Dear Environmentalist's

I do support efforts to keep air and water clean.  I would like to address global warming.

But not at the expense of employment.  When it comes to our economic engine, which is what provides work for everybody with a job, energy is the blood of the system.  Energy is essential to every aspect of the economy, even if it is a 100% agrarian economy when the energy comes from food that allows people to farm and tend to animals.

When people do not have jobs, they are angry, they are depressed, they are desperate; and they will vote for someone who they believe will look after their prospects.

So environmentalists, do not be NIMBY's about energy development and transportation.  They are critical to employment.  What should a proper environmentalist care about then?  Cleaning up the activities.  Fracking can be done safely.  Pipelines are safer than trains and trucks.  Hydro is the cleanest form of electricity, but it requires long distance transmission lines from the places where there is water to where the consumers of electricity are.  Energy development is a good place to generate jobs.  It is a critical form of infrastructure and as important as roads, bridges, and water treatment plants.

What about the earthquakes in Oklahoma?  Well, the water that is being pumped back down there comes from traditional oil wells and the technology being used pre-dates any concept of fracking.

Politics is all about compromise because life is all about compromise. That is a basic concept that is taught to children.  People do not always agree, but there needs to be respect for positions and discussion about the options, the priorities of the goals and decisions about how best to proceed to achieve the goals.  And when there is disagreement on the priorities and the paths there are elections and the majority get their way.

So the goal has to be to form a majority coalition so your priorities have a higher ordering than they would otherwise.

And environmentalists, if you don't think your policies should have room for employment and development of energy resources and transportation, you will find yourself in a very difficult election and facing a very difficult Congress because the voters only want environmentalism when they have jobs.  No job, no favoring of environmental issues.

Please remember that this entire election season.

Sincerely,

An Environmentalist that wants to win elections.