I'm just not that noble

Why is the environment movement doing so badly? Their gains are made at a snail's pace and are undone like a kindergarten kid's shoelace the minute a neo-con government gets into power?

Is it because the messages of the greenies are bad? No. Most of them amount to

• Don't poison the air you breathe;
• Don't flood your own basement; and
• Don't eat all the popcorn now, save some for later in the movie when you might be hungry.

These are perfectly reasonable and sane messages of the kind comprehensible by most primary school graduates. The problem is not the calibre of the messages it's the assumption that people's actions are driven by reason and sanity.

In fact, let's take driving as an example. Hybrid or electric cars are offering me the soft, warm inner glow of morality and about 0.75 horsepower. The powerful V6 on the other hand, is offering me the chance to be admired by, and therefore possibly to sleep with, leggy women in body hugging evening wear or - and sometimes this might even be preferable - the chance to drive a car through gorgeous countryside, without my kids in the back seat fighting or my wife checking my speed all the time. There's no contest. If the Prius isn't going to get me laid, then the future of the planet can go hang.

I feel for the orang-utans, they're cute! But the tropical islands of SE Asia are also offering me beach resorts at Cosco prices, every third drink free and the chance to delude myself that the sultry beauty massaging my back might actually be attracted to me. Even if she does find me irresistible, the ape's not getting her jokes laughed at over cocktails in the Sunset Bar.

The anti-fur campaigners have the right idea: “I’d rather go naked …”.

"Hey, there's no fur on her, at least as far as I can see, so I'm sure as Hell not going to wear any."

Job done! But fur is a battle won isn't it? Maybe we could get the girls to move on to leopard skin? Banning even faux leopard skin - in fact especially faux leopard skin - is a cause I'd happily support.

Alcohol gets me access to good parties full of beautiful people - I can see it on TV, must be true. From what I see of the environmental movement on TV, saving wilderness areas gets me access to mud, leaky tents and strange hairy people who are boycotting soap, shampoo and probably deodorant and who are very difficult to distinguish from the primate inhabitants of the forest they’re protecting. Just hand me that beer.

Look at the mining industry.  All those impressive big machines, important looking men in hard hats holding blueprints and pointing at bits of the landscape. 
 

That says money, it says professional, it says respect and a six figure income.  I say, "Yes, honey, become an engineer." Adorable though the turtles and dolphins are, they aren't bringing social prestige to my daughter or private education to my grandkids.  There are WAY too many marine biologists doing the filing or making excellent coffee and as for some of the aforementioned hairy fellas, don’t even think about bringing one of them home.

What the environmental lobby needs is a naked  5'11" woman in a hard hat, driving a hybrid car to a solar powered resort and handsome,  well groomed men socializing with other beautiful people at the picket line cocktail party. Then you've got a hope of saving the spotted owl.