The Environment & the Election

Is there a lesser evil?

Photo by Missvain, CC BY 4.0, via WikiCommons

When I started this Substack, I said “I will be staying away from politics except as how it relates to plants and nature.” Well, it’s an election year, so here’s my take.

Important autobiographical note: I’ve never voted for a Republican for any office, but I haven’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1992. Which is to say, I’ve been an outside observer for three decades, and that’s the perspective I’m drawing from for this piece.

No matter whether Trump or Harris wins the White House, those of us who oppose ecocide will face daunting challenges during the next presidential administration. There’s no “lesser evil” between these two; just different evils.

Okay, some folks just clicked away and that’s fine. For those who stayed, I’ll spell it out.

Since the Reagan years, every Republican president has openly striven to ignore, eliminate or water down environmental regulations, or have otherwise committed ecocide, and they’ve all succeeded to some degree. But because they’re Republicans, they’ve faced vocal opposition from environmentalists, many of whom consider themselves Democrats. (Though not so much with Trump, and more on that later.) Some battles were won, some were lost, but the overall state of the environment has gone from bad to worse.

Since the Clinton years, every Democratic president has paid lip service to environmental issues, but when pressured by corporate donors have also ignored, eliminated or watered down environmental regulations, or have otherwise committed ecocide. But because they’re Democrats, they’ve faced far less vocal opposition from environmentalists, many of whom consider themselves Democrats too. “We don’t want to give our person a hard time.” Some battles were won, some were lost, but the overall state of the environment has gone from bad to worse.

The Republicans drive a bulldozer right at nature without apology. Environmentalists fight them (mostly). The Democrats might let the bulldozer sit there idling from time to time—or just claim they are—but they never turn off the ignition, and the machine ends up moving forward under their direction too. Too many environmentalists don’t pressure them.

When Clinton entered office in 1992, efforts by environmentalists had led to a judge declaring a moratorium on commercial logging on public lands. This was a holy grail. But Clinton assembled a committee made up of logging interests with a few mainstream enviros thrown in, and they ended up producing the Northwest Forest Plan. In the following years of Clinton’s two terms, more old growth trees were logged than under the Reagan and Bush-the-First administrations put together. It was a disaster. (For more on this tragic narrative, check out my interview with Tim Hermach, founder of the Native Forest Council in Oregon, whose forest defense activities go back to the ‘80s.) Even Clinton’s Roadless Rule was designed to allow logging; see “How the Clinton-Era Roadless Rules Aid and Abet Logging” by Katie Bilodeau.

In this case of Reagan/Bush vs. Clinton, Clinton was the greater evil for old growth forests. Old growth forests—you know, the things that when you clear-cut them, they’re just gone forever. That’s a crime against nature for which there’s no excuse.

But some environmentalists had gotten a “seat at the table.” This was loudly celebrated by some and sharply critiqued by others. I’ll call it what it is: appropriation. Appropriation by the establishment of effective organizations, dedicated individuals, powerful rhetoric, public goodwill and activist energy. All of which we need when opposing the establishment. Our ranks have been thinned by what Jeffrey St. Clair calls “Gang Green,” which, he says, “functions politically as little more than a green front for the Democratic Party.”

Of course there are still real grassroots environmentalists out there. I’ve had the honor and pleasure of meeting and working with many of them. But the mainstream narrative on environmental issues is shaped mostly by Gang Green, not the tree-sitters, pipeline wrenchers, and road blockaders. In fact, Gang Green will throw such direct action activists under the bus if it suits them. And as St. Clair suggests, their allegiance is to partisan politics and power over actual environmental protection. They prioritize profit over the planet, ultimately. This was Clinton’s much ballyhooed “third way”: dressing up Republican economic policies in Democratic garb, with a few crumbs thrown out on some social issues. In a word: Neoliberalism.

Some people say we’re in Reagan’s 11^th term.

Bush-the-Second faced pushback on his environmental policies. Obama not so much. Obama “bragged about overseeing the largest expansion of fossil fuel production in US history.” Gang Green didn’t have much to say about that, though some grassroots activists did.

Trump, as promised, employed “drill baby drill” policies. When he was installed, I was hoping for a surge in action from Dem-leaning enviros, but I was disappointed. Unfortunately, Dem-leaning establishment media obsessed over the Russiagate conspiracy theory to the exclusion of nearly anything else including environmental issues. The endless accusations, always put forward on page 1 but then quietly walked back on page 17, manufactured an obsessive atmosphere of alternative facts that never ended up amounting to anything significant, certainly not enough for all the attention they received. (For an exhaustive look at the generally baseless claims of the media re. Russiagate, see this amazing series by Jeff Gerth, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former investigative journalist from the New York Times.)

So when I look at the Trump vs. Harris contest, I honestly don’t know which will be worse for the environment. Project 2025 seeks to dismantle the “administrative state” which would mean gutting environmental regulations. It could be horrific. I sure don’t want to lose NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act). I hope Gang Green will step up to the plate if things get that bad, but given their dedication to tepid DNC-approved ideas and tactics, and their less than stellar record during the first Trump occupancy, I dare not set my expectations too high. And I fear that all the oxygen get sucked out of the media space by conspiracy theories again.

Climate

Some Team Blue people will say: “But Trump and the Republicans don’t even believe in climate change!”

Yeah, but under Biden, U.S. crude oil production hit an all time high. I don’t care what he and his party believe in. What do they do? Not enough of the right stuff. Industrial-scaled “green energy” dominates the conversation, but that’s a dead end, both practically (it can’t be done) and environmentally (it expands our consumption footprint).

