I don’t write about politics here on That Wife very often because as fun as the increased traffic can be people can sometimes get stupidly crazy about the issues (no matter how many times I revise the post to avoid unnecessary controversy) but I’m going to head in that direction today to make a plea for pragmatism, sanity, and just plain common sense.

Source

There are a lot of very conservative people in the area where I’m from, and many of my family members are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans to the core. There is nothing wrong with being a Republican or a Democrat, as both parties have valid points and a lot of good in them. Where I roll my eyes in disgust though, is when I see people who are so pig-headedly in favor of one party that they feel it’s their duty to oppose anything the other stands for just to stick it to ‘em.

An awesome example from my Facebook page: Earth Day several years back. What an awesome way to remind people how lucky we are to have the earth providing the things we need to survive, right?. (And to get religious for just a moment, God put a lot of time into the place we live, you know?) I’m seeing all sorts of status updates about how this person is going to do this to use less resources, and that person is going to recycle everything for an entire month to try to get in the habit.

Then I see someone I know post something along the lines of “Tonight I’m going to leave all the lights on and go drive my diesel truck for no reason at all. Ha! Ha! Ha! Take that Earth Day!”

This person’s political affiliations? Republican. I get that it’s commonly accepted that Democrats are tree-huggers and Republicans are gung ho about digging for oil. But if that friend of mine on Facebook actually did the things he said he would do, all he did was waste his own money. I can’t see any reason why it has to be a “Democratic thing” to want to be nice to the earth and conserve limited resources. If you watch this video you’ll learn, like I did, that overconsumption of the earth’s limited resources is a serious problem and we have to change the way we are doing things.

But this isn’t a post about overconsumption.

This is about my friend on Facebook feeling like he had to choose between being a Republican or working to conserve the earth’s resources. He felt like he couldn’t support Earth Day because that would mean he supports the Democrats. That’s silly, and in this case, wasteful and ignorant.

Recently I felt like we saw this play out on a national level. Under Nancy Pelosi’s guidance the House instituted the “Green the Capitol” program. According to the Wikipedia article on this program the following happened between 2007 and 2011:

  • Purchased renewable wind power for 100% of House electricity usage
  • Swithced from coal to natural gas in the Capitol Power Plant for House Operations
  • Eliminated all Styrofoam and plastic food service items in House food service operations and replaced them with biodegradable plates, utensils and packaging
  • Implemented a House recycling program that sorts compostable waste and use a pulper to reduce waste stream by more than 50% and 118 tons of landfill waste have been diverted since the House began composting in December 2007
  • Purchased all-electric, zero emission GEM car for use in House of Representatives

I’ve also read that they were going to (or did?) install low-flow toilets in House office buildings, installed thousands of energy-efficient light-bulbs (which this guy hates I’m sure), and start serving organic food into the cafeterias. (If I find out that the Rebuplicans threw out everything but kept the organic food I’m going to laugh maniacally and then go into my room and cry over the irony.)

The reason the Republicans are scrapping this plan? We’re being told that the program, which costs $475,000/year is neither cost-effective nor energy-efficient. “The impact made by the program was equivalent to taking just one car off the road annually,” according to Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif.  Apparently this is all a big joke to the GOP, as a press aide to John Boehner’s tweeted “The new majority - plasticware is back.”

There are plenty of bloated government-sponsored programs throughout the United States, why would the Republicans go after this one so quickly? I think it’s because came from the Democrats, and they seem think that the best way to be a Republican is to be on the opposite side of the other guy. (And to be clear, I think Democrats do this sometimes too, but not nearly as often as Republicans. I consider myself to be a member of neither party.)

Why should they keep the Green the Capitol program in place? Because it sets a good precedent for the rest of America. It shows citizens that we have to take the responsibly to reduce our consumption seriously, because we are screwing our children’s children over otherwise. I get that the poor poor elected officials were having a hard time cutting up their chicken with the earth-friendly utensils, but wouldn’t a better solution be to *gasp*, not use one-time use utensils? When it comes to coffee cups, why not stop supplying them altogether and let representatives bring their own mugs and *gasp again* take care of cleaning them out each time they use them? To say that throwing out hundreds of plasticware every day is not something to worry about now is to act as though the Pacific Garbage Patch and overflowing landfills are no problem at all. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Well this kind of turned into a post about overconsumption a little bit, didn’t it? The message I started out with though, and that I hope I got across, is that you don’t have to choose one side. You can develop your own ideology that includes information from a variety of sources, educate yourself, and shape based on what you believe. Not what a bunch of donkeys or elephants say. I hope the Republicans plan on initiating their own system to help conserve and preserve the earth’s natural resources, because that’s an issue that crosses all party lines.

I can’t see any sane, intelligent, logical reason why anyone would ever be against campaigning for Mother Nature.

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