discovered at that facilitated meeting.
When I pointed out that the ranchers and environmentalists at that meeting had discovered that they had the same goals, one of my friends, an ecologist and activist, was so offended she positively fumed.
“We have no right to set goals for nature.” she spat. “We need to do the right thing and whatever happens is what’s supposed to happen.
That explained to me better than anything else I have encountered why so few environmentalists were interested in the message that they could achieve what they wanted more effectively by working with ranchers (and other people they saw as environmental adversaries) than by fighting with them. I had made the mistake of believing that, for the people within the mainstream (liberal) environmental movement, environmental goals, such as healthy rangelands, functional watersheds, and healthy wildlife are primary, while, in truth, they are not.
My friend, the ecologist/activist, and all the others who have no interest whatsoever in working with their adversaries to achieve Goals That Unite, made it very clear that for them and many other mainstream environmental activists, what is primary is getting other people to do what they (the environmentalists) think is “the right thing” regarding the environment, and that protecting endangered species, reducing the human “footprint” on the land, fighting global warming, and the whole list of environmental causes are the excuses they use to impose the regulations, elect the politicians, and win the lawsuits that enable them to dictate people’s actions vis a vis the environment, which means vis a vis everything.
And if the threatened fish disappears, the endangered bird nests somewhere else, and the rangeland turns into desert; that is what’s supposed to happen. You can’t blame them, and you can’t blame the policies they promote.
My friend took issue with my “manage for common goals” solution to rangeland conflict because, to her, the question of how to manage the environment is a matter of moral judgement—and as with all moral matters, outcomes are irrelevant. How’s that? When we are exhorted to be honest or to follow the golden rule we are told that we must do so whatever the outcome. Whether it benefits us or not. The problem is, how we manage the environment has a practical as well as a moral side. Although the people who forced the removal of cattle from along the Verde River did it because they considered it the right thing to do (See earlier post). They also did it to save a “threatened” fish, and when their action exterminated the fish they and their method deserve to be held accountable.
What does this have to do with Barak Obama? The policies he has promised to bring to government, and is now in the process of enacting, have been sold on the basis of their morality. We’re supposed to abandon the most successful energy source humans have ever devised (fossil fuels) for a bunch of 1960s pipe dreams: windmills, biofuels, solar, and cogeneration (whatever that is), which are technologies into which we’ve poured billions for almost half a century and still they haven’t performed, because “it’s the right thing to do.” We’re supposed to negotiate without preconditions with enemies who place plenty of preconditions on us; turn loose murderers who can’t wait to murder more of us, kill ourselves via increased abortions and euthanasia disguised as restricting treatment to elders and others who are “low priorities” because a socialist economy won’t support as many of us. And last, but certainly not least, we’re supposed to scrap the most effective economy humans have ever devised—free market capitalism—for the real “failed policies of the past”—socialism.
We’re supposed to do all of this for the flimsy reason that a lot of liberals think it is “the right thing to do.”
As for accountability: When the “chickens” of this transformation come home to roost, you know what’s going to happen. When the economy tanks, when our enemies gain strength and we weaken, when our freedoms disappear and government control is extended into every aspect of our lives, the proponents of these policies are going to tell us that this is “what’s supposed to happen.” They’re going to tell us that it’s is the best we can hope for. It’s what we have to do to live within our means—to keep from destroying the planet. They’re going to give us all these excuses when the real reason is these disasters are the best a socialist economy and policial system can produce.
When that happens will the fact that in a socialist society the people who live highest on the hog are the political leaders be any solace?
The Obama administration is just beginning, and Obama’s supporters seem to be convinced that he is about to create a worldwide renaissance in all areas of human endeavor—the environment, the economy, relations among races, nations, religions, you name it. I’ve heard my liberal friends say that finally we have a president who can bring peace to the world, one who can even change the planet’s climate. The euphoria is so absolute that it has become obvious to some of us that no one is going to be keeping track of whether any of this is really working.
