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| 9/22/2009 8:36:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Where are the environmentalists? They don't exist
When I was growing up, both politics and the politics of protest were radically different. Back then, they were about policy; today they are about power.
That's a shame, but it is indicative of a society that focuses so much on narcissistic consumption and so little on ideas and inner substance. Today, your politics are defined not so much by your participation for the public interest as by your association in a special interest.
Back in the 1960s, war protesters - those who were actually against American involvement in Southeast Asia - demonstrated against pro-war politicians, no matter whether they were Republicans or Democrats. They took to the streets against L.B.J., and they didn't go away when Richard Nixon walked through the door.
On the other hand, when George W. Bush was president, there were anti-war activists everywhere; today, there is only Cindy Sheehan.
The others have gone home, despite continuing deaths in Iraq - 4,535 as of this writing - and despite President Barack Obama's decision to send 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, with more likely.
Yes, just Cindy Sheehan remains camped out in protest, warning that Obama has changed only the political facade and not any real policies.
Ms. Sheehan apparently didn't get the memo from her old comrades: Hey, it doesn't matter whether war policies have changed because 'Barack,' as his cultists like to call him, as if he were their close friend, is our guy.
It's the same on the state stage. Gov. Jim Doyle was against a governor-appointed DNR secretary when he was out of power; for it, when he is in power. The Republicans lambasted the Democrats over writing the state budget in secret but did the same thing when they were in power.
And so it goes. Nobody seems to believe in anything but power any more.
Ditto for the environmental movement. If you listen to these con artists, they will tell you they are all about protecting fish and wildlife habitat and all about keeping things clean - clean land, clean air, clean water.
And so it would seem to have made sense for them, during these past seven years as the DNR wrote new shoreland rules to help protect water quality, to press the agency and the Legislature to end the most glaring deficiency of all - the statutory exemption from the regulations of 190 cities and more than 400 villages.
That's a lot of territory, and it's critical to end the exemption because, the truth is, no regulations for the state's unincorporated areas will make one bit of difference so long as the cities can do what they want.
Even the DNR will tell you that shoreland regulation is not about regulating individual water bodies; it is a matter of regulating entire watersheds. As the DNR's Russ Rasmussen told a Senate panel, water quality begins to degrade when about 10 to 12 percent of a watershed is covered with impervious surfaces. That's why they want a 1,000-foot impervious surface limit in unincorporated areas.
Unfortunately, as long as cities and villages can build at will, they can never avoid that percentage. Thus they cannot prevent watershed degradation, new rules or no new rules.
What's more, stricter rules can't even protect unincorporated areas any more than they are. Simply put, all the water of a watershed is connected. Groundwater seeps in and out of lakes, as does stream drainage, and moves on.
So not only does a river polluted in an unregulated city flow on to a highly regulated unincorporated area, but groundwater polluted in a city moves, too, through the entire watershed, from lake to lake.
The proposed rule, therefore, is not, as Mr. Rasmussen tried to pass off, an attempt to protect water where the agency can. For any regulation to be effective, it must apply to the entire watershed.
That extension should be the next logical step, and yet we hear not a peep from environmentalists. Instead, we hear them - the Wisconsin Association of Lakes, the River Alliance of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation - applaud the DNR and declare the agency's efforts to be long overdue.
What's overdue is ending the exemptions for cities and villages. What's overdue, too, is the disclosure that the environmental groups who have joined with city-based realtors and builders are frauds and phonies.
If they weren't, they would be building a coalition to establish municipal regulations - as real environmentalists did in Minnesota - instead of joining with the municipal-based power establishment to preserve the status quo.
The status quo is nothing less than a covenant between special interests to depopulate the state's northern and rural regions in exchange for unfettered development in the southern and developed regions.
It has everything to do with power and privilege and nothing to do with clean water, and it is a direct violation of the Public Trust Doctrine of the state constitution.
Too bad it's not like the old days, when people protested because they believed in the issue they were espousing, and directed their dissent consistently.
If it were, we might have someone from the cities standing up for water quality.
Instead, we have the likes of Democrats Spencer Black, Mark Miller and Jim Holperin, who preach the public interest even as they broker deals with special interests.
They are today's political pollution. It's time to end their reign, so that we might finally stand up to the cities and halt water pollution as well.
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Posted: Wednesday, October 07, 2009
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Northwoods Patriots
northwoods patriots are hosting a local film premiere -- part of the simultaneous national premiere of "Not Evil Just Wrong" movie to debunk global warming hysteria. Oct 18, 7pm at Vilas Cinema, Eagle River, WI -- plan to come! http://northwoodspatriots.blogspot.com/2009/10/oct-18-cinematic-tea-party-eagle-river.html
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