Tag Archives: Activism

The Environment

My Environmental Conversion

Environmentalism is becoming my number one issue.

In the long term, other current issues are mostly irrelevant. Whatever legislation or policies we implement on issues like gay rights or gun control or religious freedom will only make a difference during our day. In one hundred years, or in five hundred years, when we and all those who knew us are dead and no one remembers us, new generations will come along and re-fight these issues and rewrite all we did.

Even the most influential triumphs (things like the Declaration of Independence or the Fall of Communism) are extremely fleeting in their effects. In another two centuries–or ten–no one knows what the world will be like. Maybe the center of the Earth will be Mecca. Or maybe it will be Tokyo. Or Salt Lake City. It’s extremely unlikely that the Fall of Communism will be much remembered–much less who the next US Supreme Court justice is.

Environmentalism is different.

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The Environment

A Single Day’s Work

The morning after the Brexit vote, as the status-quo-shattering results were becoming clear, Hamburger Morgenpost, the daily newspaper in Hamburg, Germany, rolled out a front page featuring a large portrait of Winston Churchill and a long headline in bold letters: Etwas aufzubauen mag die langsame und mühsame Arbeit von Jahren sein. Es zu zerstören kann der gedankenlose Akt eines einzigen Tages sein.

The headline is a translation of words Churchill delivered on September 29, 1959 in a speech to the Conservative Party Association in his constituency of Woodford: “To build may be the slow and laborious task of years; to destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”

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