Given the couple of recent threads about PETA, I thought I'd share a few thoughts.
It seems the animal rights groups, environmentalist groups, etc with the highest profiles are the most extreme (you can't eat meat, you can't wear leather, WE are the cause of "global warming", etc etc). To me, it causes some sort of unnecessary backlash within "conservative" groups. For example, the people who would say things like, "I'm gonna buy the biggest gas-guzzler I can find, take off the converter and muffler, and blow exhaust up them liberals arses, while dragging a bunch of fighting dogs on the road behind." You know the kind I mean...the kind that turn their backs on any type of pro-environmental, pro-animal rights thinking. Maybe you're one of them. That really gets under my skin, just as much as the out and out LIES these extreme groups spew.
I consider myself somewhat of a libertarian. I want the government out of my business as much as possible. I'm a conservative thinker when it comes to the Constitution. I'm also pretty conservative morally speaking. But here's the thing. I think we are to be good stewards of the earth and the life upon it. There's no reason for us to waste and pollute as much as we do. There's no reason for corporate farming to rape the soil and poison the atmosphere and the ground the way it does, or treat the animals as cruelly as they do. We're about as far away from the mom and pop farm as you can get!!
As hunters, I just feel like that should motivate us to be true conservationists, WITHOUT a hidden agenda. I just started hunting last season, and if anything, it made me appreciate these things (our environment, the lives of all living things) more than ever before. If being "conservative" means trashing the earth and treating its inhabitants like garbage, well I guess I ain't conservative!!
It's just another example of division and polarization, and I think it's by design.
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"Well if it ain't loaded and c0cked, it don't shoot." -Rooster Cogburn
In practice, it's not quite as simple as most people seem to think it is. In most of our personal lives, economics play an enormous role in our ability to follow through with the "high ideas" of "conservation" set before us by any number of celebrities and special interests. Even the word "conservation" has been re-badged into something that 30 years ago we'd easily identified as "environmental" or "extremist". Gifford Pinchot is rolling over in his grave.
I certainly don't condone unnecessarily spoiling our environment, either. But it's often in the eye of the beholder. How about those "gas guzzlers"? To someone who has access to public transportation and only needs a vehicle those times they go on vacation somewhere and rent one, any of us who own a vehicle to begin with could be deemed "wasteful". They may not consider that the rest of the country may not live the way they do. Some of us don't have access to public transportation.
To someone who never has to haul anything more than their family and a couple of suitcases, those of us driving anything but a Prius or other econo-hybrid could be labeled "wasteful". They may never have dealt with rutted roads, sudden fall snowstorms in the high country, let alone had to pull a trailer - either for work or recreation. Sometimes it's a week before the snowplows hit the road by my house, but I'm still expected to get to work on time. Those like me find great amusement in big cities going into emergency mode over six inches of snow. Though I'd love to have something smaller (hybrid, Smart, etc.) so that I don't accumulate so many miles on my expensive 4x4 during fair weather, I don't quite have the bank account to support it.
To someone (like me) who walks when they're in the woods, things like ATVs are "wasteful". Though my knees are shot, I'm not disabled the way some other folks who might otherwise enjoy the woods are. But, even "disabilities" are subjective. To me, "disabled" implies things like amputations. To some, it could be as broad as "too big to walk very far".
And yet it remains. However we get there, that we're there at all has implications to the environment. Sure, they may be small impacts, individually, but they're cumulative effects. I'm old enough to remember "Primitive Areas" on the USFS maps. You could nearly bank on never seeing another human being not in your party any time you'd go to one of those spots. Today, they're called "Wilderness Areas". The USFS makes trailheads for people to park in so that they can walk there. There are signs on the trails. I rarely go there without seeing groups of other people. A few years back I participated in the White River National Forest Plan revision. One group wanted the boundaries of the "Wilderness Area" expanded, essentially to move them closer to the roads so more people could get there. Of course, they also wanted what amounted to elimination of any motorized travel in areas that had been roaded for years.
Today, you can go there and see probably five to ten dead trees for every live one. Bugs are killing the forests that have been weakened by years of drought and by overcrowding (it's just math, more trees competing for less water, something's gotta give). The "conservation" groups don't want them thinned, because logging requires roads, and roads are innately bad. Thinning would reduce some of the impacts of the drought. Of course, with so much fuel, fire now becomes a serious threat. Not only would it burn vast swaths of forest, the resulting smoke and emissions would make those gas guzzlers seem pretty small in terms of impact. We can hope for a few weeks of below zero temps to kill some of the bugs, but then it becomes difficult to heat our homes, Heaven forbid we have to send more money to the oil and gas companies.....
I'm sure every human on the planet could point fingers at someone else and say that those are the people who are ruining the environment. It remains that we ALL impact the environment negatively. Those threads the PETA girls in the other post here are wearing were either farmed (cotton, etc.) or mined (petroleum products becoming synthetic fibers) - neither of those practices are without environmental impact (pesticides, fuel use, drilling, etc.). Yet groups like them choose to label anyone who'd wear a nature-based product as "bad", open as they are to criticism themselves by someone opposed to commercial farming or mining/drilling.
