The Environment of American Environmentalism, part 3

So here’s the problem: How boring would this discussion be on national television? Maybe I’m anti-capitalist, that does not bother me; I’m certainly not anti-religion. But if you argue on television that you do not mind being anti-capitalist, you default into anti-democracy, and anti-religion. Possibly even anti-freedom. The United States lives in a time when one’s conscience can only be voiced with authority in the public world if the conversation focuses on very specific issues. There is no need to name them; we all know them. But the environment is not one of them.
That may sound like a surprise. Everyone on tv, every station and every news channel has their devoted programs and anchors and spokesfolks to discuss Climate Change and melting ice caps and the endangerment of Polar Bears. They just don’t want to talk about solving the problems they represent: conserving energy and polluting less in an effort to protect the ice caps, and thus the Polar Bears. Why would they? What would they report on?
The true result of bringing environmental activism into the public sphere has not been seen, because it has not occurred. Even Al Gore, Oscar winner and Nobel Laureate, can’t bring it about. I hope he keeps trying. Next year we’ll have a pro-environment President, they say, and he’ll put energy issues and conservation on the map. I’m hopeful that the results will be positive. But it’s just hope, now.
That’s the problem. No one, yet, has carried to the American people the face and fire of the environmental damage which has occurred, and will continue to occur. So how can someone who believes that the natural world deserves more attention than, say, prosperity, enter the debate? If we’re talking about the American people, and somehow in this country we always are, how can one tell the nation convincingly that the bog preserve they smell could be more important than their pocketbooks? It just won’t sound quite, well, polite enough to be accepted. It certainly doesn’t sound like something Jesus would say.
Maybe it’s not. But that’s where reading the Bible for years, and reading the land for years, has brought me. And I know, and thank whatever God there is, that it’s not just me with a clear conscience. The world will not be in more peril because of me; that is all I’ve figured out how to do. I hope we protect this world; I hope others will do their part to keep it around. But until those nationally televised pundits allow science into the conversation without the crippling banner of socialism and anti-capitalism, until they realize that most of us have got nothing against the Bible or their God, we just might not believe in them, what chance do we have?