You value nature, quality of life, and your own health. When you're in the wild you practice the "take only pictures, leave only footprints" ethic. When you're at home you practice the "three Rs" by reducing what you buy and use, reusing what you can, and recycling what you can't. You handle household chemicals responsibly so they won't contaminate our shared environment. Doing things like those I've described means you are environmentally responsible, right? Not quite. With the stroke of a pen, a single politician in Washington can open 58 million acres of federally owned wilderness to logging, mining, oil exploration, and the whims of individual state governors. That's far more than you'd save in a million lifetimes of practicing the three Rs. The same politician can extend billions in corporate welfare subsidies to polluting industries and dismantle long standing safeguards for clean air, clean water, and endangered wildlife. All this and more has happened in the past few years. That's right, environmental responsibility means knowing the environmental record and stance of the candidates and voting accordingly.

Many who would not dream of setting a forest fire, dumping used motor oil into a lake, or throwing garbage into the street, vote for irresponsible public officials who enact laws that are far more destructive. By a gigantic margin, voting for people who are champions of the environment makes more difference than anything else you can possibly do. Make a difference and vote. I'll see you at the polls.


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Additional Resource: League of Conservation Voters
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Update: On July 19, 2004, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency for two Republican presidents criticized President Bush's environmental record, calling it a "polluter protection" policy. 
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Russell E. Train, who headed the EPA from September 1973 to January 1977 under presidents Nixon and Ford, and who was co-chairman of Conservationists for Bush, an organization that backed the candidacy of George W. Bush's father, said Bush's record on the environment was so dismal that he would cast his vote for Democrat John Kerry.
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"It's almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection," Train said. "I find this deeply disturbing."
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He accused Bush of weakening the Clean Air Act and said the president's record falls short of those set by former Republican presidents, from Theodore Roosevelt, who advocated creating national parks and forests, to George H.W. Bush, who supported revised standards for clean air.