Obsessive-Compulsive Environmentalism

[Geee]

American Spectator:

America’s massive and well-funded environmental industry is always in need of new worlds to conquer, or at least to attack with broom and dustpan. But the irony behind the modern-day environmental movement in America is that the more successful the movement is, the more petty subsequent goals necessarily become. There is no other choice. The big environmental organizations have mouths to feed and rents to pay just like any other business. They’re not going to offer up an attaboy to the nation and close up shop just because America has reached a level of environmental purity that would have been impossible to imagine just 50 years ago.

Risk, and more specifically the way that average American perceives risk, is the crux of the matter. So long as Joe and Josephine McOrdinary believe that substantial environmental hazards exist that threaten the well-being of themselves and their children, the environmental movement will continue to maintain traction and, most importantly from its perspective, a healthy balance in its checking account. The flip side of that scenario is the one that strikes terror into the hearts of Sierra Club fundraisers, for if the public ever perceives that today’s environmental risks are really pretty mundane, the good times will be over.