"It's kind of ironic; if you look at this hemisphere, the country that is well in the lead in trying to do something serious about the environment is the poorest country in South America, Bolivia. They recently passed laws granting rights to nature. It comes out of the indigenous traditions, largely — the indigenous majority, they've got the government advocating on their behalf. Sophisticated Westerners can laugh at that, but Bolivia is going to have the last laugh.
"Anyway, they're doing something. In the global system, they're in the lead, along with indigenous communities in Ecuador. Then there's the richest country — not only in the hemisphere, but in world history — the richest, most powerful country, which is not only doing nothing, but is going backward. Congress is now dismantling some of the legislation and institutions put into operation by our last liberal president, Richard Nixon, which is an indication of where we are. In addition, there's a great enthusiasm about tapping new sources of fossil fuels and doing it in ways which are extremely environmentally destructive: water and other resources are destroyed through fracking and deep-sea drilling. Anywhere you can find anything that you can use to destroy the environment, they're going after it with great enthusiasm. It's like issuing a death sentence on the species.
"And what makes it worse is that a lot of it is being done out of principle — that it's not problematic, that it's what we ought to be doing. In a sense, the same is true of nuclear weapons. They're justified on the grounds that we need them for defense — we don't need them for defense — but the argument for moving forward toward disaster is a conscious, explicit argument that is widely believed. With regard to the environment and the United States, there is also quite a substantial propaganda campaign, funded by the major business organizations, which are quite frank about it. The US Chamber of Commerce and others are trying to convince people that it's not our problem, or that it's not even real."
