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100 Years

Last week, I sat in a focus group for a company that wants to install systems that will use renewable energy in homes. The idea goes beyond solar panels to include wind and geothermal where possible. When the moderator asked us to rank the reasons we might be willing to consider renewable energy everyone chose cost savings first. Only two of us chose environmental protection first.

I like saving money, but I couldn’t help but wonder why more people don’t consider preserving a healthy and liveable world for future generations to be more of a moral issue, and quite frankly, the most important one there is. This is something I’d like to hear one of the so-called ‘values voters’ explain to me. I often read about the issues that drive these people to the polls and it’s rarely conservation.

There are some in the evangelical community (which seems to think it owns values and morals, but never mind) who would like to add environmental protection to the mix of values issues, but the leaders of the movement see it as a wedge issue to divide their base. Do they care about anything other than short term power?

Don’t answer that.

In 100 years, it seems unlikely that anyone other than scholars will care how we structured our families, whether or not we let gay people marry, what schools taught kids about evolution, or even whether or not abortion was legal. I suspect, though, that they will curse us for every methane spewing landfill, toxic waste dump, dead reef, poisoned aquifer, dead forest, overfished sea, desertified landscape, silt-blocked river, lost glacier, styrofoam cup and plastic water bottle that we leave for them to enjoy.

A few days after the focus group, I read Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and was struck by how often he refers to environmental protection as a moral imperative. I couldn’t agree more, but I wonder how long it will be before we look at politicians and demand to see their environmental ideas before we make the decision about their values. What kind of people ask about candidates’ positions on gay marriage before asking about ocean policy ideas?

Can you have values if you don’t value the well-being of future generations?

Published inNature

3 Comments

  1. I started to reply, and found myself on a bit of a soapbox. So, I put it on my blog, and feel free to read my post there.

    But you’ve been warned about my soapbox. 🙂

  2. Nothing wrong with a soapbox. Blogs are the modern soapbox. Sometimes, they’re the modern rotten tomato or cream pie that was once hurled at politicians too.

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