Baby Brown Seals or Brown Kids?

Environmentalism. It’s not just for white people anymore.

Or is it?

This thought crossed my mind after I got my mail today. We have a very heated and NASTY race for LA City Attorney. The new C.A. will hopefully not lie about attending an Ivy League school on a scholarship and whose spouse will not be convinced that it’s okay to drive an SUV on the city’s dime, drive like a maniac, and then bill the city for the repairs. But seriously, voting for city attorney is not like voting for . . . oh I don’t know, school board or city council, where decisions are made that immediate affect our lives. Let’s face it, the winner gets to manage a large law firm full of lawyers who get paid far less and work way more--and then the winner will have a steppingstone to another office—which is why I’m voting for the older guy, since I figure he’ll be more focused on his job and not salivate when mayor Antonio Villar (change your name back, you’re not married to the wife you cheated on!) is out of office.

Which is why I usually smirk when I fill my recycling bin daily with hysterical mailers from the younger candidate, saying the older guy is a polluter, environmental Ebola virus, etc. The smirk turned into a sneer, however, when I saw a picture of a baby seal with a target superimposed on it. I didn’t even care what the mailer was about—the baby seal irritated me enough. Oh and by the way these campaigns were wasting paper and fuel by having all these mailers delivered, but I think that point was lost on both campaigns.

Now, this is where many in the environmental movement gets it wrong: why do they love to rely on pictures of baby seals to get people worked up? Why don’t they show pictures of kids in the inner city who live near power plants or toxic dumps? Why are they favoring baby brown seals over babies in poor neighborhoods, where pollution often has the most horrific effects?

I went to a conference at a local university a few weeks ago, and I swear, there were so many older, white people, who seem to believe that environmental consciousness means wearing loose fitting Guatemalan clothes and diversity means telling the token African American at the conference, “Oh, you should meet my friend Lola, she’s black.” One woman was quite simply stupid enough to say the one problem with climate change was overpopulation. I wanted to yank her by the canvas shopping bag and tell her, “Well, actually, all the industrialized countries have low birthrates, and the truth is, stats show that an Indian child uses one-tenth to one-twelfth of the resources of an American child,” but I sipped my organic green tea in frustration instead.

The saner folks at this conference were those that asked what environmentalists would do—and how green tech would help--to assist those kids who live near those power plants and waste dumps. They also pointed out that solar panels are great, but those chemicals used in the film are toxic, and where would they end up? I think the answer was for them to Obama-ize and community organize, but in the end, this is my frustration:

In building support or their causes, I wish these activists and organizations would show the pictures of families who are stuck next to a belching power plant or seeping dump instead of doe-eyed cute animals. And as for that city attorney candidate, I’d rather focus on improving the quality of lives of folks in my beloved city—I like seals and seal loins and whales and polar bears and I’m sorry about their plight, but I haven’t seen many of those seals traipsing about in my neighborhood.