Why Obama is Wrong for the Environment

Anyone who has ever found out in recent months that during the election season, I was a supporter of both Greenpeace and John McCain, has wanted a real answer.  But surprisingly, I have quite a few reasons for my eclectic decision.

I will grant you that Sarah Palin would have been a horrible choice for our country, especially in the environmental arena, which really is where Joe Biden shines.  Any care she has yet to show us for the natural world represents much of the public’s general consensus of what a modern republican is.  But I don’t believe the democratic party as a whole cares much more than Governor Palin about halting global warming and pollution, a solution to the energy crisis or the preservation of endangered species.

During the election season, John McCain pledged his support to 60% of scientists’ suggestions for required steps to stop global warming in its tracks, while Barack Obama claimed agreement to 100%.  But John McCain also has a lifetime of experience keeping his word within an inch of his life, as evidenced by his five-and-a-half years spent in Hanoi as a prisoner of the Vietnam War; he refused to betray the country of which he had been charged to retain certain secret information.  Barack Obama comes from a wonderful educational background; during the election both candidates promised not to use federal aid to enhance their campaigns and only John McCain followed through.

Personally, I have a little trouble believing anything President Obama says, helped only by his inadequate experience up to this point in executive work; McCain’s life experiences have proven to me that he can handle heavy loads ranging from the environmental crises to our wars (I would trust that a President McCain would find a way to contain and subsequently abolish widespread terrorist attacks, which are also often un-green for both people and planet) as well as repairing the economy.

The economy will also be another of President Obama’s effects on the natural environment, as his proposed taxes make for a nation where no one but the highly elite has much money.  This causes consumers to make the switch to more affordable products, which are often nondegradable plastics.  Parents will purchase less wood or cloth toys for children and instead, more plastic.  Some stores may find paper bags too expensive and replace them with cheaper plastic bags.  All of these things eventually end up permanent toxic release factories in landfills or the ocean.

Another negative result of the stimulus is that taxpayers will have less money to donate to their favorite natural-stewardship-preaching religious institutions and private environmental organizations.  Well, that’s all right; government still works for the environment, right?  Wrong.  In addition to the fact that no one in my area seems to know of any “green collar worker” employed by an Obama program, along with the insanely-high taxes to help pay off the high-falutin corporate pigs who ripped off the system to begin with, Barack (who, may I remind you, is often compared to President Roosevelt) has had to make some major cuts to some of our most fundamental government agencies and programs.  One of the first and hardest hit was the E.P.A.  Big shocker there, no?

This year, 2009, I have only touched down in three U.S. states so far: New York, where I live; Connecticut, where I have family and used to live; and Hawaii, because it’s just awesome.  Needless to say these were all “blue states” in the 2008 Presidential Election and have been for consecutively for several recent election seasons.  So I am assuming that the majority of the people I have been around when in any of them have been Obamanites…the very people who question my status as a radical environmentalist and McCain-idolizing Green Libertarian.

Now, I know plenty of republicans and actually, I am the black sheep in a relatively conservative family.  Yet my republican mother and sister don’t take plastic bags at the supermarket.  My mother is extremely conscious of how much gas she uses, and reuses waterbottles.  When out in the world in NY, CT and HI in recent months, I have easily seen thousands of people toting excessive plastic bags, purchasing endangered and nonsustainably farmed seafood, and speeding down the road as if being avoiding a rapidly-gaining avalanche.  And I can only assume that a major plurality of these environmentally-unconscious folk voted for Obama and think they’re really green?

Point-blank, we should not need the government to baby us all the way back to the garden.  And, as Barack Obama has proven, we will be hard-pressed to ever find someone who can or will.  I want to know that everyone who voted for our current president and criticizes across-the-board environmentalists like myself has invested in their own reusable bags; that they walk or bike or carpool or crawl when they can avoid burning gasoline; and that they stop eating endangered species.  Most of all I want to see that they realize the responsibility of environmental stewardship proven by nearly all major religions and ethical evolutionary theory liesnot just with people in administrative positions, but with us all.

Copyright 2009.  All Rights Reserved.