The food fight over environmentalism

In politics, if you want to make a point, it's best to do it in a way that gets as much attention as possible. In the US, this is easiest to do in three places.

The first is the roof of the White House. In 1979, Jimmy Carter showed America he was serious about renewable energy when he had solar panels put up. Ronald Reagan showed he was just as serious when he had them taken down in 1986.

The second place is the House of Representatives. Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, famously shut down all legislative activity in 1996 until they'd forced major compromises on the budget. Barack Obama submitted his budget for 2012 early enough to avoid that kind of showdown, but the Republicans, and some Democrats, told him last week to try again.

The third popular venue is the House cafeteria, where French fries were renamed "freedom fries" in 2003. Later, the name was changed back. Then, in 2007, when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, she and other Democrats got healthier food put on the cafeteria menu. Now Republicans are upset. "We want real food," says California Representative Dan Lungren.

The green Capitol

Pelosi's lunch menu was part of a much larger initiative of hers called "Green the Capitol", which emphasized energy efficiency, waste reduction, recycling and reusability. For the cafeteria, this also meant using plates and silverware made out of pressed cornstarch. The trash was collected and taken to a composting facility.

Lungren has now led a successful effort to get rid of both the cornstarch and the composting by questioning their cost and practicality. Lungren says that chopping up the forks and plates to make compost cost more energy than throwing them away, as did carrying all the trash to the composting facility, which was farther away than the old garbage-disposal facility. His plan is to have the trash incinerated and to capture the heat energy.

Who's right? And who's left?

Lungren is by no means an anti-environmentalist. "It is prudent for us to take action to minimize CO2 emissions," he says on his website. He does, however, question the conclusions usually drawn by environmentalists. In his view, composting is worse than incineration because the former produces methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide produced by the latter.

Arguments like these are not uncommon in America, where European-style environmentalism is considered preachy leftist politics. To conservatives, the closest thing to the devil incarnate, after Pelosi, is Al Gore.

In Europe, though, environmentalism isn't much of a left-or-right issue. There's a consensus that it largely brings health and safety benefits — even economic benefits. Why shouldn't Americans have these benefits, too? That's the idea behind Carbon Nation, an environmental documentary aimed at conservatives who are interested in clean air, clean water, relying less on Middle Eastern autocracies and making some money.

The film interviews politically conservative entrepreneurs who have profitably developed wind and geothermal energy. A former army colonel also talks about energy independence as a matter of national security. The film is being shown at a series of screenings across the country this week, perhaps in preparation for a broader release.

As for those solar panels... Obama is putting them back up this May.