I’ve been torn ever since this blog started about how much to engage in political discussions on Science Says:

On one hand, I don’t want to alienate anyone because of my personal politics. It seems to me that America is deeply divided right now between two contrarian political philosophies, but environmental problems are everyone’s problems - Republican or Democrat, this is our planet and we all have to live in the mess we’ve made.

On the other hand, Republican or Democrat, we all have to live in the mess we’ve made of this planet, and environmental problems require political solutions. There can be no doubt any longer that our President is an enemy of the environment - President Bush has deferred to business interests at the expense of the environment at every turn. In addition, America’s in the midst of a Presidential election campaign that’s pit two candidates who have very different beliefs about the state of the environment and very different ideas about how to deal with them. As a result, can you discuss the environment without getting into politics?

The reason I bring this up is that I know myself well enough to have learned that my political beliefs and particularly my sense of humor about politics can be abrasive to people with different beliefs or more modest feelings about things.

It just so happened that I was preparing another post about John McCain and offshore drilling with some glee, and in doing so realized that I needed to step back and make sure that the humor I saw was from an environmental perspective, and not a political one.

What do you think - can environmentalism be separated from talk of politics?

photo by schlegi

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