The current environmental narrative is far too narrow, due in part to Gang Green and their international counterparts. Environmentalism has been reduced to Climate, and Climate has been reduced to Carbon (leaving out the equal or greater factor of Land Use). This benefits the Establishment because they can make schemes to profit from Carbon.

The Dems want to build out a “green energy” infrastructure with solar, wind, battery storage and miles and miles of transmission lines, built by union labor, but I oppose that. I am for reducing our energy use rather than building new energy infrastructure. See my essay: “No” to a “Green Energy Transition”—“Yes” to an “Energy Reduction Transition.”

Reducing energy use is not as glamorous as huge expanses of solar panels and windmills, but it’s the logical place to start. A partial list of methods: insulating homes and businesses, setting up free-of-charge public transportation, rezoning cities to decrease car-dependence, building bicycle infrastructure, planting trees to diminish urban heat island effects, subsidizing the localization of agriculture to lessen transportation costs, managing traffic flow better, limiting uneccessary lighting at night. Most of this could be accomplished at a local level with federal grant money. Most of it is barely discussed outside wonky circles. The Dems, like the Reps, take their cues from their donors, not from regular citizens or even from their own voting base. They won’t do anything good unless it is demanded of them by enough people.

Now it’s time for the Howard Zinn quotation:

“What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in—and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.”

What Zinn means is that change comes not from politicians but from mass movements. For example, in US history, which president has so far done the most for the environment, legislatively speaking?

Nixon.

That’s right. Tricky Dick, the war criminal and crook. But he’s the one who signed NEPA into law. We have Nixon to thank for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which engages in important climate and environmental research.

Why did he do it? Because a mass movement successfully elevated environmental concerns to a level where they could not be ignored. Was Nixon cynically trying to gain votes this way? Sure, because he was a politician, and no party “owned” the issue yet. But whatever his reason, his actions were and are meaningful, granting to us many of the tools we use to prevent pollution and limit industrial development.

Will either Trump or Harris be the next Nixon for the environment? Highly highly doubtful. Can either of them be pushed hard enough by a mass movement that we at least don’t go from bad to worse? That’s in the realm of possibility. But we’re in a conundrum. Having a Republican in the White House might mean there’s too much bad to push against. Having a Democrat there might mean there’s not enough good people pushing. Which is worse? I honestly don’t know, and am expecting heartbreak either way. Every freaking presidential election, liberal advocates of Team Blue say, “We just gotta get them in, and then we can hold their feet to the fire,” and every single time it doesn’t happen. I just don’t trust those people.

War

On an important related note, there’s one issue where there’s barely any daylight between Trump and Harris, and that’s US militarism.

At her acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, Harris declared: “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

Yikes!

Bernie Sanders pushed back, saying: “In all due respect, the United States is now spending more than the next 10 nations combined on defense... I do think enough is enough. You’re seeing military contractors profits soaring, and I think we can have the strongest defense in the world without spending a trillion dollars a year.” (What if Bernie had been nominated in 2016 instead of Hillary? See my thoughts on that here.)

At the Vice Presidential Debate, Tim Walz said something alarming that doesn’t seem to have gotten the attention it deserves. In answer to a question about supporting Israel, he said: “The expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute, fundamental necessity for the United States to have the steady leadership there.” Excuse me, the “expansion” of Israel? Hopefully that was just a slip of the tongue and not what it sounded like, which was a reference to the goal of Greater Israel [explainer video], the pursuit of which would lead to a much wider war and unfathomable suffering.

Trump likes to brag that the US didn’t start any new wars during his term, but that’s disingenuous, because it’s not like he didn’t try, what with his arming of Ukraine against Russian wishes, his assassination of a popular Iranian general, his kow-towing to Israel, his bellicosity towards China, etc. Trump is anything but an anti-war candidate.

Crucially, it can’t be plausibly argued that Harris is less pro-war than Trump is, with her support of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine, the military encirclement of China (Obama’s “pivot to Asia”), and the genocide in Gaza. The genocide in Gaza is a big deal. US support of it is both morally abhorrent and literally criminal. Between Trump and Harris there is no way to vote against it, only for it.

The Military Industrial Complex owns both these people. Waging war and preparing for war are very, very bad for the environment. Among the effects are decimated landscapes, slaughtered wildlife, toxic pollution from battle and from weapons production, carbon emissions, and the threat of the ultimate environmental disaster: nuclear winter. (See my essay from earlier this year, “Ecological impacts of the war machine.”)

As an illustration of just how war-mongering the two corporate parties have become, consider this quotation from Dwight Eisenhower, who was a Republican president in the 1950’s:

"I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."

The greater good, not a lesser evil

Personally, if I vote at all, I’ll be casting my ballot for the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware because they represent the greater good, not a lesser evil. Their environmental program is much, much closer to what I want to see (especially their agricultural proposals), though it still leans too heavily on new energy infrastructure for my taste. On war and militarism, they are legit peace candidates who want to cut the military budget by up to 75%. We need more choices than the corporate duopoly and by voting Green, I am encouraging the growth of a new party that can hopefully someday challenge that duopoly on the national level. If you vote, I hope you'll vote Green too.

[If you’re a Blue No Matter Who advocate, please just don’t in the comments. Like I said, I haven’t voted Dem since 1992 and I’m not gonna now. Please consider me a lost cause.]