Posted on 12/06/2004 7:24:40 AM PST by ZGuy
Environmentalism is a dead movement walking. So goes the theme of a controversial essay circulating among environmentalists and their funding organizations.
Entitled "The Death of Environmentalism," the epistle was produced by longtime environmental activist Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute in El Cerrito and Ted Nordhaus, vice president of Evans/McDonough, an opinion research firm. Its content was based on interviews with more than 25 of the environmental community's top leaders and thinkers.
On Dec. 8, former Sierra Club president Adam Werbach will take up the cause, in a speech, also titled "The Death of Environmentalism," to be presented at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Several National Public Radio affiliates plan to broadcast the speech a few days later. In it, Werbach will argue that the modern environmentalism must die in order for a new movement to be born.
"Ironically, even as the environmental movement achieves less than in the past, it is raising more money than ever before," Werbach told me on Thursday. "But I'm predicting a funding crash will hit the movement soon." Why? "Because people expect results, and they're not seeing them."
Considering the relative youth of the environmental movement, the notion of death and rebirth isn't as outrageous as it may seem.
During the Nixon administration, the movement convinced Congress to establish the Environmental Protection Agency and pass the first Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.
After a string of stunning successes, today's environmentalism seems stalled. "Over the last 15 years environmental foundations and organizations have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into combating global warming. We have strikingly little to show for it," according to Shellenberger and Nordhaus.
Now comes added challenge. A second Bush administration is pushing to open even more public lands to timber, oil and gas extraction, and to shift pollution control from government to the market. Last Tuesday, the administration proposed a steep reduction in the miles of rivers and streams to come under federal protection for Pacific salmon, and signaled far-reaching changes in federal enforcement of the Endangered Species Act.
Regional success stories are being rewritten, as well. Since 1973, Oregon has led the nation in the prevention of urban sprawl. But on Thursday, a new voter-approved law will go into effect, forcing Oregon officials (who have no money to spare) to retroactively compensate landowners for regulations that reduce a property's value or waive those restrictions.
"What the environmental movement needs more than anything ... is to take a collective step back to rethink everything," Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue. "Our thesis is this: the environmental community's narrow definition of its self-interest leads to a kind of policy literalism that undermines its power."
They offer a sketchy, sometimes contradictory, alternative vision. Environmentalists should, for example, "ask not what we can do for nonenvironmental constituencies but what nonenvironmental constituencies can do for environmentalists." The movement should work not only to protect specific pieces of land and water, but to change trade policies that undermine environmental protections. It also should champion massive investments in the creation of new alternative-energy industries.
Such a frame would move "the environmental movement away from apocalyptic global warming scenarios that tend to create feelings of helplessness and isolation among would-be supporters," Shellenberger and Nordhaus contend. "Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech is famous because it put forward an inspiring, positive vision that carried a critique of the current moment within it. Imagine how history would have turned out had King given an 'I Have a Nightmare' speech instead." Environmentalists do need to better describe the kind of world they hope to create, and not only the trends they oppose.
Understandably, considering the mounting challenges, many environmentalists instinctively prefer solidifying and marshalling their base. This is no time, they say, for a wave of self-doubt and or analysis-paralysis.
Last week, Carl Pope, the current Sierra Club director (whom Werbach admires), sent grant-makers a remarkable 6,650-word counter-argument to the "Death of Environmentalism" treatise. He called it divisive, self-serving, less than original, based on "shoddy research," and that it has "actually muddied the water and made the task of figuring out a comprehensive and effective set of strategies more difficult."
Nonetheless, Pope does acknowledge lack of progress on global warming; and that environmentalism shares, with the rest of the progressive movement, "a set of increasingly outmoded organizing, advocacy and political approaches."
Werbach is being attacked this week by many of his closest environmentalist friends, underscoring his most interesting point: the movement has no mechanism (other than competition for funding) to encourage debate about the basic tenets of its future. When arguments do occur, they often proceed without civility; environmentalists tend to eat their own – which raises an additional question.
Is the environmental movement no longer a movement, but a tradition? A movement suggests change and adaptability. A tradition is something people cling to for a sense of stability, especially in times of fear.
A tradition, by definition, is not open to question.
Dirt worshipers.
Like constipation, some movements bring tremendous relief when they are past (passed).
Much better would be one that emphasizes technological R&D (e.g.: developing better batteries, more efficient solar cells) to improve the efficiency of products that are also competitive in the marketplace, and to promote a move toward safe nuclear power generation (which the greenies have been obstructing for decades) that would go a long way toward freeing the US from foreign oil dependence.
Environmentalists have no clear, constructive agenda. They're a lost cause until they do.
The Watermelon Jihadist Terrorists ain't dead yet.
They are starting to suffer cash flow problems. Former Sierra Club, goose stepping vineyard owners in Napa county got their moderate land owners elected this year. They threw out the Green Jihadist anti property owners Director and his Druid Jihadists. They recently led a successful prop campaign against a terrible Druid prop that would have made drainage areas sacred green sites and the season flows into the drainage areas.
The biggest friend of the Druid Jihadists, the left wing mediots of the MSM are losing their war of survival. When the MSM loses subscribers or viewers, their pro Green Terrorism slants become less effective.
We will see more changes legislative wise in congress and state legislators where republicans control the legislature.
The Druids will still cause damage with their Druid Judges at the state and federal level.
But, as you know, that's still not enough to make them happy!
They won't be happy till the air and water is STERILE!!!
(and then they'll bich because that's not healthy)
The cadre of charismatic leaders that inspired and drove the movement in its early years and through the great successes of the 70s have slowed down and settled into a noisy, but less-effective presence mainly in the courtroom; after all, it's darn hard to monkey wrench clear-cutting in a national forest from a wheelchair.
BTTT!!!!!!!!
Long as the environmental movement is driven by elitists, nature worshipers, and true believers, irrationality will reign on sound environmental care.
Who made sure that there would be plenty of bug killed woodlands because they didn't want the FS to treat the outbreaks? Some forests like the Dixie NF have big areas that are mostly dead.
Who made sure that forest fires would burn hot and scorch the earth beyond the normal for that type of forest because they thought someone might take a stick of wood out?
The current environmentalist legacy: Habitat evidence doctored, bad science claimed as truth, pushing so hard that people don't want to believe their good evidence just out of reflex...and huge amounts of wasted good US taxpayer's money has been spent to deal with the constant court battles.
And let's not forget that the enviromental movement has its own terrorist wing with Earth First and ELF.
There are rational people out there who understand the compromise between use and preservation. There is scientific data that helps people restore the land and keep it in good shape.
Many times, though, the environmentalists have made it impossible to work, allowing noxious weed infiltration , for example, while they dicker out the right to treat the problem in court.
You want to protect the enviroment in good ways? Learn for real about ecology, and the concepts of synergy. Find groups that are actually rationally doing it the right way, like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Pheasants Forever, the Nature Conservancy.
Stay away from the Sierra Club!
Hopeful words -- where does one go to contribute to the tombstone fund?
Another way, read Natural Process by fellow freeper Carry_Okie
Sorry, but the Nature Conservancy is turning into a land racketeering scam. They do a piss poor job of managing their rangeland.
Sorry, KC, post 37 was for KAC.
Remember Trey Arrow, the ELF, Oregon terrorist? I hear he's in Canada and they are not giving him his wish to not be extradited to the states for trial.
Rather than just championing massive investment (someone else’s money), perhaps they could offer their millions to actually help develop alterative energy sources.
But no, such development could cause pollution or even (scary) environmental damage so they would rather sit back and throw rocks.
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