A Simple Government (14 page)

 

 

 

 

M
y weekly television show,
Huckabee,
on the Fox News channel, is taped in Times Square, the heart of teeming Manhattan. A walk through that district can give you a slight case of sensory overload, as you might know from experience. A cacophony of noise, pedestrians and cyclists right next to you, the glitter of huge digital jumbotrons—yes, today’s “Gotham” is a long way from Hope, Arkansas, in the 1950s.

Just a quick walk from the studio to a Starbucks on the corner requires quick-witted navigation through a churning sea of humanity. And every one of these people, each of these swiftly moving pedestrians—some forging straight ahead, some blocking the sidewalk to shout into cell phones—has a unique story. It’s humbling. So many millions of human beings dealing with their individual problems, hopes, failures, and triumphs.

Sometimes, though, when I’m making my way down Broadway, one story in particular pops into my mind. It’s about a peculiar, frail young boy who grew up in that neighborhood in the 1860s, during the Civil War. Wearing thick glasses to correct his poor eyesight, he was nearly debilitated by recurring bouts of asthma that would render him limp, struggling to breathe.

His mother would sometimes send him up Broadway before breakfast to buy fresh strawberries at the outdoor market. One morning, he was struck by an exotic sight: a dead seal that had been caught in the harbor displayed on a slab of wood along with the mounds of fish, vegetables, and bread. This was, of course, more than a hundred years before seals were designated a protected species, but the boy had never seen this glistening marine mammal. His heart raced as it somehow brought to life the oceangoing adventure tales he loved to read. For some time, he stared at the seal in awe, until he suddenly realized he’d better get himself home in time for breakfast. I don’t know whether or not he remembered to buy those strawberries.

When he returned the next day, he was excited to find the seal still there. He was on a mission, having brought a ruler in order to measure every dimension and characteristic of the animal. Passersby surely scratched their heads at the sight of this scrawny kid fastidiously recording his data in a small notebook. As it turned out, he dreamed of preserving the carcass in order to author a natural history, but he had no way of doing so. Eventually, almost all of the animal was sold off for its skin, oil, and meat, but the market keeper, well aware of the boy’s intent curiosity, gave him the seal’s skull.

The boy raced home with it and, before a small audience of cousins, declared it the first specimen for their new collection. On his bedroom door he hung a sign that boldly declared: ROOSEVELT MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

True story. And if you haven’t guessed by now, that peculiar, sickly (and many would later say “aggravating”) little boy with the goggly specs and fertile imagination was Theodore Roosevelt, who would become the most ardent conservationist (as well as the only amateur ornithologist and zoologist) ever to occupy the White House. Hungry from such a young age for knowledge about nature, he would grow up to set aside 160 million acres as protected federal lands during his presidency, so that Americans could enjoy these preserves for centuries to come. Or as Lyndon Johnson once put it, so that we could see “a glimpse of the world as it was created, not as it looked when we got through with it.”

Roosevelt was a complex, charismatic man about whom volumes have been written, and many more will follow. But the principal thing I admire about his passion for the natural world was his recognition that nature doesn’t exist apart from humanity: It is part of humanity, and vice versa; we are all a part of nature. He understood that sensible existence requires a balance. Today, when we use nature’s resources for our benefit, we must do so responsibly and judiciously, so that the generations that follow us can follow suit. And so forth, ad infinitum.

What I’ve just described is now widely discussed as “sustainability,” but it’s not a new concept in America and wasn’t even in Roosevelt’s time. The Iroquois people, for example, who have lived off American soil for centuries, devised the doctrine of “seven-generation sustainability.” In other words, all decisions, environmental or otherwise, should be made in light of the impact they were likely to have on the next seven generations. For many reasons, generations have become longer than they were even early in the twentieth century, but just as a workable yardstick, let’s estimate that seven generations would be about two hundred years. Now try that measure on what’s happening to nature in your town or neighborhood. Probably not fitting that ideal, I’d guess.

The same idea was phrased another way by the Boy Scouts of America, as I recall from my scouting years: “Leave your campsite in as good or better shape than you found it.” The rule was strictly enforced, at least in my day. I learned the important lifelong lesson that the land and its resources are for our use and enjoyment, not our abuse and destruction.

On this point, Roosevelt argued, “To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them.” His conviction inspired generations of conservationists (and conservatives) to share his passion. In fact, it was Ronald Reagan who explicitly defined the connection between conservation and conservatism: “What is a conservative but one who conserves? This is what we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than we found it.” For him, the lesson of the campfire applied to the whole of nature.

But both men, if you read carefully, avoided making the mistake of those fervent environmentalists who believe that nature is to be protected at the expense of humanity. I mean, let’s keep it real. We human beings leave a mark on the environment. How could we not? Even in prehistoric times, when the environment was altered only in ways necessary for survival (wood fires for warmth and cooking, game killed for food, forests cleared to grow crops), however small the human foot-print, however much in harmony with nature, it was nonetheless there. It was inevitable. Today, of course, there are billions more beside it. In fact, in some cases, the footprint of humanity has become a defining aspect of the land. But we should not beat ourselves up over this fact. Ours is as legitimate a role in the ecosystem as has ever existed.

Ayn Rand once wrote, in answer to especially fanatic environmentalism, “Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon.” You don’t have to know Genesis by heart to recall that God created us as part of the natural order, and arguably the apex of it. After all, unlike the animals of the forest or the fish of the sea, we alone possess the ability to contemplate our role in, and our impact upon, the environment.

That intelligence, that ability to reason, is why Roosevelt came to believe that we have a moral responsibility to practice sensible conservation. I see it as a moral imperative, since I believe that our abilities come from God, to lay our footprint lightly, and wisely, upon the land. We should walk with moccasins, not cleats.

