The Environmental Waltz

Last month this reporter commented on the enervating frustration of fighting the good fight to preserve what’s left of the glorious and life-giving forests and fields, lakes and oceans of Mother Earth. Oftentimes it seems a marathon death-waltz of “one step forward, two steps back.”

Virtually all of the good environmental deeds—modest though they indeed were—accomplished during the Clinton-Gore years (one step forward) have now been completely erased by the Bush administration as a massive Big Oil sponsored rout of environmental reform laws by Bush/Saudi banking and corporate interests resumes the pillage of America’s natural resources without a care in the world (two steps back, at least).

It is as though the clock of our national conscience has been turned back about fifty years. Bigger cars, bigger houses, more inefficient and more disposable pleasures. The assumption is that natural resources have magically become once again infinite, just like we thought they were in the Fifties. That we can just continue to build and consume without suffering any consequences, just like we assumed in the Fifties. America first, and to hell with the rest of the world. Is that Bill Haley and the Comets I hear in the background? Suddenly I feel the urge to slick back my hair with Brylcreme and slouch around in a leather jacket with a Lucky Strike dangling from my lips.

Gas-guzzlers, bigger families, more houses, another Vietnam…and now the cornerstone of Emperor Dubya’s “energy policy” is nuclear power? Doesn’t this road look eerily familiar to you, or is it just me?

Forget about melting ice fields and glaciers. Forget about disappearing forests and wetlands. Forget about the exponentially increasing incidence of little annoyances like asthma, diabetes, cancer. Everyone knows that “global warming” is a hoax. Everyone knows that for-profit corporations can manage the environment every bit as well as they can manage themselves. And as for those pesky health concerns? Well, everyone knows that’s why God invented pharmaceutical companies.

But maybe not everyone is buying into this suicidally destructive nostalgic euphoria.

An old friend of mine who used to avoid political issues the way I would avoid a soccer match (there’s a lot of running around but not much happens), decided to go out on a limb and support John Kerry in the last Presidential Theft, er, I mean Election. This friend—Gordon by name—first became despondent following the results of last November, then became enraged as the evidence began to mount that not only had the Emperor stolen Florida again, but also managed to shanghai the state of Ohio. Gordon has since dedicated a good portion of his Web site (http://www.squadron13.com) to an exploration of Bush’s 2004 snitchery and discussion of how to combat these threats to American freedom.

What’s more, Gordon is now taking on an organization very near and dear to his (and his daughter’s) heart, the Girl Scouts of America. Gordon and his daughter are extremely active in Troop 149 down in Springfield, Oregon. And when it was announced that the President’s Environmental Youth Awards program was being promoted via an email sent by the local Girl Scouts office, Gordon felt compelled to express his outrage. It began with letters to editors of local papers. Here’s a sample:

“The idea of receiving an award from the President on behalf of an EPA sponsored program is outrageous. Bush has done more harm to our environment than possibly any person ever on this earth, through legislation that favors heavy, polluting industry…at the expense of ordinary citizens, reduction of the EPA enforcement budget by 75 percent, subsidizing gas-guzzling vehicles, withdrawing from the Kyoto agreement, discounting the overwhelming evidence of global warming…and many other actions (most ‘under the radar’) that compromise the national and planetary environment.”

Well! No Girl Scout cookies for Gordon next year, that’s for sure.

Linking our disgust over the idiotic national policies of the Imperial Oil Cartel to local issues at the community level. Is there a better way to bring Bush’s chickens (or is it vultures?) home to roost? Who knows: Today, a local Girl Scout troop, tomorrow the Building Industry Association?

Thank you, Gordon, for showing us one way to move this environmental waltz forward again. Dance on, my friend!

One step forward, don’t look back.

This just in…Spokane Mayor James E. West has just been accused of molesting two boys when he was a Boy Scout Troop leader. Bad month for the Scouts, all around. Apparently, Mayor West also offered political favors to a young man (turned out he was an investigative journalist) during an on-line chat at a gay Web site, according to published reports. This is the same James West who, as a leading right-wing Republican legislator, vehemently opposed gay rights and women’s reproductive choice. Just goes to prove the old adage, “He who hides behind God must have much to hide.”

Welcome home to the roost, chickens. And vultures. §

To contact Matthew, to add spice to this casserole, or to order his new book, “Original Recipes” (it’s a “best-of” collection of columns from 1985 to 1995, not, thank heavens, a cookbook!), please write to P.O. Box 28983, Bellingham, WA 98228; or email mdthuney@email.msn.com.