Unstoppable (17 page)

There is a long trek ahead, however. In March 2013, Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the new senator Rand Paul introduced the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013, allowing judges to impose sentences below mandatory
minimums. This joint Democratic–Republican filing needs far more public mobilization if it is to be more than just a filing and a joint press release. But the groundswell is at least visible on the horizon. As conservative George Will described in his column, “they hope to reduce the cruelty, irrationality and cost of the current regime of mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes.”
³⁷

Driving such a groundswell is the National Campaign to Reform State Juvenile Justice Systems, which works daily with twenty state-based efforts “to provide strategic resources to end the reliance on punitive responses toward juvenile crime and delinquency and move toward evidence-based rehabilitative and restorative approaches. Founded by large nonprofit institutes, led by the MacArthur Foundation and super-organizer Donald K. Ross, the effort, supported active campaigns in eighteen states by 2013 and retained twenty-five lobbying firms and other support structures. Mr. Ross crisply asserts that legislative successes in state after state embody Left-Right alliances inside and outside state legislatures.

This subject has already called up enough polemical fervor on both sides for convergence, but it will take more than that to lift the heavily policed hand of government so as to replace our current drug war with a much smarter set of public policies. Here convergence, once it gets underway, will tap deeply into the historical philosophies of conservatism and liberalism. (See the documentary
The House I Live In
at
http://www.thehouseilivein.org
.)

23. Prioritize the protection of our environment.

The need for ecological consciousness to preserve the planet Earth and its posterity seems to be common sense. Instead, it viscerally divides Republicans and Democrats. Thank the Republicans in Congress for desiring to close out the EPA and OSHA in a corporatist-encouraged rage, an example of truly ignorant nihilism. The science and evidence of climate change and global warming
are casualties of this rejectionism. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) repeatedly calls global warming one of the greatest hoaxes of the century. He does not say it's exaggerated or partially erroneous, but a hoax—something completely made up.

Many self-described conservatives do show little care for the environment, that is, except when they are outdoors with their families as tourists. This is at least partially based in partisanship, since they insist on attaching the liberal or Democrat label to the occasional governmental initiatives to enforce the environmental laws, the ones that so anger industry.

Still, earlier conservatives often embraced environmentalism. In the appendix to his book
Conservatism Revisited
, written in 1974, Peter Viereck called the young people in the early seventies who were marching and acting for environmental protection “unconsciously conservative . . . even when under radical slogans,” as they protested “against what [Herman] Melville called ‘the impieties of progress.'”
³⁸
Today when we are beset by such problems as recessions, wars, bailouts, and credit crises, it may not seem to some to be a good political climate for working on ecological advancement or even for staying the course to avert us from sliding ecologically backwards for lack of public investment and regulatory compliance. But for considering the possibility of convergence in tough times, like now, a little looking backward is a good start.

If there were ever an argument to be made on the importance of historical knowledge, it could be made by looking back at the Republicans' heritage as a way of cutting through the ideas of the present self-styled Republican conservatives in Congress and other elected officials, who stand adamantly against most environmental and consumer regulations. It's as if they didn't recognize that they too are breathers, drinkers, eaters, and motorists!

Our first historical lesson is to remember that the conservation movement against despoilment of land, air, and water started in a big way with President Theodore Roosevelt and his fellow
Republicans. Over a hundred years ago, they were the activists who established the national forests, the great national parks, and other reserves for posterity to enjoy.

Other than through an extension of their nineteenth-century belief in the need for husbandry of our resources and from biblical wisdom, where did they get such foresight and such a sense of the necessity—not just pleasure—of the communion between nature and the human spirit? It helped, of course, that they had a lot of land and beauty available, having wrested it from the Native Americans. But critical also was the legacy of conservative philosophers, who preached a conservation ethic and had a sense of holding a public trust for those who followed them. Perhaps not always explicit, these were the views that animated Roosevelt's doers from Gifford Pinchot to John Muir and that maintained a lasting influence, though more diminished, right down to the Nixon administration.

Under President's Nixon's tenure, the Democrats and Republicans in Congress passed the major environmental laws of our generation, bolstered by his signature and eloquent supporting statements. Besides being deeply impressed (or alarmed) by the massive, all-American turnout for Earth Day in 1970, Nixon also knew that poll after poll showed Republicans themselves favored saving the natural world from plunder and pollution. He was reading both the philosophic and pragmatic tea leaves. It was absurd to keep soiling our own nests!

About this time, Russell Kirk, a grand savant of modern conservatism, was writing that “the issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks and middle class straights.”
³⁹
Recently, John Gray, the British political philosopher, declared, “Far from having a natural home on the Left, concern for the integrity of the common environment, human as well as ecological, is most in
harmony with the outlook of traditional conservatism of the British and European varieties.”
⁴⁰
To which Mr. Kirk added, “Nothing is more conservative than conservation.”
⁴¹

These and other ecumenical judgments should not be surprising. Common human biological inheritances and an aesthetic appreciation of nature transcend ideologies. People naturally want health, safety, and beauty. They want nature to last and be bountiful. They do not abide pain, filth, and having their children and grandchildren degraded and deprived of the memories they or their grandparents and great-grandparents had when rivers, streams, and lakes were there to enjoy and forests were there to explore.

