In the middle of yesterday afternoon, I pried open the closed doors of Council Chambers at City Hall, strolled down the slanting, carpeted aisle and slipped into one of the estimated 9,000 seats still available in the midst of the ongoing city-sponsored Earth Day program.
Entering as a skeptic, I left on a cloud of disappointment, not necessarily for the reasons you would suspect. I remain hopeful that City Hall will try again to educate us on the environment and this time succeed.
Quite without external distinction, black-tee-shirted J. Marvin Campbell, who comes equipped with a spectacular drawl and splendid teaching manner, was at the podium at 3:45.
Do not be misled by externals.
Surely that should be the first three commandments of the Save the Earth Society. As a group, they don’t look like much. They reminded me of left-over Vietnam protestors going shopping for a new cause to protest. Nordstrom’s would go broke relying on the down-dressing lifestyle of these true believers to buy a new shirt once every few years or at least one new sock.
Dressing for Success
The sterling exception, predictably, was Masterful Mike Cohen. Sharply attired in a business suit and flashing the only necktie in evidence, the smart and charismatic emcee paced the program beautifully, even if most of the crowd could have fit onto his living room couch.
Returning to Mr. Campbell, I am sorry I missed the heart of what must have been a brilliant presentation because the 20 minutes’ worth I heard undeniably was.
Later, on the floor beneath a table in the lobby, I found a nondescript flyer, announcing, obviously to no one in particular, that Mr. Campbell would start speaking at 3:15.
If only I had known.
If our green friends briefly will pardon a detour into succinct extravagance, when I walked into Council Chambers, I thought I had stumbled upon one of those intensely secretive, true-believers-only Communist cell meetings from the1940s or early ‘50s.
Shhh. Do not tell anyone we are here.
Without exchanging words with anybody, the atmosphere in Council Chambers was just as unmistakable.
For a different reason, my nostrils were tempted to twitch the way they did on a September evening in1975 when a former Mrs. Noonan and I attended a concert at the Universal Amphitheatre. The fouled odor of the masses puffing on marijuana wafted, in a rush, toward my virgin nose. I had to ask Mrs. Noonan to identify it.
Any Loyalty Oaths in Sight?
There was no doubt yesterday I was at a True Believers Convention. Skepticism aside, the audience and the professional people out front seemed like lovely types, even if they are just a little too willing to indiscriminately drink in all they are served and go to war for a cause they are stumped to explain with even ambiguous precision.
The purveyors are gentle, kind and, hoo boy, are they zealous. Being nice people who are longer on charm than on hard information, much less proof, I still might have said “we” instead of “they” at the end — if I had remained in the room longer. Which is the purpose of charm, right?
These true believers would be more convincing — I, for one, am available — if they brought at least a teardrop of skepticism to the debate. They do not. They disparage the least of the doubters they encounter.
They are cursed with another dreary habit. Like an inedible casserole composed of garbage, carrots and brussel sprouts, the academically dishonest Lordy, I Do, I Do Believe crowd sweeps together all aspects of the environmental movement into a single messy pile. Perhaps hey do this for nostalgic reasons because the pile is reminiscent of their pre-environment lives.
A Tasty Substitute
There is, of course, a rational explanation for the true believers’ blatant abandonment of doubt, which previously not only dominated but virtually monopolized their lives.
There had been an emotional and intellectual gap in their lives until the now fabulously wealthy Al Gore galloped across the globe and turned Going Green from a quirky circus act into an irresistible fad.
Largely, environmental preachers hail from the secular Left. In their young years, they rejected the traditional religion that appeals to most earthlings. Ever since, they have been frantically searching for spiritual meaning to their lives.
Honk if you know one apostle for the environment who entertains the smallest reservation about any of the unexamined, untested information he has so cheerfully gulped down.
As you know, there are at least 12 foundational differences between the intellectual approaches of conservatives and liberals.
Don’t you think it is a little curious that 95 percent of liberals run to embrace, unexamined, any environment pronouncement while 90 percent of conservatives reject most “findings” for their lack of rudimentary scientific evidence?
I will wager a carrot sandwich that every person in the Earth Day audience voted for President Obama, and that each one would fling a rotten tomato at President Bush. That is no accident. So let’s be clear. We are talking politics, not science.
Returning for the final time to J. Marvin Campbell’s talk yesterday, the rational-sounding information he delivered was deserving of a serious community audience, not the several strays who wandered into City Hall.
Hopefully, Mr. Campbell will invited back for the respectable kind of forum on the environment that his considerable body of knowledge warrants.
If the persistent Vice Mayor thinks the weekly City Council meetings are poorly promoted, he should have looked in on the Earth Day “crowd.”
By the way, he, a major believer, was not there.
Maybe City Hall’s Earth Day Notification Machine was broken.
