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The Gaffer's Philosophy:
Part 109: The Environment P1:
June 28, 2004:
In this essay I want to outline what I mean by the word environmentalist. I also want to look at some people who qualify. The generally accepted definition of environmentalist is one who advocates conservation of our natural resources and works to protect the natural environment from destruction or pollution. That is acceptable as far as it goes. My problem is it is too inclusive. The main sticking point here is about means. To suite me the definition would have to include the concept of lawful means. My definition would be a person who advocates conservation of our natural resources and works within the law to protect the natural environment from destruction or pollution.
The people my definition would specifically exclude are those who break the law to gain some imagined noble end. I have in mind, people who use the cutesy phrase civil disobedience to put smoke over their criminal acts. They interrupt commerce, they destroy capital equipment, they commit acts of piracy, and they put the lives of ordinary workers at risk. They do all of this under the dishonest flag of civil disobedience disguised as environmentalists. I consider them to be hooligans and nothing more. Without the issue of environmentalism they would still be criminals because that is their nature. Environmentalism simply gives them a cloak to wear.
An important part of my definition is it does include anyone who acts to improve the environment regardless of the size of their contribution. So, Weyerhaeuser is a conservationist company because they plant trees. Indeed, Mrs. Gaffer is also a conservationist. By herself she planted some 3000 coniferous trees. In that she has done more for our environment that all of the green freaks put together.
Now I will borrow some thoughts from other essays on these subjects. I have a serious problem with people who support criminal activity with a "means justifies the end" attitude. We have an entire subculture of people who approve these methods. I will insist, criminal activity in a democracy is never justified for any reason. It is short sighted, lazy, and self defeating. It brings the judgement of the law abiding community down on all of us. It makes our advocacy in Washington more difficult. I makes the achieving of our goals more difficult. It gives excuses to the exploiters of our environment.
The reaction of these fools is predictable when I ask them how many trees they have planted. The hemming and hawing is answer enough. Most of them have not even planted or cared for a single tree. They want someone else to do that part. Mrs. Gaffer and I have done that part. We did not resort to criminal behavior to do it. When we bought our property one of the first things we did was plant 5000 coniferous trees. We did that before we put in inside plumbing. That's how important it was to us.
Financially we were struggling, but we found the money for that. We got the trees from the State of Michigan's conservation department at cost. We paid about $300.00 for 5000 seedling trees. I admit, Mrs. Gaffer did the bulk of that work. My excuse is, I was working full time and going to school part time. It turned out I could have skipped the school, but that is another story. Planting those trees was so important to Mrs. gaffer that she did it while pulling a baby around a stubbly corn field in a stroller. Here's how. Pull the stroller six feet. Plant a tree. Pull the stroller six feet. Plant a tree. And so on. She did that every day until the 3000 trees were planted. The other 2000 were planted by me with the help of some relatives on a weekend.
It would do no good to tell these fringe people we did that or to tell them Weyerhaeuser is a better conservationist than they are. Weyerhaeuser plants millions of trees every year. They plant more trees in a day than all of the green freaks together have planted since the beginning of time. Yet, the green freaks camp out in the top of one tree and pretend they are doing something good and noble. I still say, they are criminals, nothing more.
For the lumber companies, it has nothing to do with nobleness. They have to restore the forests because it's their business. We think of them as lumber and paper companies, but they are really tree farmers. Trees are their renewable resource. This knowledge was not always apparent to them. However, they have learned over time that trees are no different that oats and wheat. If you want to harvest a crop, you must plant and nurture it.
Now, these concepts of protecting the environment are not new. What is new is the catchword environmentalist. It is nothing more than a synonym for conservationist. Conservation is almost as old as the art of farming. In Western civilization, men have been concerned with the preservation of the earths resources since the times of the Roman Empire. One of the first conservationists in America was Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946).
Pinchot was the first director of the U.S. Forest Service appointed in 1898 by President McKinley. For him conservation meant the wise and efficient use of resources. During his tenure he did much to strengthen the US Forestry Service. He also founded the Yale Summer School of Forestry and taught as professor of forestry at Yale. He was also involved in America's Public Lands Commission and our Inland Waterways Commission.
This fellow was very active in many things besides conservation. He worked with Teddy Roosevelt to found the Bull Moose party. He was also the Governor of Pennsylvania where he reorganized the state government and instituted a budget system. He was not too busy to write his own biography called Breaking New Ground. It was published after his death in 1947. We are justified in thinking of Pinchot as the first official American conservationist.
Another activist in conservation was John Muir (1838–1914) who founded the Sierra Club in 1892. He was the key guy in getting the Sequoia and Yosemite national parks in California established in 1890. This was one tough hombre. He once walked from the Middle West to the Gulf of Mexico and wrote a book about it. Called A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, it was published after his death in 1916.
Now these two people and many like them are what I will call environmental activists. They put their hearts and their lives into working to support and preserve our environment. They did it the hard way through advocacy and personal involvement in the political process. They broke no laws and they did not support criminal activity. They acted as responsible citizens.
The Sierra Club still does that and they are still effective. Their way is difficult. It requires hard work and dedication. It requires good citizenship. It requires getting involved in the process rather than committing terrorist acts. They do it legally. They work to educate the public on environmental issues and lobby local, state, and federal governments for environmental legislation. That is my idea of an environmentalist. Done honestly, it is damn hard work.
The Sierra Club is a good organization, but with the degeneration
of America's ethics it is not enough. Disaster is looming over
us like a poisonous cloud of smoke. Our federal government, with
short sighted business and union support, is currently leading
the assault on our environment and resources. I will get into
some of the details of this next time.
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