It's true! Theodore Roosevelt has signed on to the list of environmental leaders supporting Barack Obama at Environmentalists for Obama. Okay... it's Theodore Roosevelt V, the great-great grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, but you have to figure that the DNA connection is pretty strong!
The Obama camp has recently updated its list of conservation and environmental leaders supporting Obama. Some familiar names here -- Bill McKibben, Dennis Hayes, Paul Winter, Randy Hayes, Jessica Matthews, Edward Norton -- along with a lot more who are not so well known, but who are stellar leaders from government, non-profits, academia, the media, etc.
Apart from climate, renewable energy, and "green jobs" statements, we haven't heard a lot from any of the candidates about the broad range of conservation concerns and opportunities we face. We don't hear a lot about what they will do with the national forests, or how they will restore scientific integrity to the government agencies, or how they will work to make the Farm Bill more effective in conserving our private lands, or how we are going to deal with the deteriorating health of our oceans and marine fisheries.
This is too bad, because it is an exciting time in the conservation/environmental arena. But the creative energy I see is not there in the offices of D.C. environmental organizations. It's out in the towns and counties, urban neighborhoods, farms, ranches, watersheds, river basins...where local people are finding new ways to address issues by ditching old prejudices and crossing traditional ideological boundary lines.
It's there in the burgeoning local/organic food and land trusts movements... in the green building and design movement... in the local municipalities (and not just hip coastal ones) that are committing themselves to sustainability principles... in schools that are realizing the need to provide healthy food to kids and get them off their e-devices now and then, and reconnected to the world around them... in the way awareness of energy issues, peak oil, and climate change have reached into everyday discussions... in the rising up of new constituencies (from evangelicals to sportsmen, urban gardeners to ranchers) who do not fall for the shopworn "liberal treehugger vs. conservative anti-environmentalist" stereotypes.
Paul Hawken tries to capture this in his new book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. I'm an Obama supporter, so I see a lot of resonance between this decentralized movement and Obama's mission of overcoming traditional ideological divides, getting young people involved in building the future, and empowering communities. I am especially hopeful that Obama, with his background in Chicago and the Illinois legislature, understands the need to overcome the rural-urban divide (i.e., the REAL red-blue divide) by bringing people together around issues of healthy food, the sustainability of our ag lands and waters, the need for open space and healthy air.... all the things that connect us.
I have had problems with some of Obama's positions (can you say ethanol?). But I feel that he will help to unleash this latent creative energy, motivate the younger generation, respect the role of science in making policy, and bring people together in a way that is absolutely necessary if we are to overcome the challenges, and grab the opportunities that are before us.
President Theodore Roosevelt (who, by the way, was T.R. II) gets the last word(s):
"The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others."
"This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."
"We do not intend that our natural resources shall be exploited by the few against the interests of the many... Our aim is to preserve our natural resources for the public as a whole, for the average man and the average woman who make up the body of the American people."
"We are not building this country of ours for a day. It is to last through the ages."