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TODAY Thursday 6 November 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Meaningless Votes, Really

As quickly noted by nimble Greenwire, Election Day 1997 was far from a triumph from the enviro point of view. True, not many states voted, and turnout was low where they did. But in those places where elections were held, rarely was the environment an important issue in voters' minds. And when it was, we lost.

In Virginia, a fat four percent of the voters said that environmental issues constituted the most significant factor in their decision on who to vote for as governor. Most of them backed the loser. The incumbent governor's environmental depredations (see Peter Bahouth's " Danger of Devo") didn't seem to bother too many people, and one of the stoutest defenders of that record got elected lieutenant governor. What did excite voter passion was the state car tax, whereby Old Dominions have to fork over a few hundred bucks a year for their new SUVs. On that environmental issue -- and it surely is an environmental issue -- the green side was the anti-democratic side, and we got clobbered.

Up in Maine, things were no better. Yankees can dismiss the election idiosyncrasies of unreconstructed rebels and Fairfax County malldwellers, but it hurts to lose in Maine. The same bond issue referendum to widen the Maine Turnpike that was defeated by enviros six years ago yesterday passed rather easily. And in a bigger disappointment, voters rejected a forest-practices "compact" that would have prohibited major clearcuts in private forests. The complicated deal between paper companies and mainstream environmental groups was successfully opposed by an odd coalition of property-rights enthusiasts and purist enviros, who said they couldn't abide the 75-acre limit for clearcuts by private owners.

Two observations. One is that when prospective voters say that they care about "the environment," what they mostly mean is that they are afraid of threats to family health that come from toxic contaminations. They are interested in preserving nature, as a general proposition, but usually only get excited when there's an obvious villain who's bulldozing old forests or Civil War battlefields. For almost all voters almost all of the time, the environment is a second-rank anxiety unless the bad guys overplay their hand. If anti-enviro politicians can evince sincerity about toxins and be photographed near a mountain stream occasionally, they can be tough to beat.

The second observation is stolen from Gene Ulm in our Five Questions feature. The fissures in the Republican Party over environmental policy have attracted a lot of attention, he says, but the potential splits in the Democratic Party between pro-bikepath professionals and pro-pickup working guys could be a lot more serious. There was evidence of that split on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line the day before yesterday.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

If there were a referendum in Maine over the use of snowmobiles, enviros would lose that one, too. Truly loathsome machines, and very popular in the places where you can run them. Donella Meadows and her friends in Vermont had to face the democratic dilemma of what to say to the local snowmobilers who wanted permission to cross their land. What she did, and why she did it, are explained by the good professor in this fortnight's issue of The Grove, the official Lib Tree newsletter. You can only get it if you subscribe, but since subscribing doesn't cost you a dime, there's really no reason not to. Yes?

 

Recent "Today" columns:

11/05: In Praise of SeaWeb
11/04: Reality Check
11/03: Green Loafing
10/31: Guilty Nationalist Pleasures
10/30: Europe Alone
10/29: Duck! (Again)
10/28: Civil Society and Conservation
10/27: Who Owns the National Forests?
10/24: Meanwhile, Back at the Infirmary...
10/23: "Heading Down the Right Path"

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