Julia Bovey's Blog
How can you be clear when you’re basically schizophrenic?
June 22, 2007
Posted by Julia Bovey in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming , The Media and the Environment
The Senate Energy Bill passed without the provisions that would have made biofuels cleaner while also making sure growing crops to make them doesn't mean bulldozing Redwoods to grow corn. That stinks.
The excuse/reason is that Senate leadership wanted a vote lickedy split so that they could pass the bill before some numbskull could offer an amendment to ruin the fabulous, historic, bold, courageous vote on CAFE standards (see every previous post). So they voted, and the Senate Energy Bill passed.
Now, we turn our attention to the House, where if we play our cards not only right but hard and relentlessly we could get the good stuff -- the global warming and land and water protections we desperately need -- into the House version That's one of the things that's agonizing about this work. What we really want to be doing today is jumping up and down and hugging and drinking over the CAFE win. Is it HUGE. But instead we're wringing our hands about how the bill lacks other things that are very important to us.
Many people -- including the grumpy but excellent Wall Street Journal energy reporter John Fialka -- say that the problem with us environmentalists is that we "make the perfect the enemy of the good." Not only that, but it seems that wins and losses happen to us simultaneously, so that we're forced to be thrilled about one thing at the same moment that we'e bitterly disappointed about something else. We want to have a clear message. But how can you be clear when you're basically schizophrenic?
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Comments
Jim Eliason — Aug 23 2007 08:45 PM
Julia,
I'm surprised that someone in your position would fall victim to the irrational taunts of opposing voices. It can, and is true that some things are good, but not nearly good enough. We are not making "the perfect the enemy of the good". We are saying that it's far too little, and possibly entirely too late.
That's not schizophrenia. That's reality. It's not we who have mental problems. It's our politicos.
Jim