This article was originally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission.
Americans are reclaiming ‘environmentalism’ from the radical left.
Certain words and phrases take on new meaning as time goes by, often due to the politicization of our language. A clear example of such evolution is in regard to what it means to be an environmentalist.
Decades ago, concern for the environment largely centered on keeping the land free of clutter, the water protected from contamination, and the cities unpolluted by soot and smog. One of the major environmentalist movements of the 1960s was fronted by then-First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson, who initiated a campaign to “Keep America Beautiful.” Johnson explained that her passion for beautification was in perfect concert with other important objectives.
“Getting on the subject of beautification is like picking up a tangled skein of wool,” she wrote in a 1965 diary entry. “All the threads are interwoven – recreation and pollution and mental health, and the crime rate, and rapid transit, and highway beautification, and the war on poverty, and parks – national, state and local. It is hard to hitch the conversation into one straight line, because everything leads to something else.”
The campaign to clean up the national landscape was bolstered by a heavy rotation of public service television ads showing litter along highways, waterways and parks, and imploring people to “Keep America Beautiful.” Most famous in the long-running campaign was an early 1970s ad ending with a closeup of actor Iron Eyes Cody, a teardrop falling from one eye as he surveyed a polluted environment. (Cody turned out to be an Italian American, not a Native American as portrayed, but that’s another story.)
But as the “global warming” movement came into vogue, the definition of environmentalism began to shift. Leftwing media, politicians and organizations began to define environmentalism almost solely on the basis of adherence to its greenhouse gas theories and its demonization of the fossil fuel industry. In their world, anyone supporting our most reliable and dependable energy sources – natural gas, fuel oil and coal – disqualified themselves as environmentalists. In fact, they were accused of being “anti-environment.”
Too often, the left’s political targets played right into their hands, struggling to defend themselves and sometimes even downplaying or ridiculing the importance of a clean environment. By allowing “environmentalism” to be redefined and coopted by the radical left, true environmentalism was lost. Fortunately, a recent action by President Trump will help reverse course.
While the passage and signing of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” grabbed most of the attention over the Independence Day weekend, an executive order signed by Trump on July 3 may have an even more lasting impact. The president’s “Make America Beautiful Again” order, “establish(ed) a council tasked with conserving public lands, protecting wildlife populations and ensuring clean drinking water,” as the Washington Post described it, while adding that the order remained “silent on climate change.”
While the Post and other leftwing news outlets cling to the “climate change” definition of environmentalism, Trump’s executive order is a first step toward reclaiming the term and unifying the country around the concept of a cleaner world.
Trump’s order decrees that all federal land management agencies will “promote responsible stewardship of natural resources while driving economic growth, expand access to public lands and waters for recreation, hunting, and fishing, encourage responsible, voluntary conservation efforts, cut bureaucratic delays that hinder effective environmental management, and recover America’s fish and wildlife populations through proactive, voluntary, on-the-ground collaborative conservation efforts.”
Trump’s order was inspired by the years-long efforts of 27-year-old Benji Backer, a “conservative environmentalist” who leads a group called, “Nature is Nonpartisan.”
“This issue needs to get out of the culture wars,” Backer told the Post. “People just are so divided over President Trump, right? But if he could do one thing that brings people together, and it’s protecting the environment, it would change the course of the issue forever.”
By returning “environmentalism” to its original purpose of protecting the air, land and water, the Trump administration will open the doors for those targeted by the left as environmental villains, welcoming everyone – right, left, middle – to actively engage in real environmentalism.
Those who provide America and the world with our most affordable and reliable energy sources have long cared about preserving the environment, in particular by investing in new technologies that make traditional energy cleaner than ever.
For example, advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies used to extract natural gas have allowed the United States to lead all major industrialized countries in carbon reductions. Home heating oil burner emissions have been reduced to near zero levels, while the sulfur content has been reduced from 1% to about 0.5%. And rapidly evolving coal plant technology means that modern pollution controls reduce nitrogen oxides by 83%, sulfur dioxide by 98%, and particulate matter by 99.8%.
As Benji Backer says, it’s time to move environmentalism out of the realm of the culture wars. Americans across the political spectrum love the environment and understand the need to protect it. Led by the president’s “Make America Beautiful Again” commission, the day is here when we can once again declare in unison that we are all environmentalists.
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. Abernathy’s “TEA Takes” column will be published every Wednesday and delivered to your inbox!
