What all of this fails to recognize or acknowledge is that the right is supported by big money, because it supports big money interests.  (This is not true for, say, anti-abortionists, but if they're willing to join otherwise right wing values like no taxes, the big money machines will provide for them.)  Because the only way to reach a meaningful number of people in a country with 300 million (or even a state with, say, 10 million) is to get on TV, those with money are winning the hearts and minds.

Obviously, we who fight for the Earth or leftist values don't have that financial support. Ours will always be a struggle against the powers that be, because, with a few extremely rare exceptions, those with money will not support our causes, which are contrary to their selfish interests.

P.S.  Mr. Ward chose a very bad example of right wingers as "oddball eccentrics fighting fluoridation of drinking water..."  All environmentalists should be fighting this poison being forced upon us.  (Flouride can be harmful in the quantities used by water districts, and the real reason that it's put into our water is to give the aluminum industry relief from having to pay to dispose of it.  At any rate, concentrated forms of flouride are not natural and don't belong in our water.)  Those who want flouride can purchase their own, but I want naturally pure water!

The is no question the environmental movement has been framed, and continues to be framed, and that it has lost all kinds of credibility as a result.

The individuals who have been fooled the most are today's young, since they were not around to witness how polluted the world was becoming in the 1950s and 1960s, before the great gains of the environmental movement were made in the 1970s and 1980s as a response to environmentalism.

But that is all water over the dam now.  With the more visible signs of pollution from the 50s and 60s cleaned up, and heavy advertising dollars as well as their own bought and paid for "scientists", the anti-environmentalists have made dramatic gains in the last decade, and there has been tremendous damage as a result.

Environmental organizations (enviros) have had to rely on less visible signs of environmental destruction to make their case and secure memberships; meanwhile, the youth who have not been taken the time to learn in the 1970s and 80s about the importance of preserving the environment have been easy prey for the anti-environmentalists (those having a vested interest in downplaying the significance of environmental insults).

As a result, the general population now takes the air, the climate, water, plants and critters for granted, without knowing just how essential those resources are to their own well-being and their future well-being.  The government has an interest in hiding that information from them, since the anti-environmentalists are the biggest donators their parties' campaigns.