The eco movement is a myth.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff

NOT LONG AGO I WAS WATCHING SOMETHING ON television concerning the ever-higher prices of gasoline for cars and natural gas and electricity for home consumption. Someone was berating the energy companies for price gouging. Gas companies were reporting record profits after unprecedented price spikes in the wake of the hurricanes; and utilities were lining up to announce record pass-along price increases as the supply of fuel relative to the demand for it changed.

Then there was a knock on the door. There stood an earnest young man who identified himself as a "community activist." He was raising funds and collecting signatures for an organization where the mission was to stop "the oil companies" from expanding their exploration efforts. He showed me a map of proposed natural-gas exploration activities in Northeast Colorado that he deemed unnecessary. He accused the oil companies of taking advantage of a bad situation by profiting from misery, and he was hell-bent on stopping them. Of course, he was going door to door taking advantage of a bad situation to benefit his own environmental aims, so I guess the environmentalists and the oil companies share the affliction of moral myopia.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking about the environmental movement on the one hand and the need for oil and gas exploration on the other. I suppose there have been times in my life when I have hugged trees with the best of them; and I will also admit that several times in the late 1970s and early 1980s I put my name in with the government to see if I could get the rights to an oil and gas lease somewhere in the vast expanses of the West.

Sure, I'm against air pollution and water pollution and despoiling the wilderness, but apparently, like both environmentalists and the oil companies, I'd be willing to take advantage of a windfall if I got the opportunity.

But then I started to think of the big picture. See, in the small picture there are left-wing environmentalists who seem to be against anything that will harm Mother Nature, no matter how inane. Then there are right-wing profiteering oil companies willing to go anywhere, at any time, no matter what the cost, to get more crude.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the big picture--the really big picture--I think the oil companies have the edge. People left and right talk all the time about their beliefs, but their actions speak much, much louder than their rhetoric. And the actions say...