August 22, 2003
Bill O'Reilly - Environmentalist!?
For reasons unknown to me, my new housemate digs listening to conservative talk radio. This morning, Bill O'Reilly was on, and for the last half hour or more he's been raving against SUVs and fuel consumption regulations.
He said that the regulations we need for this won't happen because "Republicans are the party of big business." That environmentalism needs to be a non-partisan issue, but that it's been hijacked by extremists in the Sierra Club (okay, that sounded like O'Reilly) such that people don't want to identify with it. And he said that the Bush administration, for whatever reason, didn't seem to care about pollution.
Before that, he was explaining that though he's as capitalist as anyone else, in a country with 300 million people you need government regulation to tell everybody to "keep it clean." That fuel consumption needs to be mandated for all vehicles, maybe 25/30, giving the industry a deadline of a few years to comply.
Further, he went on to blame SUVs for destroying the roads with more consistent pounding than they were designed to take. Specifically calling them out as part of the reason that every major highway in the New York metropolitan area is currently under construction, causing daily traffic nightmares for everyone.
It was mentioned, both by him and a caller, that it's important to stop relying on fuel that has to be purchased from dictators. That this was important to the future of the country. O'Reilly expressed a desire to see fuel cells up and working, so that even the current hybrid cars would be unecessary. Sensible points, and I don't care who made them.
Encouragingly, a lot of the callers agreed with this tough environmental talk. Maybe those people at the Utne Reader who keep insisting that there are plenty of green conservatives weren't just being optimistic?
You'd be justified in thinking that I'd posted this to make some kind of sarcastic point, because, you know, I am in fact a raving lefty. Not that there's anything wrong with that ;) But I'm genuinely happy to be hearing this, because it offers some hope that we as a society have some possibility of working together on a problem that threatens all of us.
If Mary, or anyone else, has some thoughts on how concerned progressive environmentalists can work to dispel the impression that we're all a bunch of Luddites, speak up. And hey, next time you try to convince someone that environmentalism isn't just for Birkenstock wearing left coasters, tell them Bill O'Reilly sent you.
Posted by natasha at August 22, 2003 01:18 PM | TrackBackComments
I just want to add to your post that going to hybrid electric vehicles right away beats going to fuel cells right now by a mile and that we should be pursuing increasing CAFE standards ASAP and stop subsidizing all fossil fuels in all ways including loans around the globe from the world bank to get the much more prudent results that we need and crave. It will be tough but fuel cell technology for transportation purposes is not ready for prime time and it would be a mistake similar to the nuclear power boondoggle we experienced if it is pushed down our throats in the same reckless manor, which includes the ethanol boondoggle we are paying for at the moment too. You can listen to Andy Frank concering this for a much better idea of the reality of the possibilities of using off the shelf technology over the automakers heel-draging hype about fuel cells.
Part 1 http://www.evworld.com/databases/storybuilder.cfm?storyid=504
Part 2 http://www.evworld.com/databases/storybuilder.cfm?storyid=505
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