Posted on 03/11/2005 8:55:11 PM PST by neverdem
OP-ED COLUMNIST
When environmentalists are writing tracts like "The Death of Environmentalism," you know the movement is in deep trouble.
That essay by two young environmentalists has been whirling around the Internet since last fall, provoking a civil war among tree-huggers for its assertion that "modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live." Sadly, the authors, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, are right.
The U.S. environmental movement is unable to win on even its very top priorities, even though it has the advantage of mostly being right. Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may be approved soon, and there's been no progress whatsoever in the U.S. on what may be the single most important issue to Earth in the long run: climate change.
The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they've lost credibility with the public. Some do great work, but others can be the left's equivalents of the neocons: brimming with moral clarity and ideological zeal, but empty of nuance. (Industry has also hyped risks with wildly exaggerated warnings that environmental protections will entail a terrible economic cost.)
"The Death of Environmentalism" resonated with me. I was once an environmental groupie, and I still share the movement's broad aims, but I'm now skeptical of the movement's "I Have a Nightmare" speeches.
In the 1970's, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou herd. Since then, it has quintupled.
When I first began to worry about climate change, global cooling and nuclear winter seemed the main risks. As Newsweek said in 1975: "Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend ... but they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century."
This record should teach environmentalists some humility. The problems are real, but so is the uncertainty. Environmentalists were right about DDT's threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.
Likewise, environmentalists were right to warn about population pressures, but they overestimated wildly. Paul Ehrlich warned in "The Population Bomb" that "the battle to feed humanity is over. ... Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." On my bookshelf is an even earlier book, "Too Many Asians," with a photo of a mass of Indians on the cover. The book warns that the threat from relentlessly multiplying Asians is "even more grave than that of nuclear warfare."
Jared Diamond, author of the fascinating new book "Collapse," which shows how some civilizations in effect committed suicide by plundering their environments, says false alarms aren't a bad thing. Professor Diamond argues that if we accept false alarms for fires, then why not for the health of our planet? But environmental alarms have been screeching for so long that, like car alarms, they are now just an irritating background noise.
At one level, we're all environmentalists now. The Pew Research Center found that more than three-quarters of Americans agree that "this country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment." Yet support for the environment is coupled with a suspicion of environmental groups. "The Death of Environmentalism" notes that a poll in 2000 found that 41 percent of Americans considered environmental activists to be "extremists." There are many sensible environmentalists, of course, but overzealous ones have tarred the entire field.
The loss of credibility is tragic because reasonable environmentalists - without alarmism or exaggerations - are urgently needed.
Given the uncertainties and trade-offs, priority should go to avoiding environmental damage that is irreversible, like extinctions, climate change and loss of wilderness. And irreversible changes are precisely what are at stake with the Bush administration's plans to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge, to allow roads in virgin wilderness and to do essentially nothing on global warming. That's an agenda that will disgrace us before our grandchildren.
So it's critical to have a credible, nuanced, highly respected environmental movement. And right now, I'm afraid we don't have one.
E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
I guess the environment is his new avenue for attacking this President
Enviro's have told so many lies that I woudln't take their word for it if they said the Sun was coming up tomorrow.
The U.S. environmental movement is unable to win on even its very top priorities, even though it has the advantage of mostly being right. Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may be approved soon, and there's been no progress whatsoever in the U.S. on what may be the single most important issue to Earth in the long run: climate change.
Amazing that he can claim something is a problem in one paragraph and illustrate it so well in the next one.
If the environazis want "nuance", they should hire John F'n Kerry. After all, he could use a full-time job.
Back in the eighties, there were dire warnings that the Earth would only last another ten years unless we took some draconian action.
We took action. We forgot about the warnings. We forgot them so completely and so well that a new book has come out. A new book, urgently warning us that we have about ten years before the Earth goes kaput. (I can't remember where I saw it, in an e-mail or something.)
Plus ça change...
Check it out... here's the essay he's talking about:
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/doe-reprint/
Looks like their solution is to become even MORE alarmist and hysterical. Their premise appears to be that any deviation from precisely average weather is the fault of human beings.
"We were wrong, but we are still right."
The Chutzbah of these guys ... to say "In the 1970's, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou herd. Since then, it has quintupled."
... and NOT say: WE WERE WRONG. PERIOD. SORRY FOR BOTHERING EVERYONE. PLEAE IGNORE ENVIRONMENTAL HYPE FROM NOW ON.
That would be more helpful.
This writer makes a very effective case against his own argument.
Show me an environmentalist, and I'll show you someone with a raging, out-of-control Messiah complex.
So we should keep believing him because...?
He started to make some sense. On one hand, he talked about the Caribou doing well after drilling, but Anwar will be bad. I'll give him credit for being less crazy than most of the whackjobs.
Less crazy? In the sense that Pluto is closer to Earth than Sedna?
=== At one level, we're all environmentalists now.
And we can no longer conceive of unplanned children.
Again, he can thank the Pubbies who kicked off our national re-education campaign with nearly 400 million 1970 dollars.
=== Their premise appears to be that any deviation from precisely average weather is the fault of human beings.
Please remember it was no "evil Democrat" like Clinton who legitimated the pseudo science of global warming.
Instead, in June of 2001, it was Bush who conceded that such a thing existed and -- most importantly -- that humans were responsible. This was a critical admission for which the so-called "left" had pushed for years.
But ... what do you expect from a guy who, two months prior while inking the UN's POP treaty, commented: "And now a Republican administration will finish the work of a Democratic administration. This is how environmental policy should work."
Particularly funny when -- as the record will show -- it's the Useful Idiot Dems who are generally doing the Republicans' dirty work on the environment, abortion, birth control and other curiously dehumanizing initiatives.
Can't wait for 'The Death Of The New York Times'. Already dead, in my mind for decades, it's time to look forward to making their "official" funeral arrangements.
Yeah I'm under no illusions about the two-party conspiracy. Just compare the government's spending habits with the rhetoric supporting the latest bankruptcy bill.
How true! They are arrogant elitists. They are absolutely wrong on ALL their assumptions. Environmentalists are absolutely delusional to think man is responsible for climate change. In the long term, environmentalists pose a greater threat than the terrorists to the survival of this Republic. We should be drilling of Alaska, off the coast of Florida and anywhere else there may be oil. We should be building more gasoline refineries. With China increasing demand, there will be big problems with supply in a few years. The environ-devils hope with glee to wreck out economy.
</b> sorry about the bold tag... my mess up :(
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