Truth, consequences and wildlife

Someone’s got to say it. The Green Party gets Republican candidates elected. And one consequence of Ralph Nader’s presidential candidacy two years ago is that George W. Bush now has a Congress poised to fall in line with his assault on the environment.

In a commentary published in the Nov. 18 issue of the New Yorker, titled “Sound of a Tree Falling,” Elizabeth Kolbert points out that oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has only been forestalled by Democratic opposition – Congress in the Reagan years, and President Clinton when the Republicans controlled Congress. Now that Republicans control the Senate, the House and the presidency, it is only a matter of time before the votes are in and drilling begins.

And that, Kolbert warns, is only the beginning. “During the past two years, the Bush Administration … has set about undoing more that thirty years of work to protect the nation’s air, water and shrinking wilderness,” she writes. “Highlights include: encouraging road-building through wildlife habitats, pushing tax cuts for energy exploration on public land, rejecting the Kyoto treaty on global warming, and devising new rules that allow mining companies to fill in valleys and streams with waste.”

The oil industry tycoons who run the Bush presidency must be rubbing their hands with glee. The road to higher profits – and to accelerated environmental degradation – lies open.

“With President Bush and Vice-President Cheney – two oilmen – in the White House, and with lawmakers of a similar anti-regulatory outlook about to control both the House and the Senate, there has probably never been a greater government consensus on, or perhaps one should say against, the environment,” Kolbert writes.

Never mind that Bush’s energy program remains exceedingly unpopular. He is president, after all, only because a partisan majority on the Supreme Court anointed him. Al Gore, a Democrat with solid environmental credentials, received more votes, despite the presence of Nader, the “environmental” candidate. Put the Green and Democrat vote together, and you have a solid majority against Bush’s anti-environmental agenda.

The irony of all this is that Nader’s candidacy has made the impending assault possible. Gore would certainly veto drilling in the ANWR and other odious anti-environment, pro-big business legislation. Nader’s assertion that there is no fundamental difference between the two major parties is about to be proven wrong with a vengeance. The consequences, in terms of polluted watersheds, despoiled wilderness and increased emission of greenhouse gases, will be felt for generations.

Gore’s chief failing, in the eyes of voters who deserted the Democrats for the Greens in the 2000 election, seems to be that he is wooden on television and in debates. Granted, Bush’s malapropisms and linguistic manglings are more entertaining, but behind the regular-guy facade lies a cadre of wealthy businessmen eager to impose their agenda on a country that opposes it. This is just what Nader ran against, yet this is what his candidacy has wrought.

The unvarnished truth is that Nader got Bush elected. If Nader had not been on the ballot, Gore would have won New Hampshire, and Florida would have been moot. You can yell all you want to about Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris and hanging chads and the Supreme Court, but none of it would have happened had not Nader split the majority, left-of-center vote.

In a parliamentary democracy, minor parties make some sense, because ideologically close parties can form governing coalitions. In the American, winner-take-all system, splinter parties like the Greens are ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst. When drilling begins in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, President Bush ought to send a personal thank-you note to every Green voter in America. After all, they made it possible.

Henry Garfield’s most recent book, “Tartabull’s Throw” was published earlier this year. He lives in Belfast.