Seems to me that we'd all be a whole lot better off if we paid more attention to what we do for or to the environment as individuals, and less attention to what someone else is doing?
Oh, and it has nothing to do with being "conservative" or not. You need look no further than Mr. Global Warming, former VP Al Gore and his house a few years ago, chartered jets to events, etc. to know that even liberals can be environmental hypocrites.
Last edited by homers brother; 01-09-2010 at 04:39 AM.
Scientists started warning us about the damage caused by acid rain in the 1950s. Little or nothing was ever done about acid rain until it is too late. Those political hacks who were/and still are in the pockets of the large corporations; said there was not such thing as acid rain.
Politicians finally became alarmed because the forests near coal burning power plants were dying. They passed laws that required higher smokestacks rather than require the power companies to clean up their emissions. Yep, now the forests hundreds of miles from the power plants are dead and/or dying.
Much of the forest that i walked in, hunted in and fished in during the 50s and 60s in WV, MD and VA is dead because of the effects of acid rain. Yep, the streams look just great and the unsuspecting tourists think that they are pristine. Problem is that there is not one living thing in many of those streams, the water is too acidic to support aquatic life. Some of my favorite trout streams in WV have been ecologically dead since the late 1970s.
homers brother - That was a good post. I understand that people's ideas of conservation and wastefulness differ. There's always going to be subjectivity where that's concerned and we don't all have the same needs as others. But that really wasn't the point of my post. Really, more than anything, I'm talking about attitude. I'm talking about people who thumb their noses as being environmentally conscious, etc, just because it tends to be a "liberal" point of view. Someone talks about recycling or whatever, and they're like, "Damn liberal treehugger." They are against something just to spite the "political POV" it's coming from. That's why I can't stand the right vs left/conservative vs liberal paradigm and the two-party system. IMO, it unnecessarily divides the people and causes them to focus on issues not central to liberty when, underneath all the fluff, both parties are nearly indentical. And you're absolutely right about Al Gore...what a hypocrite!! But that delves into another subject altogether...the true motive behind the "go green" and "global warming" hype...a method of GREED and CONTROL. But just because that's the real reason behind what they're doing, doesn't mean I think we should shirk our responsibilities as good stewards.
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"Well if it ain't loaded and c0cked, it don't shoot." -Rooster Cogburn
Yep, now the forests hundreds of miles from the power plants are dead and/or dying.
They're dying out here in the West, but for an entirely opposite reason. The forests have been so overprotected that they're now overcrowded and the beetles are making short work of them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by falcon
Much of the forest that i walked in, hunted in and fished in during the 50s and 60s in WV, MD and VA is dead because of the effects of acid rain. Yep, the streams look just great and the unsuspecting tourists think that they are pristine. Problem is that there is not one living thing in many of those streams, the water is too acidic to support aquatic life. Some of my favorite trout streams in WV have been ecologically dead since the late 1970s.
Well, count yourself fortunate that the forests there present themselves as pristine. Most of the forests I grew up in are now comprised primarily of bug-killed snags headed for "the big one" (fire). Whether it's been clearcut or burned off, the visual effect is the same, and it's far from anything I'd describe as "pristine". Not to mention any loss of habitat. My daughter will never enjoy what I did growing up, but maybe her grandchildren will?
IMO - environmentalists are just as bad as industrialists are when it comes to forest management and policy. They're ALL "hacks."
Last edited by homers brother; 01-09-2010 at 12:43 PM.
I'm talking about people who thumb their noses as being environmentally conscious, etc, just because it tends to be a "liberal" point of view. Someone talks about recycling or whatever, and they're like, "Damn liberal treehugger."
Yes, I realize that. I'm a conservative. I recycle (among a number of things you might consider as "liberal"). Responsible behavior toward our environment has it roots far from any political leanings any one person may have.
Attempting to logically connect one to the other will eventually drive you insane. It's just not that simple.
I doubt there is a person on this site that isn't for a cleaner environment but with that said, a bunch of people espousing major lifestyle or financial changes for global warming or the latest cause du jour lights me up. I clearly remember Paul Ehrlich from Stanford (now a hugh global warming proponent) raising the alarm for "Global Cooling" and as it turns out there was a big alarm for global warming as early as 1925! This thoughtless "greening" is killing us. As mentioned in an earlier post, the beetles are killing the trees in his area, here too. The entire Lake Tahoe basin went up in flames two years ago because residents couldn't remove diseased trees, pick up fallen trees or even rake up the fallen pine needles because it "would harm the environment." I don't know about that, but today there is NO environment to harm because it burned, ...... along with all of the houses. Three residents who dared the wrath of the Tahoe Regional Planning Board and cleared their property saved their houses. Few of these, so called, "environmentalists" live what they preach.
The Thing About PETA, etc.
