Greens have gone wrong

I have been a registered Green Party member for ages. I take great pride in the Green Party. It is a diverse party and have a great diversity of ideas. However, the environmental wing that often allies with the Greens has made a number of over-reaching mistakes. Jimbo and I have discussed this at some legnth. Today, the WSJ offered a classic example.

Living in the city is dangerous. Not only because of the crime and as a pedestrian war zone - but that pollution, from combustion, has deleterious effects. In addition to the smog promoting nitrogen oxides from the combustion of gasoline and its attendent production of ozone as well as the sulfurous compounds from combustion, the particulate matter has a deleterious effect on human physiology. Anyone who has left their windows open in the District will see this on their window sill. It is a black dust that permeates urban life. And we breathe these particulates. Finally, a study has quantified the effects of this combustion of gasoline and diesel.

The particulates from internal combustion of diesel and gasoline (along with coal burning power plants in the Midwest and Northeast) effectively render all urban dwellers with the burden of being a cigarette smoker. Yup, breathing the air in the District can make you a smoker (woe to those who smoke and suffer the double whammy).

Environmentalists are trying to use CO2 from internal combustion as a focus for change - and this is very admirable. However these activist link it to global warming. While this may be true, nobody in America gives a shit. The linkage to biofuels hangs currently on this tenuous link. Bad move. In our self-indulgent culture, you have to make the penalty more personal. Climate change is like globalization in this regard, the effects are only apparent after the damage is done.

Note to the environmentalists: If you want to effect the conversion to biofuels, then use the personal tack. Ethanol is carbon neutral, has no nitrogen or sulfur (ethanol is CH3CH2OH - note no N (nitrogen) or S (sulfur)) so those smog and acid rain promoting compounds are absent. Further, can you find a particulate that comes from a compound whose molecular weight is well under 100 and whose output is CO2, some CO, and water?? Easy answer - Absolutely not. If Americans can link the exhaust from diesel engines (and as a collolary the gasoline engines) to the particulates that effectively make them cigarette smokers, then the environmentalists will see a change. This is simple politics. Make it personal. If commoners can see the exhaust from dirty American diesel, then they can see the particulates. If those same people can see that diesel is bad, then the easy connection to gas is made. Enter Ethanol.

Environmentalists who want to effect change have to link that change to something that is tangible to the voting public. Global warming is not tangible. Soot on the windowsill is. Hey Green Party - get with the program. Tie ethanol to lung health. That will effect the change that you want anyways. All politics is local - particularly when the local effects are the pulmonary system in each one of us. The Green Party needs to refocus the environmentalists to be effective rather than shrill.