OH DEAR, OH DEAR, WHAT CAN THE MATTER BE? – AT 10:58 A.M. ET:  We posit that everyone is in favor of a nice environment.  I mean, we all like clean air, right?  But environmental "groups" are something else again.  The Washington Post reports that some of these groups have woken up and realized that the public is buying their line any longer.  We wonder why:

On Thursday, some of the country's most respected environmental groups - in the midst of their biggest political fight in two decades - sent a group of activists to Milwaukee with a message.

We're losing.

They put on what they called a "CarnivOil" - a fake carnival with a stilt-wearing barker, free "tar balls" (chocolate doughnuts), and a suit-wearing "oil executive" punching somebody dressed like a crab. It was supposed to be satire, but there was a bitter message underneath: When we fight the oil and gas industry, they win.

"We killed the clean-energy bill! There's still no cap on oil spills!" yelled Heather Brutz, the barker, who was pretending to speak for the industry. "And now, for our graaaaaaand finale, we're going to pass the diiiiiirty-air act!"

A year ago, these groups seemed to be at the peak of their influence, needing only the Senate's approval for a landmark climate-change bill. But they lost that fight, done in by the sluggish economy and opposition from business and fossil-fuel interests.

Now the groups are wondering how they can keep this loss from becoming a rout as their opponents press their advantage and try to undo the Obama administration's climate efforts. At two events last week in Wisconsin, environmental groups seemed to be trying two strategies: defiance and pleading for sympathy.

Neither one drew enough people to fill a high school gym.

COMMENT:  They live in their own world.  Sure, environmental groups have done some fine work.  But in the 1970s their ranks were swelled by old leftists who were looking for a new cause after they destroyed our effort in Vietnam.  Environmentalism looked neat, but they turned a well-meaning movement into a political march.  The first "Earth Day" was held on Lenin's birthday, and no one thought it was a coincidence.

In recent years the enviros went for too many bridges that were too far.  On climate change, they have used suspicious data and unproved theories.  Too often their cry of "the sky is falling" was followed by the sky remaining firmly in place.  And so many Americans have grown skeptical.  They become especially suspicious when they're told they must abandon the life they've striven for, while some environmental "leaders" live in huge mansions and fly in private planes. 

What the environmental movement needs is greater care, more modest goals, and a decent respect for the lives that people dream of living.  If they're going to go for a hundred percent, which the left often does, and if they continue to show contempt for average people, which the left also does, they will lose more and more. 

August 30, 2010