I wish one of the political candidates running for US presidential fame was an environmentalist. I feel like in this day and age that we could use a forward looking President, similar to the way Teddy Roosevelt was in his time.
Theodore Roosevelt was actually a very active naturalist, and can now be labeled as an environmentalist of his time. As the 26th president of the United States (1901-1909) he was a cowboy, explorer, founder of the Rough Riders volunteer cavalry unit, corruption-fighting politician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, enthusiastic speech-giver, avid hunter and an unlikely environmentalist. During the 1800's a lot of damage was done to the environment, and luckily people like Teddy Roosevelt who were very in touch with nature understood that the wilderness and environment could only suffer so much exploitation.
Teddy saw that hunters, miners, and timber cutters threatened not only individual species, but entire ecosystems. Fortunately, Theodore Roosevelt began to organize for the conservation of game and game habitat. The organization he helped start, the Boone and Crockett Club, ended up being one of the most influential organizations when it saved Yellowstone. As President he was also able to establishing wildlife refuges, develop farmlands of the American West, and advocate the protection of natural resources, paving the way for environmentalists of the future.
If we had a president who was viewing the future of this country from an environmentalist point of view, I think we would be much better off in the short and long term. Just imagine a cheaper, cleaner alternative energy source that was available to all Americans, more recycling programs, more protected forests to enjoy, new developments in reducing and reusing waste and more community and educational programs... instead of our current state of making the oil companies rich.
This would be a welcome change from the looming water shortage in the West, the threat of global destabilization, record high oil prices and rising sea levels!
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"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them."
Theodore Roosevelt
"I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use our natural resources, but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob by wasteful use, the generations that come after us." Theodore Roosevelt