The moral environment.

• Author: Prugh, Thomas
• Position: EDITORIAL - Environmentalists and religious conservatives - Editorial

There's far too much mercury in fish; emissions of smog precursor chemicals are up; and the rate of increase in atmospheric C[O.sub.2] concentrations is accelerating. Russia just ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but the Bush administration, long opposed to serious action on climate change, reportedly tried to keep any action steps out of a recent eight-nation report on the rapid warming of the Arctic.

You wouldn't have known it from the U.S. election campaigns, but the world still has environmental problems (the list above is just recent headline-makers). The need for action is more urgent than ever. In the United States, though, the ballooning deficit, rising military spending, and entitlement obligations will make new environmental initiatives difficult, and in any case the president prefers to ignore the environment. Barring a Nixon-goes-to-China epiphany, he will presumably be disinclined to spend any of his "capital" to address tough environmental questions.

Environmentalists continue to face an uphill struggle. We cannot afford to ignore any potential ally, including the religious conservatives that the early post-election conventional wisdom credited for President Bush's victory. Though clearly that's not the whole story, he was re-elected in part by people who voted on the basis of "morals"--usually taken as code for opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

But this representation of religious conservatives' views is almost certainly false. Here is some good news: first, religious conservatives, long thought to reject political engagement as too much "of the world," clearly can be mobilized to vote...