Few issues get Americans as worked up as the environment.
On one hand are the folks who look around at the vast paved expanses of surburbia and lament the transformation of our landscape. They are concerned that current industrial and waste-disosal practices are degrading our land, air, and water, and that we are depleting our fixed supply of natural resources- minerals, fossil fuels, forests. They read reports from scientists that we are losing unprecedented numbers of species and huge areas of rain forest and coral reefs in the tropics. Most respected scientific authorities agree that human beings as a species are even altering global-scale processes and conditions like the atmosphere and climate. And then, of course, are the claims that the human population is simply too big and growing too fast for the planet's finite resources--and that some catastrophe is imminent. The people on this side of the debate are worried about pollution...about the disappearance of the last wild places on earth...about destroying our unique natural heritage of biodiversity...about tinkering with global processes that we do not understand, but that sustain our economies, our minds, our spirits.
On the other side of the fence are those people who view environmental laws and regulations as an unnecessary and often unfair burden on the economy and on individuals. These folks bear witness to workers laid-off and economic developments stymied by environmental laws. They are moved by tales of the third generation farmer or shop owner or fisherman forced out of his trade because he can't afford to comply with all the environmental rules. This group is aggravated when arcane environmental regulations seem arbitrary and unfair...making a company foot the whole bill to clean up a toxic landfill that many parties helped to pollute...making a landower pay the price to protect a species she's never even heard of...or making a whole industry implement expensive new practices and equipment so that the level of some multi-syllabic pollutant can be lowered by .001 in the air or water. Environmental nay-sayers point out that several respected scientists do not agree that the atmosphere or climate are in trouble. The people on this side of the environmental debate doubt the validity of the environmental doomsday scenarios that have proliferated over the last 30 years--the world hasn't stopped turning yet, so how much truth can there be in all these dire predictions?
Even if some of these environmental tragedies do come to pass, these folks retort, "so what?" Scientists have not been able to clearly articulate to the public the significance of their predictions. For example, most people could not say what the importance is of losing 1 species versus 10,000...of heating up the climate by 1 degree versus 10...of cutting 50 acres of rainforest versus 5,000,000. The people on this side of the environmental debate are tired of paying more for environmentally-friendly products...tired of holding up huge development projects for some obscure little endangered critter...tired of being told to recycle and not use the HOV lane...tired of a befuddling tangle of environmental red-tape that is expensive, frustrating, and ties up the courts with litigation.
The truth is that most of us can see merit in both of these arguements. We want clean water, fresh air, and attractive, green landscapes...we want remote open spaces for recreation and spiritual rejuvination...we want pandas, whales, elephants, wolves, and eagles...we want rainforests, deserts, wetlands, coral reefs, rolling plains, and Arctic tundras...we want a life free of worry about getting 
sick from pesticides on food, radiation from power lines, asbestosis in schools, toxic waste in the soils, and smog overhead.
On the other hand we also want plastics, miracle drugs, fast-food hamburgers, and dry-cleaners...we want the independance embodied in the automobile and the open road...we want disposable diapers, contact lenses, cameras, and styrofoam cups...we want strip malls with ample parking...we want cheap food, electicity, gasoline, and home heating oil...we want manicured lawns, climate control, and golf courses. As with many debates currently raging in American politics and livingrooms, the problem lies in the fact that we want it all, but reality offers us only a set of trade-offs and difficult choices.
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