All these commonalities did not go unnoticed by the corporatists, for whom nature was to be exploited for profit or off-loaded to cut costs. They had become accustomed to using our air, water, soil, and natural patrimony as free goods or, some would say, free sewers for disposing wastes and emissions into our biosphere. They did not want to invest and internalize the monies that would be needed to be spent for safe disposal or reuse or to drop unsafe procedures altogether. Suddenly, within two years (1970–1972), they were confronted by federal and state laws that told them they no longer would be the sole deciders in how fatally toxic the human environment would be either outside (the Environmental Protection Agency) or in the workplace (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). This legislation came with an awakened public consciousness that change was overdue, necessary, and urgent. Fully twenty million people participated for at least a few hours in their communities during the weeklong celebration of Earth Day in 1970. The mass media widely headlined this historic civic event.

Presently, the networking of convergence in relation to environmental pursuits comes when an occurrence in any locality threatens neighborhoods, which face the danger in common, untroubled by competing economic interests. Lois Gibbs, inspired by her grim
experience during the 1970s raising her family unknowingly over the toxic soil of Love Canal, New York, created a national grassroots environmental group in 1981 that organized thousands of small communities threatened by such problems as toxic leaks into their basements and drinking water or gaseous fumes around their homes and schools. She says that, whether during her visits to polluted “hot spots” or during her large convocations, which draw grassroots activists from around the country to Washington, DC, she does not detect any ideological divide. The people working with her are activists. They want healthful conditions for their children, and they want polluters to stop, laws to be enforced, courtroom doors to be opened, and honest disclosures to be made about environmental conditions. Common threats invite common ground.

On the other hand, sailing is not so smooth when there are severe local controversies over competing material interests that do not break down by political persuasion. The struggle to end mountaintop removal by people in the Appalachian hollows pits the downstream people against the coal companies, their suppliers, and a dwindling supply of workers. The burgeoning struggle over natural gas fracking is another case. Communities have also been riven when a large corporate project, such as a new nuclear power plant, entices a locality with property tax reductions, thus solidifying supporters against others who fear the risks of radioactive leaks and accidents and taxpayer bailouts more than they desire any short-term advantages.

On more macro-environmental disputes, such as over global warming or acid rain, ideologies become divisive. These disputes feature the different groupings presenting pro and con regulatory actions or proposals. “Big Government” and “Big Business” accusations come into play here, with the sides accusing each other of promoting one or the other.

Convergence is needed here, particularly in decision-making forums like Congress, where systemic decisions would have to be
made. There, however, the division between Republicans and Democrats has hardened to a point that proactive politicians worried about global warming have become mostly silent. They have made the calculation that a subdued attitude loses fewer voters than a clarion call for action that their opposition—the deniers—can tie to incurring huge taxpayer and consumer expenditures for what, the deniers still assert, is an unsubstantiated prediction. The climate change believers marvel at how, by manipulating propaganda, the deniers have swayed a sizable segment of public opinion. Yet those worried about warming have made little attempt themselves to publicize, with supportive companies, including the insurance industry, the persuasive rebuttals that exist of these deniers' ideas, such as the one by energy expert and long-time converger Amory Lovins. He shows that conversion from fossil fuels and nuclear power to renewables and conservation efficiencies will be a profitable investment for society, save consumers money, save on taxes, create more jobs, advance national security, and generate a safer environment for communities and workers. Yet the “Inhofing”—Senator James Inhofe is a blatant anthropogenic climate change denier—of public opinion continues unabated among conservatives, even as evidence piles up about the reality of global warming, including a 2004 Pentagon study,
⁴²
which concluded that the coming climate change from human activities constitutes a major national security risk.

As we've seen, this entire subject is infused with both economic interests and ideologies. That makes for a volatile cocktail. At the moment it is particularly inimical to attracting convergence. However, as the visual and empirical evidence mounts, the foreboding and storming reality may start to dissolve the hardened congressional opposition that is stalling a nation's organized sense of the need for precautions and remedies.

On the ground, events can move more quickly. In Arizona, Barry Goldwater Jr., son of Mr. Conservative, has formed an organization
opposed to monopoly electric utilities trying to “extinguish” rooftop solar installations by reducing credits for excess solar power transferred to the utility. To Goldwater and Tea Party groups, the issue is greater consumer choice.

24. Advance health.

Health, as distinguished from insurance or health care, is as perfect an objective process for local convergence as anything. A concise description of the possibilities was expressed in 2008 by Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, then director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a letter to the
Wall Street Journal
:

Right now, 75% of our current health expenditures target treatment for preventable conditions caused by tobacco use, poor diet and inactivity, alcohol and drug use, motor-vehicle crashes, firearms and other risks. It's time to broaden our conversation about reform to include the entire health system. Public health agencies, businesses, community groups, teachers, and above all, parents have a strong stake in our success.
⁴³

We have to promote changes and policies that build health opportunities into everyday life: walkable streets, nutritious school lunches, health education and fitness programs for all students, smoking-cessation programs and easy access to parks and gyms.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in full support of a rapidly expanding movement to help America become the “healthiest nation.”

I've never heard Rep. Ron Paul call for the abolition of the Centers for Disease Control, a government agency. Its mission cannot be controversial except for those bent on not being deterred from masochism or suicide. Whenever those flu viruses come from overseas—so far, primarily from the Chinese mainland to America—all eyes are on these Centers. Their scientists and
public health experts have no axe to grind, and focus on saving lives and heading off diseases and injuries.