Larger Editorial: Introducing The Clean Water Party

I’d like to introduce the creation of the first thing that I hope extends beyond the site: The Clean Water Party. I’ve already taken the liberty of creating a facebook page and Twitter feed (@cleanwaterparty) for it and strongly encourage readers to join.

I came up with the idea for The Clean Water Party the same as I might come up with the idea for anything else: by watching the GOP presidential candidates stick their foot in their mouths. Last week, it became painfully clear that ALL of the candidates seek to either cut the funds of or completely eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, something that not even the Tea Party wants.

Also, only TWO of the current eight GOP presidential candidates even believe in climate crisis (Romney, Huntsman) but neither has a plan to slow it down in either way. Both men think it’s real, and yet they would still cut the EPA’s funding. Which actually makes them “moderates” since a lot of the other GOP candidates for presidents say they would eliminate the agency entirely, Herman Cain going so far as to say he’d replace the “bureaucracy” of the EPA with a corporate bureaucracy made up of Oil & Gas executives. Essentially, that would let the industry regulate itself and we already know how well that usually works out…

So I created The Clean Water Party as an environmental alternative to the Tea Party, but I still hope more than just liberals join up. Because this isn’t a partisan debate or shouldn’t be. Everyone should be able to breathe clean air, farm clean soil, and drink water that won’t give you cancer. I can’t imagine Republican voters or independents saying “Yes, I’d like my kids to drink water containing carcinogens because some power plant didn’t dispose of nuclear waste properly.” In fact, the majority of Republican voters don’t support cuts to the EPA and think the agency is a lot more necessary than any of the Republican candidates for president.

How could this be? Could it be that even though Republican voters are ready for energy independence from Middle Eastern oil, renewable energy job creation in states across this country (New Mexico alone has enough solar power to power the Southwest and South Dakota has enough wind power to power the Northwest), and cheaper fuel prices (twenty cents a gallon for electric powered cars beats over 3 dollars at the pump for gasoline), GOP candidates are just too beholden to big oil to really push for these things? I want renewable energy, an end to volatility of oil prices, an environment that won’t give you cancer, and clean drinking water for everyone. And I’d love to see everyone DEMAND the same things.