Recently, I visited my old home town, Flagstaff, which has changed from an old logging, ranching, and railroad town, to one of the most liberal places I know of. On the streets of Flagstaff I saw a higher percentage of Obama bumper stickers than even in liberal Santa Barbara. Everywhere I went I heard my friends gush about Obama. That he is going to change the world was taken as a given. That I shared in this belief was taken as a given, too. I even heard people refer to him as a “Christ.” I didn’t have the heart to tell these people that I am an unbeliever. I think it would have been too ugly.
All this got me to wondering. Why are so many people, including so many conservatives, so euphoric about this relatively inexperienced and unaccomplished politician? Why do they think of him literally as a messiah? And then the thought came to me, that, in a liberal frame of reference, Obama is a messiah. A messiah is someone who absolves us of our sins. Because Obama is African-American, a vote for him absolves the voter of any guilt as a racist. Because Obama has promised to end the war in Iraq, meet with our enemies as equals, and change the image of the U. S. from a nation of war to one of peace, voting for Obama establishes the voter as a person of peace and absolves him or her of any guilt in the war against the Islamists or against anybody, anyplace, anytime.
Because Obama has vowed to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor and have the government provide health care for all, a vote for him absolves the voter of economic guilt. too. (That means you can keep flying first class and not feel guilty about it.)
Because Obama has stated that the U. S. can’t continue to usurp 25% of the world’s wealth for a mere 3% of the people without being held accountable, and because he has promised to work to end global warming, a vote for Obama absolves the voter of green guilt as well.
Imagine, ABSOLVING YOURSELF OF ALL GUILT merely by voting for a presidential candidate. No wonder Obama’s true believers are euphoric!!
This euphoria is one of the reasons that, when Rush Limbaugh was asked what will wake people up to the fact that Obama can’t deliver on all that he has promised, Limbaugh answered that they’re never going to wake up.
Another way to say that is: virtually everyone who voted for Obama, and many of the people who voted for McCain and now support Obama (even McCain supports Obama), aren’t even considering the possibility that Obama’s policies can fail.
Because flying blind in times as hazardous as these is so very, very dangerous, this inability (or unwillingness) to hold Obama accountable could get us so deep into trouble before we even realize it, that it will be very difficult for us to claw our way out of that trouble, if we can do it at all.
I’m sure there are plenty of Obama-ites who would tell me I’m totally delusional about this. That if Obama’s policies were beginning to fail, he would realize it and change. Hasn’t Obama said recently that if someone shows him a way to do anything that works better than his way he would change? And if he didn’t live up to this wouldn’t his supporters realize it and pressure him to change, and then, surely, he would do it.
One service this blog can provide is to equip its readers to help Obama keep this promise. To do that, I believe most of us need help because for some time now we have been failing to hold our politicians, bureaucrats, and other supposed leaders accountable while they were claiming to be saving the planet but really doing just the opposite—making the world and our lives worse. We hope to provide this help by equipping Obama’s supporters and his detractors with the skills to cut through the euphoria and recognize when his policies are producing the opposite of what he has promised. If “The Right Way to be Green” can provide this service, it might just play a role in saving his administration.
What this blog is about, after all, is making liberalism more accountable by pointing out that, in many cases, the policies of liberal environmentalism — environmental protection, preservation, reducing the “human footprint” — don’t make the environment better, they make it worse. In many cases they exterminate the endangered species they purport to protect, hasten the desertification they claim to reverse, and make us all worse rather than better off. Just like Obama, they do all this without being held accountable. In fact they get credit for doing just the opposite.
Here’s how: (These have all been mentioned in earlier posts).
When liberal environmentalists apparently were responsible for causing the demise of a population of a threatened fish in the Upper Verde River in Arizona, no Environmental Impact Statement was required even after government scientists had cited the policy two environmental groups had compelled the U. S. Forest Service to adopt via a threatened lawsuit (see Seeing is Believing and other previous posts) as the cause of the spikedace’s disappearance. Nor were any of the environmental groups or any of their members charged with a “taking” (killing) of a listed species, which, according to the Endangered Species Act is a federal offense that can be punished by a significant fine.
In spite of this failure, the environmental groups who were apparently responsible for the disappearance of the Verde River spikedace are still looked upon as its protectors and the policy that exterminated the little fish is still looked upon as its greatest hope of survival. In the meantime, the scientists who have said otherwise have been silenced. As for the press, if it reports anything, it reports the opposite of what has happened. And when I tell members of the environmental movement what their policies have done, as I have many times, they scoff and call me a pawn of the ranching industry and discount what I have told them or promptly forget it.
