Matt Yglesias wrote an article not log ago entitled Laying the Groundwork for the Backfire, in which he concluded that if the Obama initiatives his article listed were enacted "... it would be the most dramatic shift in national policy since the high tide of the Great Society."

I want to concentrate on everything Yglesias itemized that he thought compared favorably to the "high tide of the Great Society" in the area of environment. It won't take long. Here it is:

... dramatic cuts in carbon emissions and investments in clean energy infrastructure ...

Essentially, some vague handwaving about climate change - roughly in its entirety the environmental program favored by many in the "progressive" blogosphere.

What did the Great Society accomplish legislatively on the environment? Fortunately, wikipedia has a list:

Lyndon Johnson suggested that "[t]he air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are being blighted by poisons and chemicals which are the by-products of technology and industry. The society that receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for [their] control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation." At the behest of Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, the Great Society included several new environmental laws to protect air and water. Environmental legislation enacted included:

* Clear Air, Water Quality and Clean Water Restoration Acts and Amendments
* Wilderness Act of 1964,
* Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966,
* National Trails System Act of 1968,
* Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968,
* Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965,
* Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965,
* Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act of 1965,
* National Historic Preservation Act of 1966,
* Aircraft Noise Abatement Act of 1968, and
* National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.

(One of the few bright spots in this election is the likelihood that two Udalls will be in Congress)

Most of the legislation on that list was a beginning at tackling environmental problems. Some has been walked back by years of conservative domination and spineless Democrat acession. But none of that list appears in Yglesias's "Great Society" claim, or, as I recall, in the environmental section of Obama's web site. (Yglesias also claims Obama is more progressive than Bill Clinton, Gore or Kerry - at least in the area of the environment that's patently false).

Go down the list - we have serious water supply problems not only in the arid west, but even places like Atlanta recently, and still have places where water quality is poor, declining or threatened; the Wilderness Act and ESA need some rethinking (as ecological knowledge has increased dramatically since the mid-60s); trails are a joke in many places in the west - what trail maintenance is done is often done by volunteer groups; conservation of soil, farmland and wetlands remains a serious problem; solid waste and motor vehicle pollution remain problems (adding now CO2); and NEPA has been continually under siege.

Recent news reports indicate the Bush Administration has been busy writing new anit-environment/pro-business regulations to take effect before they leave office. Neither that, nor virtually any of the above has been a major focus of the Obama campaign. The west is burning - no longer just in the summer, but, with CA, nearly year 'round; salmon are declining in the Columbia and other west coast rivers; marine fisheries are depleted for some species, like cod; the US has actually increased its inventory of forested acres - instead we've exported mass deforestation to Russia, East Asia and even Africa for lumber and Central and South America for food; white pine blister rust threatens the survival of grizzly populations in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks.

Climate change is responsible for almost none of that.

Reducing atmospheric CO2 and developing alternative energy sources quickly are imperitive - there's no question about that. But accomplishing only those goals does not equate to a program of the Great Society's caliber, nor will it leave us with a survivable, sustainable planet.