Saturday, May 7, 2011

Walker Is Bad For The Environment - - Tell Us Something We Don't Already Know

The Journal Sentinel Sunday paper recounts the now-familiar litany of State of Wisconsin environmental policies and initiatives Scott Walker is ending  - - purportedly in favor of economic development - - but that is a false dichotomy Walker has been spinning since the campaign, when he accused opponent Tom Barrett of having "a radical environmental agenda."

Look who's talking.

And also look to Walker's hostility towards wind energy - - entire projects ready to go have been killed - - and explain the loss of their manufacturing and maintenance jobs as somehow pro-development.

Walker apologists will say wind energy is too dependent on subsidies.

As if drilling for oil and natural gas, or the entire highway budget, aren't testament, monuments even, to decades of subsidization.

Walker's approach is ideological, with a heavy dose of politics - - a high-profile conservation writer has spelled that out - -  and payback aimed at the City of Milwaukee, where high-speed rail equipment and wind turbines were to be built.

Take that, Tom Barrett, Lee Holloway and anyone else who dared make Walker's tenure at the Courthouse less than the daily parade he expected.

It's a lot easier in politics to do something than undo it: Walker's damage to a state synonymous with environmentalism (think Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, et al) will take decades to reverse, but by which time many acres of Wisconsin wetlands and woodlands will be concretized.

The July State Senate recall elections are the best early step to slow down the Walker bulldozer.  Then finish the job next year recalling Walker, and beginning the great unwinding.

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