Why is saving the planet labeled a "liberal" cause as if it were a bad thing?

Earth is home to almost seven billion people and millions of other living things, including trees, plants, coral, animals, birds, insects, fungus, fish, aquatic life, and microbes.

But Earth is in trouble.

The planet that we all live on is showing signs of distress in the form of climate change, melting sea ice and polar habitats, water shortages, and increased pollution.

However, many Republicans, conservatives, and media commentators have chosen to make environmental responsibility and stewardship a “liberal” agenda, as if it were a bad thing.

Even conservatives who claim to be worried about the environment are only willing to participate in making changes if it doesn’t inconvenience them or cost them money.

Liberals are scorned by conservatives and accused of practicing environmentalism like it is the “new religion”, with Al GoreAl Gore being worshipped as the new God. Some conservatives make up labels for everything they disdain, like calling Al Gore the non-scientist.

A completely inappropriate label for a man, who won the 2007 Nobel Peace prize and never claimed to be a scientist, but he did place enough value on the work of hundreds of scientists around the world to take their work seriously.

Al Gore’s life time of environmental awareness was manifested in the form of an Oscar winning documentary; “An inconvenient Truth”. It would be rare to find a conservative who has actually seen the film, but they are still quick to criticize it.

Activism, stewardship, and social concern should not be just a liberal cause. Most of the world understands that, but there is a conservative segment of American society that stubbornly refuses to recognize that change has to happen in order to secure the future for all of humanity.

The aversion to change has been vocalized as being too expensive and too inconvenient. The argument that Climate regulation will tax Americans onto welfare, even though the White House report showed ACES, the house version of the climate bill, would only cost people $175 per year.

Many conservatives see any form of climate regulation as big government trying to tax them and take away their freedom.

They see environmentalism and wildlife conservation as an effort to place importance on animals and other living species, over the importance of man. The fact is true wildlife conservation strives to find ways for man to co-exist with other species--rather than just killing them off as a path of least resistance.

According to a recent report on Nova, humans, animals, and insects, have the same basic genetics. The scientists expected to find differences based on the species; instead they found that the body parts of a fly, a mouse, or a human are made up of the same basic building genes that date back to master genes found in fossilized organisms, which lived over a half a billion years ago.

The Earth must be looked upon as a living organism, with interconnected systems, which include every system from its protective atmosphere to the deepest depths of the world’s oceans. If one of Earth’s systems gets out of whack, it will start an adverse impact on the entire organism.

Further more, trees and forests are one of the cornerstones of nature’s tightly woven fabric of biodiversity. Every living thing, from the majestic Sequoia, to the smallest fungus and microbe, are locked in a symbiotic relationship; each depending on the existence of the other.

For example, when fruit and pine seeds are spread by bat and animal droppings, the chances of germination are higher for those carried to areas with increased sunlight. Thin tendril fungus roots play an important part in providing moisture and nutrients to a tree’s root system.

In Nature’s community, there are also a thousand species of beetles, spiders, amphibians, spores, mites, earthworms, and bacteria; all working to contribute to the strength and health of their particular world.

In a recent interview with John Horning, Executive director of WildEarth Guardians, he was asked this question: “I noticed a mayfly and mist forestfly as potential endangered species candidates. Why are these small insects important?

Horning explained it this way:

“The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts”, a line from Aldo Leopold, quoted by Horning.

“Science would tell you this and basic auto mechanics would too,” John continued. “For Example, say a million bolts hold a plane together. Ask people: would you get on a plane that’s missing one bolt? Would you get on a plane that’s missing 10 bolts? Are you willing to get on if 100 are missing? At what point do you say these small parts are actually holding something much bigger together?”

“People are cavalier at a one quarter-inch bolt, but there is a tipping point. Do you want to figure out which bolt is the tipping point after the fact or would you rather we keep all the bolts? It’s a story of prudence and precaution.”

But prudence and precaution is not a characteristic of many conservatives when considering environmental issues. They reject the science of global warming and say it is just a normal cycle and that millions of species have gone extinct already, so what’s a few million more? The cost of regulation is just too high and their children should not be straddled with the debt.

So, would they rather have their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren straddled with a polluted, waterless, and dying world?

Thankfully, over the past 10-15 years, public consciousness and awareness has increased and a more interconnected global society has embraced the efficacy of protecting Planet Earth.

Saving our home should be an “international community” effort from all citizens and governments, including American conservatives--and not just those pesky liberals.

***Copyright DelilahStarling 2009