Why Environmental Politics Matter

[Laxman]

From Politics of the Environment

A discussion of the influence of corporate interests on environmental policies and why fighting for the environment is important.

Cross-posting from the Good Reads forum. Brought it over here to get some more eyeballs on it. (Even though this is a little serious for a Friday night) . Glad to see that after 30 years my old college roommate still wants to change the world. Here's to hoping he can. I wonder if he was listening to Pink Floyd's Animals when he wrote this.

Environmental issues are barely registering in our collective political consciousness this election cycle. The environment, as a cause, is passe’. Relegated to the realm of aging hippies and out-of-touch tree huggers, environmental issues are for people who are disconnected from modern politics. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The current environmental issues facing our society are a bellwether for the larger political trends that are the product of what amounts to a hostile corporate take-over of America. If you follow the state of the relationship between politics and the environment, it will prove to be an excellent indicator of where the majority of our national policies are headed.

Why do environmental issues provide a window for us to view the state of our national politics? The answer is fairly simple. A large sector of our economy is made up of corporations that profit from exploiting our nation’s resources. Primarily these companies come from the oil, gas and coal industries and related derivative businesses. These same companies can increase their profitability greatly by limiting any restrictions on their profit-making activities. Environmental law is rooted in the concepts that our country’s natural resources are a shared public asset and that individual citizens have a right to be free from harm resulting from someone else’s actions. These concepts gave rise to laws designed to protect our air and waterways and to prevent pollution that was a threat to public health. Environmental regulations were created to promote these concepts and to provide societal protection through reasonable controls on industrial activities. However, to some powerful business interests they are seen as unwarranted restrictions on their operations. The struggle between the influence of powerful corporations and the rights of individual citizens is the political conflict of our generation.

Worth the read. The full article can be found here: http://enviropolitics.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/the-corporate-environment/

[KT2000]

1. Environment = Public Health

Simple as that.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

2. You might think that would be a good enough reason

we have clearly gone off the rails

The results can be seen in measures like the exemption of hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Clean Air Act or the exemption of certain types of coal mining from the Clean Water Act. These exemptions were obtained through the intervention of powerful business interests into the political and policy process. These exemptions have a very real impact on average people and on the environment. However getting regulation out of the way to facilitate bigger profits and satisfying large donors were more important policy goals than protecting public health and well-being and the integrity of the environment.

and ALEC thinks EPA regulations are a "train wreck".