I’m not going to pretend to speak with scientific authority about the possibility of global warming. When well-trained climatologists and environmental scientists don’t agree on the basics, what do I know? Does global warming exist as our most urgent threat to the environment? If so, is it caused by the human race, by carbon dioxide emissions from our cars and power plants, among other things?

Can’t say. But I do know that while carbon dioxide alone is not dangerous to human health, those auto and industrial emissions contain hydrocarbons that are definitely harmful to us. The answer could not be simpler. We need to reduce air pollution because it is a threat to us humans, whether or not it creates a threat to the planet. By not being effective stewards of the air we breathe, we’re not just making ourselves sick; we’re actually killing ourselves.

Who is crazy enough to disagree with that? According to the American Lung Association, some 60 percent of us live in areas where air pollution is a proven health danger. In its various forms, it causes asthma, bronchitis, lung disease, cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and stroke—some of which, aside from lowering quality of life, can result in premature death. Of course, pollution-caused health risks are highest for babies and children. People who live near freeways—and are thus exposed to high levels of automobile fumes—have a higher- than-normal incidence of infant mortality, heart attacks, and allergies.

The major cause of emission threats is ozone. Though not a problem in the earth’s upper atmosphere, where it occurs naturally, it is a tremendous health risk at ground levels, where it creates smog. So far, the best ways to reduce this form of pollution, especially during the summer smog season, are to drive less, reduce electricity use, and not burn wood.

There are exceptions to smog danger. The cleanest air is found in places like the North Dakota towns of Fargo or Wahpeton or Lincoln, Nebraska. But things are not so good in the top ten cities polluted by ozone. Los Angeles, as you’d probably guess, is number one, followed by five other California cities plus Houston, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

The health risk second to ozone is particle pollution. In other words, soot. For the record, Bakersfield, California, suffers the worst seasonal particle pollution, while the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Arizona, axis has the most dangerous year-round. Down the list of dangerous emissions after ozone and particle pollution are carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide.

This is an ugly situation. Simply put, it is vital for us, for the sake of our national health, to cut back on pollution-causing emissions. But one word of caution: Let’s not rush into things and pretend to do something useful, rather than actually address the problem sensibly. Aren’t you a bit tired of the celebrity types who fly in on a fuel-hogging Gulfstream jet, then are squired in a gas-guzzling limo to a thirty-thousand-square-foot home (one of six or seven they own) in order to lecture the rest of us about using too much energy? I know I am. I only listen to envirocelebs, if you will, who walk the walk. For example, I greatly admire those like Ed Begley Jr. and Daryl Hannah, who actually practice what they preach. I’m not ready, myself, to go to the lengths they do, but consistency of conviction is admirable. Hypocrisy, though popular, is not.

This goes for government entities too, not just entertainment stars. For example, until we actually produce more of our electricity from sources other than fossil fuels, it does not measurably change the environment for some states and the federal government to force all of us to subsidize plug-in electric cars by giving tax credits for them. This is a shell game: shifting the demand for gasoline into more demand for electricity. Tax policy can’t solve the pollution problem by moving it from the tailpipe to the smokestack. Now, I’m not criticizing electric cars themselves. I own one myself, a golf cart ready for street use, and find it great.

Still, we have to analyze the current situation sanely. At the moment, about 40 percent of worrisome emissions are caused by the generation of electricity. And that’s not going to change overnight. In the future, we will be able to use sources like wind and solar energy to produce clean electricity; so electric cars will indeed make more sense down the road, no pun intended. Right now, about 70 percent of our states have renewable or alternative energy portfolio standards in place to encourage the generation of clean electricity. A good start. But in truth these standards are not very ambitious and will be slow to take effect: Typically, they are predicted to result in 15 percent to 20 percent of all electricity being from clean sources by 2020 or 2025.

Where does that leave us right now? One simple answer is to use “smart meters” and “smart grid” technology to reduce emissions by spreading out electric usage across the day. Because smart meters charge higher rates during peak usage times, utilities have found that they’re an effective way to use the marketplace to avoid peaks and valleys of demand. I’m sure you’ve heard some people arguing that reducing pollution is always necessarily more expensive. Not so in this case. Smart meters are definitely a win-win, giving consumers the option of reducing their bills while helping to clean the air. For instance, Salt River Project, the largest provider of electricity to the greater Phoenix metropolitan area (where, as you’ll recall, particle pollution is a year-round problem), reports that its deployment of approximately five hundred thousand smart meters has conserved 135,000 gallons of fuel. How? Those clever little gizmos helped the utility process more than 748,000 customer orders, thereby avoiding more than 1.3 million driving miles for customer-service reps. Only about one in ten American households have smart meters as I write, but the Department of Energy hopes to have them installed in about one-third of homes by 2015.

By the way, my wife and I are definitely on board with this approach to pollution problems and overuse of energy. In the house we are building in the Florida panhandle, heating and cooling will be geothermal, saving up to 80 percent of the power necessary for traditional methods. Energy efficiency will be maximized with some solar panels and hopefully a rooftop wind turbine. To quote a certain froggy, it may not be easy being green, but it sure is a good thing.

I’m not building that house as some kind of stunt or experiment. I’m putting my footprint where, maybe, Teddy Roosevelt would like it to be. I think that for a simpler America, we need to pursue all avenues of alternative energy: wind, solar, hydrogen, nuclear, geothermal, biofuels (ethanol, biodiesel), and biomass. But to do that, we need to make it possible for the private sector to make sound investments in technologies and projects by setting up a coherent, consistent statutory and regulatory framework. Partly, that means addressing a persistent problem within the environmental movement: the schizophrenia that causes different groups to work at cross-purposes.