Why is this issue even ideological?

by: Carnacki

Tue Jun 23, 2009 at 11:38:14 AM EDT

But here is the question, and one of the things I have never really understood. I don't know why, so often these issues (and I'm not necessarily talking about the ruling, which seems to me to not be about the issue itself, but who has the right to make the decision), there is a clear left v. right split. Obviously I understand the business interests at play, but what I don't understand is that surely there have to be some on the right who say to themselves "Hrmm. Dumping 4.5 million tons of toxic shit in the lake is going to be expensive in the long run." That would seem to me to be the "conservative" position.

I truly do not understand this, and you see it played out in West Virginia a lot with mountaintop removal and other mining issues when tons of, well, shit, is just dumped in creeks and rivers. Why is this an ideological issue? Why is it that anyone who says "killing all the wildlife in this lake might be a bad idea" becomes a de facto granola eating DFH? Why is it not considered conservative to say "this could cost us a lot in the long run, not just monetarily, but in terms of other measures." Surely there have to be people in agribusiness and property rights advocates who oppose this sort of thing, and they can't be considered "teh left." I also understand that there are folks on the fringes of the environmental left who would shut down all business, if they could. Clearly there is a need for balance.

It's clearly not about jobs as many of our politicians try to claim. If it was about jobs, they would oppose MTR because below surface mining creates more jobs.

If we're making a bad economic trade off in terms of coal mining, why not at least go with the least bad option?