I just realized what’s been itching at my brain about Daryl Slusher’s letter urging people to vote against Props 1 and 2. Personally, I find his arguments fairly compelling, but am viscerally compelled to vote for the propositions anyways thanks to the co-opting of the evil “Costs Too Much” iconography from Skaggs and Daugherty’s execrable anti-light rail campaign of 2000.
Here’s the important part:
– If the amendments lose, with united environmental support in favor, then the environmental movement will be seen as losing strength and will further lose influence.
– What may well be worse for the environment and environmental movement is if the amendments pass. Then every resulting unintended, and some intended, consequence will be blamed on the environmental movement — with considerable justification if environmentalists are largely united in supporting the amendments.
This is exactly why I thought it important for pro-transit people to vote against the 2004 Capital Metro commuter rail proposal. Here’s one relevant excerpt from one of my many crackplogs on the subject:
In fact, it will be difficult to defend Capital Metro’s money if this election doesn’t pass. However, it will be even MORE difficult to defend Capital Metro’s money if this election does pass, and the rail service meets my expectations (matching the performance of South Florida’s Tri-Rail, the only other new start rail plan relying exclusively on shuttle buses for passenger distribution). At that point, we will have SHOWN that “rail doesn’t work in Austin”, and the long-term justification for at least 1/4 cent of Capital Metro’s money will be gone.
There are many other cases where I made the point that, yes, if Capital Metro lost the ’04 election, it would be bad; but it’d be even worse if they won with unanimous transit-supporter support (er, yeah). The “But we did what you wanted and it sucked” argument is pretty hard to overcome the next time around.
Yet Slusher was so royally pissed by my opposition to that plan that he wouldn’t return emails from that day forward.
Ironic, huh?
