In this day and age environmentalism has become an hot topic subject, not because many are against it in of itself, but because it has increasingly been used as a tool to increase government power or funding for various causes. But beyond that to the root of the problem is the ever murky and always fluctuating as needed definition of what is in the end considered environmental.
So my question is where should environmentalism realistically start and end? How much is too much and how little is too little?
I think the rule of thumb should be "could you explain the benefits in a way that would be accepted as worthwhile by an average 60 year old farmer".
Why farmers? Because by virtue of their profession they need to have some knowledge about environmental matters that directly affect people and some skin in the game on top of that - if groundwater is poison, that's not someone else's problem, that means their crops will fucking die. They also have skin in the game of not listening to crazy vegans&co that want to force their cultish behavior on everyone by any excuse.
Or in other words, environmental policy should be decided by cold cost-benefit calculation, not by whatever ideologues care to yell the loudest and most often about environmental policy.
And yes, that specifically implies the policy has to have meaningful benefits, for people of the country paying for it. Which in itself is not something obvious to green nutjobs.
I think subsidizing green energy on a home basis is okay provided it isn't forced upon anyone. Oil isn't an unlimited resource in the long haul and probably will only get more expensive in the long run, diversifying energy needs is a good thing for a country's self-sufficiency.
Everyone already has that in reverse, as in all the fossil fuels are taxed, in some countries very heavily. Diversifying energy sources is good, but that cannot be limited to politically correct sources, and those in turn should not be favored with high subsidies.
Imagine how many nuclear power plants could be built with all those subsidies those get. Meanwhile, a NPP has an expected lifetime 3-4x that of wind or solar plants. To add insult to injury, the main problems with nuclear power expansion are organizational financial and legal ones, aka problems that can in fact be solved with the stroke of a pen, rather than requiring inventing new technologies that may have issues of their own or a whole new electric grid.
One big Shibboleth for me is Hunting and Fishing. Since the megapredators that once preyed on animals like deer, hogs, and the like are gone, humans have to fill the gap and hunt them to keep the numbers in balance. Additionally, most of the money paid for hunting and fishing licenses goes to directly support wildlife refuges and such, it's a major source of income for those projects.
People who have done their research and are genuinely looking at solutions to real environmental problems usually know this and will support hunting and fishing, and even want to increase them (We're kinda facing a hogpocalypse right now as there just isn't enough hunting going on to keep them from spreading like the Zerg, and a Deerpocalypse from insufficient hunting is on the way).
Meanwhile, people who have no actual knowledge and have weird notions of how peaceful, harmonious, and wonderful nature is will call you a murderer for wanting to kill a beautiful creature like Bami's mother.
Hunting and livestock are the pet peeve of vegans and other crazy hippies, bonus points if they are city people who have no idea what they are talking about.
