ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT Right Hook JJ McCullough, OP Columnist Electoral politics is just like any other form of aggressive marketing, really. Campaign man- agers concoct slogans and ad campaigns, re-enforce brand identities, and try to establish base loyalty. Like the most cunning advertisers, politicians are preoccupied with appearing fresh and dynamic, with values in sync with the changing demographics of their electorate. They cling remora-like to the latest fads and hot-button issues of our time, hoping desperately that their product will sell. And just like in the corporate world, sometimes hype never materializes into success. As far as trendy political issues go, it seems the environment is the fad that can never quite break ‘through. For at least a dozen years environmentalists have acted like over-enthusiastic huck- sters, trying desperately to market their agenda to a largely indifferent political audience. “This _year will be the year!” they say. “Get on board while you can with the issue of she 21st Century!” , To some extent it works. Politicians are gullible people after all. The first President Bush tried to market himself as the “environmental president” during his failed campaign for re- election, and Al Gore similarly made much of the issue when he came to power in the same year. His current noisy obsession with climate change has been interpreted by some as the first sounds of a possible political comeback. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, another potential ’08 presidential candidate, has likewise been keen to play up his own “green” credentials, scolding his fellow Republicans for their letting the left dominate the debate. Back in this country we’ve seen the rise of Stephane Dion as Liberal leader, a man who’s used the environment as a one- issue campaign. And then there was the whole cabinet shuffle terminating the career of the controversial environmental minister Rona Ambrose, a move all the big shot analysts have since described as an attempt to project a greener face on the Harper regime. So green is clearly in. But is there anything to it? Growing up in the early 1990s, I can clear- ly remember when “the environment,” as a single, cohesive issue first began to catch on. In elementary school we had to learn about the “three R’s:” reduce, reuse, and recycle, and brain- storm ways in which we could implement these sacred principles into our humdrum daily lives. When you're young, this all seems very exciting, and I can remember eagerly sorting our blue boxes and making crafts out of old tin cans and all the rest of it. But as you get older, the three R’s evolve from being whimsical fun to a boring hassle. Saving the earth is all well and good, just as long as it doesn’t involve, in the words of Monty Burns, “pawing through my garbage like some starved rac- coon.” This is, in essence, the problem with “the environ- ment” as an issue. It’s 1 0 THE OTHER PRESS JANUARY 25 2007 Who Cares about the Environment? something that we can all nominally agree to care about, but few are prepared to go much far ther than that. If the environment was truly the defining matter of our time, as the greenies allege, then one expects we would see far more grassroots initiatives from the concerned com| mon-folk. People would stop driving their SUVs, take more public transit, litter less, turn dov their thermostats, and retire en-mass from their sinful jobs at smog factories, pulp mills, and q firms. But they don’t, so the ball has very much been in the government’s court. As a result today’s “green” initiatives are among the biggest of the big-government policies ever dreamed up in recent years. They are big to the point where they almost entirely transcend the lives and concerns of every single citizen, and focus attention solely on high-brown realms of corporat federal, and international relevance. The debates are complex and confusing, and the policies even mote so. Take the Kyoto accord, for example, the supposedly quintessential issue of 215 Century environmentalism. Ten years later it remains little more than an enormously expensive collec- tive guilt trip. As an international regime to curb greenhouse gasses it barely lives up to any of its own titles, as in practice the treaty has proven to be widely ignored when needed, under- mined when obeyed, and inconsequential when successful. But none of this seems to matter much. No soccer moms are going to be making their key voting decisions based on which ey has the most robust carbon credits regime. s an electoral issue, the environment is one of the most superficial debates of our time. plays to pre-existing biases on both sides of the political divide. Liberals will ahyays accuse co servatives of being anti-environment, regardless of the facts—simply because it helps re- enforce an image of the right as being in league with the forces of sadism and pollution-spew ing big business. And Conservatives remain largely indifferent, turned off by the inherent flak ness and hyperbole of leading left-wing greenies like Al Gore and David Suzuki. Should the environment be a bigger political priority? Probably. But if people genuinely cate about green issues they should start championing them on a personal level. A public that is vaguely concerned with the state of the planet, but lazy and indifferent enoug to believe all initiative on the matter rests with the government and big business, is not a public that genuinely consid ers the environment a high priority, regardles of what they claim in polls. It’s an iss that’s maybe good for a week or so of half-hearted discussion.