the last book I ever read (The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics, excerpt six)

from The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics by Dan Kaufman:

Leopold’s work incorporated ecological concerns into economic analysis, an idea that maintained currency in Wisconsin’s government until Governor Walker. “Walker is a representative of a cohort of politicians who are unaware of this tradition and its nuances,” Meine said. “It’s now been undermined, and done away with in many cases.” Nowhere had this been more apparent than in the Republican effort, on behalf of Chris Cline, a billionaire coal magnate in Florida, to facilitate the construction of an enormous iron-ore mine in a pristine section of northern Wisconsin called the Penokee Hills. “The proposal seemed to wrap up in one package all that was going south,” Meine said. “The influence of corporate money and political corruption, narrow, short-term thinking about economic value, and an active disinterest in science and a fair and transparent public process.”

Since Walker introduced the mining proposal in 2011, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose reservation sits a few miles from the miles from the site, have led a fiercely determined opposition to it. In their response Meine saw hope that Wisconsin’s legacy of environmental stewardship might yet be revived. “Just at the time when political authorities in Wisconsin no longer espoused or defended the land ethic, the Native communities and voices were there,” he said. “They were the ones who spoke for the land and water, for the plants and animals, for future generations. They were the true conservatives.”