ultima forsan [translation]

A Wired article with pretty much the same details as the story I mentioned yesterday reminds me of one small thing: though I'm incredibly overzealously big on the idea of conservation and ecologically sound living methods, Redford's quote in the articles seems oddly ignorant. I'm not sure what he was getting at with it:

Redford, a longtime environmental activist born and raised in Santa Monica, said the building symbolized a step forward for the conservation movement, which he said had been dealt setbacks by the Bush administration.

"We are now suffering through an administration that has, in a very calculating way, set out to undermine and destroy 30 years of hard work," he said.

"There's never been a time in my life when I've felt so challenged as a country, so challenged on the environment, as we are now."

I'm not sure I agree with this notion, but I can see the logic behind it--instead of trusting the distant federal government to properly legislate for the vagaries and varieties of environmental requirements for the entire nation, simply trust it to local authorities, and above all trust businesses to realize that sound ecological behaviors are in their own best interests. A company can spin their green actions into good PR, earn the respect of potential employees who see the ecological efforts of the company as an investment in the community, thus creating a stronger business overall.

Sure, maybe this won't ever happen because most companies are exporting labor overseas to save money, and any smaller companies that arise to take advantage of the excess labor in the United States will not likely focus on ecological concerns since there's a stronger incentive for fast growth due to the lack of support for smaller businesses in the United States. Fast growth might as well just be called "ecologically unsound growth".

Even if it's not likely to happen due to every level of government pandering to megacorporate interests, I think many Republicans still believe that it's the best way, if only they could get rid of those pesky liberals and implement their full agenda, thus ensuring that their Good Works aren't undercut by stupid social programs that hurt us more than they help us. But I digress.

My point is, if Republicans believe it's the responsibility of the individual and their locality to develop sound ecologies, isn't Redford just proving their point by putting his hard-earned funds into a project trying to demonstrate the feasibility of ecologically sound design? He's basically standing up and shouting out: "Hey Republicans, see this? If you keep cutting environmental legislation in this country, eventually insanely successful businessmen will start funding such programs and efforts out of their own pockets!"

Wouldn't the Republican answer simply be, "I certainly hope they will"?

Last updated by eric Sun Nov 16 11:04 2003 | thought | link