There are plenty of other instances of this phenomenon (again, which I have reported in other places in this blog). For instance, I’ve told you how the policies of liberal environmentalism have:
• Accelerated desertification of extensive areas of the American West.
• Created a preserve for an endangered bird which the bird avoids, preferring to live on a nearby cattle ranch. To add insult to injury liberal environmentalists then tried to remove the rancher from the ranch the bird preferred ostensibly in order to “protect” the bird.
• Caused the deterioration of California native grasslands by making those grasslands more vulnerable to invasive nonnatives.
• Caused the demise of unique habitats called vernal pools, which have been called the densest concentrations of threatened and endangered species on the planet.
• Caused the deterioration and near demise of native bird habitat on the Island of Kauai in the state of Hawaii.
• Caused the deterioration and near demise of one of the most valuable wetland habitats in India and resulted in the killing of nine villagers in the process.
Why would an environmental group whose primary mission is to protect endangered species end up causing the extermination of a population of one of those species and not even say “Oops,” or admit their mistake, or try to correct it? And why are they still pressing to expand the policy that caused the demise of a fish they say their mission is to protect?
After more than thirty years of experience as an environmental activist, including several years with the Sierra Club, Audubon and Earth First!, examples such as these have convinced me that the collection of activities we call “environmentalism” may appear to be about birds and fishes and ecosystems, and many of those involved in it may sincerely feel that they are personally dedicated to things that are green and growing and wild, but in the end, environmentalism is about politics, which in the end is about control.
One sure way to confirm this is to recognize the way in which environmentalists measure success. Environmental groups measure success in the number of green laws passed, regulations created, acres brought under “protective” management (administered by the government and directed by them), and in the election of politicians committed to increasing all of the above (like Barak Obama). On the Verde, for the environmental groups directly involved and those cheering from the sidelines, success was identified as removing private management from the lands along the river and placing control of those lands more securely in the hands of the government, which environmentalists are more adept at controlling than they are at controlling individual ranchers or private corporations.
All this has happened under cover of a smokescreen which protects the process from accountability and anoints it as the “right” thing to do. That smokescreen is provided by the bedrock assumption of contemporary liberal environmentalism (which most of us subscribe to): that all environmental problems are the result of human impact — more specifically the impact of human productive activity, and the only way to solve any and all of those problems is to reduce that impact, ideally to zero. Removing cattle from along the Verde reduced human productive activity on those lands and therefore returned them to “nature.” When the Verde River spikedace disappeared as a result, the enviros blamed nature, and washed their hands of the matter.
In this same way, Barak Obama is absolved of any accountability for the failure of his policies. If his energy policies cause our economy and therefore our standard of living to shrink, even catastrophically, his supporters will tell us and themselves, he is doing the right thing by reducing the human footprint on the planet and reducing our dependency on foreign oil, and the standard of living we are left with as a result is natural and good and, therefore, we shouldn’t expect anything more.
And if Obama’s plan to nationalize health care reduces the quality and availability of health care in America, as people who have lived under similar systems tell us it will, that failure, also, will be chocked up as a “success” because making health care available to all is the right thing to do, and for liberals success is a matter of installing the right (i. e. liberal) policies and whatever happens as a result is the best you have any right to expect.
If Obama’s foreign policies embolden our enemies and make us and our allies more vulnerable and more likely to be attacked, this new teflon president, who has sold himself as a “man of peace,” will not be held accountable for that either. Those unhappy consequences will be dismissed as a late payment for “the failed policies of the past” or the legacy of George Bush, or as Obama’s minister has described it, “America’s chickens coming home to roost,” and we will be told we’re getting what we deserve.
In short, Obama’s election has not only absolved us of all guilt, it has done the same for him. What that means is, most likely our circumstances will have to become very ugly to wake enough of us from our slumber to recognize that this emperor has no clothes and we have a right to try to achieve more than the sour fruit he is already trying to sell us.
Stay tuned. We’re working to help wake you as early as possible.