Russ Harding is a contemptible twit

by: Eric B.

Fri Aug 27, 2010 at 11:52:29 AM EDT

I was actually going to headline this post, "Russ Harding is an ignorant dumbshit," because that's really the most accurate way to describe things. But, we all know the score ... when it comes to demagoguing an entire swath of people or using a vulgarity on the Internets, every Very Serious Person knows that what really coarsens us as a people is the word "shit." So, instead you got what you got, and I'm guessing that calling him a twit will in some corners be seen as a greater crime than Harding's piece, "Environmentalism is a threat to liberty."

So, why are we calling names this morning? Well, it's not so much calling names as it is offering an honest assessment of the things the man writes. Through those things, Harding has issued a public declaration that he is willing to speak out on things about which he has virtually no demonstrable understanding. I suppose it ought not concern us terribly that the man who once ran the state's chief environmental stewardship agency doesn't understand a related politcal movement, since his agency wasn't tasked with representing merely environmentalists but all the state's citizens. However, it is telling that during a tenure to running such a thing that you'd expect him to have enough contact with activists that he would at least have familiarity with their motivations. I guess not.

Let us start with a question ... is environmentalism a threat to liberty? Since environmentalism is a form of political expression arrived at freely in a free society, the reflexive answer is that it is not. However, let's look at the case Harding makes in arriving at the contrary opinion.

The Berlin wall came down and communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, but the socialist ideology is alive and well and has found a new home in the modern day environmental movement. The environmental movement has been likened to a watermelon — green on the outside and red on the inside. Most environmentalists would not consider themselves socialists, much less communists, but the policies they support in the name of saving the planet almost always sacrifice individual liberty for central government control.

A great many things have been said about environmentalism, starting with that is substitutes the planet itself for God. There is also this, that the environmental movement is a socialist movement. We've discussed this here from time to time, so excuse if we wind up rehashing old history. However, it is worth noting that this notion surfaced shortly after the end of the Soviet Union in a book written by Pat Robertson. You are free to consider whether Robertson possesses the proper sense of authority and familiarity with the topic to make such a claim, and whether persons who repeat things said by such a figure are based on informed opinion or whether they are just repeating slurs against people they don't like.

For it to be true, however, that green is the new red, it has to be asked whether green simply materialized after red disappeared, or whether green appeared long before red. If that is the case, it has to be asked whether green and red occupied the same space while existing at the same time.

The answer to that is a matter of simple history. Green existed long before red disappeared, some 100 years to offer a simple estimation. Green -- environmentalism -- was preceded by conservationism. Coincidentally, red appeared a short time before. But, before jaws drop and flimsy conclusions are reached, the two appeared on different continents. Red, as we all know, first appeared in industrialized Europe, a reaction to industrialism by people advocating on behalf of the working poor. Environmentalism at that time was known as conservationism, and came to us all as a gift from a robust democracy called the United States. That is, what Russ Harding has called a threat to freedom came from the same people who's freedom he says are in danger.

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What is at the root of this movement that threatens liberty itself. The key can be found in the root word of its original form -- conservationism. The root is conservation, or better yet, conserve. It is the root of a great many things, like -- unironically -- conservative.

The original intent of conservationism was to wisely use our resources so as to preserve them for future generations. It never had anything to do with worshiping the planet or even saving it. It had to do with the responsibility that most of us feel towards our children and our children's children to not leave them a human habitat that is filthy and degraded. Environmentalism inherited those root values, and continues to be about wisely using resources today so as not to deprive future generations of Americans.

Another sentence from Harding:

Fighting global climate change, which has become the defining issue for environmentalists, is the perfect vehicle to exert control over every aspect of Americans' lives, from the type of cars we drive to the light bulbs we are allowed to use in our homes.

With this, we have revealed a second truth about Russ Harding. He apparently understands socialism almost as poorly as he does environmentalism. He is describing despotism and calling it socialism, when the two are not the same thing. In fact, we have had socialist countries in the past, and when socialism stopped being the defining form of government, it was learned that their environment was even more badly degraded than was our own. It turns out that socialist is not synonymous with telling people what lightbulbs they can use or what cars they are allowed to drive.

But, we are not talking about the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but about a movement heavily influenced by lessons from the evolution of our own country.

The evolution of that expression has received contributions from a great many people of a great many political affiliations. Some of the most influential environmentalists were devout Christians, and some of them were political conservatives. Many of them simply defied political labels, drawing values and principles from a wide range of authors and nature thinkers. It is difficult to imagine anyone reading Walden and see Thoreau's exhortation that we, "Simplify, simplify, simplify" (or Emerson's response that Thoreau's exhortation could be shortened by two words) as the words of a raving radical. After all, Thoreau wasn't compelled by some local politbureau to live next to a pond ... he did it all on his own. It is likewise difficult to conceive of Aldo Leopold's believed that proper stewardship started with the individual and not government as the stuff of Marx. There was also the utilitarian form of environmentalism preached by figures such as Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt. The list of conservative ideas that influenced the core values of environmentalism could go on, as well as the list of people who espoused them and who were not interested in controlling what lightbulbs people use.