Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Books

Reviews
"On Parole" by Akira Yoshimura
A bestselling Japanese novelist depicts the grim aftermath of a grisly crime.
By Emily Gordon
[03/09/00]

Ivory Tower
The Tao of "Seinfeld"
A sitcom that forbade hugging and learning becomes a tool for teaching Aristotle. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
By James Nestor
[03/08/00]

Reviews
"Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy" by Frances Kiernan
A host of gossips weighs in on the left-wing scrapper and wickedly erotic novelist.
By Pam Rosenthal
[03/08/00]

The tell-tale cipher
Could a mysterious cryptograph be a final message from Edgar Allan Poe?
By Jeffery Kurz
[03/08/00]

Does Al Gore have a heart?
A new bio suggests that underneath the stiff, zombielike striver we've come to know is a real guy.
By Marjorie Williams
[03/07/00]

Complete archives for Books

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

His precise definition of a "soft green" is basically anyone he disagrees with, and that's everyone from Phish-lovin' granola-boys to the regulators at the EPA, from Al Gore to the co-opted editorial writers of the New York Times, who made the mistake of waxing on about Ted Kaczynski in a vaguely pro-Luddite manner during the Unabomber's 15 minutes.

Hard Green: Saving the Environment From the Environmentalists, A Conservative Manifesto By Peter Huber Basic Books, 288 pages Nonfiction Buy this book at B&N.com

Huber is pigheaded in his refusal to acknowledge that you can be against bionic cows and for forest preservation, and that fighting the former doesn't make you a sellout on the latter. The same conservationist environmentalists in New York who've been fighting to free up more land in the vast Adirondack Park are also concerned about PCBs in the Hudson, acid rain and community gardens; to Huber, that's enough to put their "agenda" at hard odds with his.

But he should get his troops in line: T.R.-lovin' Gov. George Pataki of New York hasn't scorned the praise heaped on his conservationist efforts even though it came from those same recalcitrant, tofu-snorting softies Huber is so congenitally disposed to dismiss as eco-frauds.

Everyone who cares about saving the world knows full well the paradoxes and occasional zero-sum choices even the most devoted environmentalist must make on both the local and global level. But Huber offers no quarter: You're a hypocrite if you criticize Exxon for the Valdez disaster and still drive a car.

Furthermore, contrary to Huber's assertions, no "soft green" is saying that we should burn wood instead of oil as some kind of global back-to-the-garden strategy. No one is demanding that we rip that Big Mac out of the hands of the blue-collar burger-and-fries masses and force-feed them Fakin' Bacon. That's all a matter of personal choice, and the markets, Huber's precious markets, have responded to consumers' desires with healthier products.

McDonald's didn't start selling its McVeggie burger because some long-hair came to a board meeting threatening global chaos if they didn't. You can beat on environmentalists with your baloney-stick for guilting McDonald's into using paper over Styrofoam packaging, and you can even argue about which is better for Gaia in the long run -- but does Huber distrust the instincts of McDonald's? Mr. Leave It to the Wise Markets and Marketers?

And let's put a little context to his up-with-Teddy sloganeering. In Roosevelt's day, many dozens of species that now simply no longer exist crawled, crept and soared about this country. That was all pre-sprawl and pre-brownfield; the buffalo roamed (OK, barely), the Colorado River roared and uranium's secrets were as-yet-undiscovered. It is an undeniable fact that the world was a simpler, less crowded place in Roosevelt's time -- and that his conservationist motives were pretty self-serving.

Roosevelt's main objective in conserving nature was to arrange it so that he and a fellow privileged few could enjoy the scenery as they blew holes in as many wolves, bison and cougars as they could find. Now, Huber takes up the call, aims straight and declares, "Today, free-roaming game is an asset; the hunter pays dearly to capture it, and entire habitats are saved as a result. Put a trophy price on elephants or bighorn sheep, and animals on the brink of extinction are soon multiplying like Frank Perdue's chickens."

And if you've got a problem with that notion, for whatever reason -- logic, morality or whatever -- watch out. "Affirming and protecting our liberties is a civic duty, and an armed citizenry can play a role there." So, nature-boy: Head to the hills with your crates of soy-bombs and green-algae camouflage face paint -- the meat-eatin' militiamen are comin' to get you!

If Huber won't drop his weapon and admit that the left environmental movement is already hot on the conservation trail, he also fails to acknowledge that science itself is an evolutionary process and that we sometimes get a bit ahead of ourselves. It's a simple point, but one that bears stating: We're dumb. We really don't know jack about how badly we're screwing up the environment with global warming because there's no model to compare it with, and if there are hints in our flooded past, they're vague and compromised.

There's no handbook that says, "When your society reaches the point where you can simultaneously cook a chicken, wash your clothes, communicate with relatives on another continent and watch 'The Sopranos,' here's what you do to keep the party going."

Next page | Here comes the apocalypse!