Reply #229: No he's not... [View All]

Our environmental problems are so big at this point in time, and getting bigger all the time, that we can’t win this with half or more of the country against us. But many of us will not “condescend” to reach out in a broader sense, particularly if that means crossing a partisan divide, which leads me to my next point.

Environmentalism has been co-opted by the progressive movement. I make this last point as a progressive myself; anyone who knows me knows what my personal politics are. But a major mistake we’ve made, in my view, is in allowing our personal political dispositions to infect environmentalism to the point of turning it into the progressive movement itself, which it didn’t used to be, and shouldn’t be today. If it remains as such in the future, I think environmentalism will be dead.

In allowing environmentalism to become almost the exclusive preserve of the Democratic party, of the liberal and progressive political forces in this country, we have simultaneously estranged at least half of this nation. It need not be that way, and if we want our movement to move forward into the future, we need to end this partisan practice.

We should not allow a tendency toward liberalism to alienate conservatives, who have an interest in our environment too. We should not allow a tendency toward secularism to estrange people of obvious and prominent religious faith, where stewardship over creation is, or could be, a deep and shared value between us.
http://www.onenw.org/toolkit/onelist/deeper-green-in-defense-of-environmentalism/?searchterm=None