Blame Environmentalists! (For Very Different Reasons)

They're apparently either too passive or too aggressive
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted May 28, 2010 1:21 PM CDT
Blame Environmentalists! (For Very Different Reasons)
A soaked oil boom and oil are seen on Louisiana coast.   (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Environmentalists just can't catch a break in today's op-ed pages of the Washington Post. Charles Krauthammer blames their aggressiveness for contributing to the Gulf oil spill, while Eugene Robinson criticizes their passivity. Robinson's point is that while green-leaning people are good with the easy stuff (recycling and fluorescent light bulbs) they fall short "where the rubber hits the road—in public policy."

Protecting the environment is seen today as a "bureaucratic imposition," writes Robinson, and "when there's a perceived conflict between environmental stewardship and economic growth, the bottom line wins," he writes. Krauthammer, meanwhile, complains that one of the reasons BP was drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place is that "environmental chic has driven us out there." The Pacific and nearly the entire Atlantic coast is off limits, he writes. "And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." (More Gulf oil spill stories.)

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