Collide-a-scape

Here’s a delightfully salty essay from a fellow Brooklynite (of course!) which you should chew on while pondering the collapse of civilization. Pay special heed to this:

There is a good reason that the environmental movement in this country — and those tiny, blonde Northern countries — do not win the hearts and minds of most Americans, particularly during this economic period. When people who have no money are lectured about how they’re doing everything wrong already, and are then, in the lightning round, told they don’t have any consideration for anyone other than themselves and their appallingly bloated families — much less for “the planet” — it’s one of many daily slaps in the face they have to endure. And are then asked to be grateful for the chance at enlightenment.

Most people struggling to get by are simply trying to do what they can for their families today, and maybe, if things are going slightly better, a week or two ahead. There is no time, no mental energy — no fucking money — to consider the aerial environmental view. Criticizing people under egregious stress is not only an ineffective tactic, it frankly lacks even baseline compassion. And this, in Broke-Ass’s view, is fundamentally un-American.

This screed is a welcome antidote to the vacuous preening and chic lifestyle “sustainability“ that has come to define 21st century environmentalism. The calcified movement, as I wrote here two years ago, is in desperate need of a reboot:

Environmentalism, for all its success, is still largely shaped by its elitist roots.

It also remains a movement made up of upper-middle class whites, something leaders of established environmental groups had cause to lament after Obama was elected president. In recent years, scholars and journalists have written books on how this lack of racial and ethnic diversity has diluted environmentalism’s political power and message.

If this has prompted any real soul-searching by mainstream environmental groups, I’m not aware of it. If there are any big mission-altering statements or campaigns by any of these groups that have enlarged the green tent, I’m not aware of them.

All still true today.

That’s what Geoffrey Lean suggests is needed to counter what he calls the “swiftboating” of climate science in the wake of Climategate. He argues that “environmentalists must bear a fair share of the responsibility” for the rising number of people who don’t believe in global warming (according to recent polls). He partly blames the “backlash” on Al Gore’s Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth, because of “the film’s polemicism and exaggerations.”

But Lean also argues:

Environmental groups, once brilliant at swaying public opinion, have lost their touch. They have progressively become part of the establishment, while the skeptics have taken the insurgent role that environmentalists once exploited so well. As they became more and more involved in the process of formulating agreements and legislation to tackle global warming, talking to governments and attending negotiating conferences, leaders of the environmental movement have increasingly appeared to take public opinion for granted.

The problem with Lean’s logic is in that first sentence: environmental groups were “once brilliant at swaying public opinion” precisely because of scare tactics that prophesized eco-doom if immediate attention wasn’t paid to the environment. Exaggeration was enviro stock in trade. That was how mainstream green groups like the Sierra Club traditionally swelled membership rolls, by selling imminent eco-collapse.

And you know what, when a river catches on fire and oil is spilled off the coast of Santa Barbara and industrial toxic waste is leaching into groundwater, that doom and gloom campaign sells itself for a few years. After all,  you can see the unfolding disaster yourself. It’s visceral. But after a while, thanks to this green awakening in the public body, which spurs reform and new oversight institutions, the environment improves and not every new disaster suddenly feels like the end of the world.

But to keep those membership rolls inflated, green groups stayed with that numbing narrative of eco-catastrophe. At some point (early 1990s?), Americans became inured to the bad news drumbeat, be it about endangered species, old growth forests, or industrial runoff pollution.

There’s reasonable speculation by social scientists that the same thing might be happening again with respect to the incessant scaremongering by climate change advocates. So is Lean suggesting that Greens go back to those old tactics and double down on scaring the besjesus out of everyone? I don’t know. He just says Greens need to get a War Room so the planet doesn’t end up like John Kerry’s 2004 Presidential campaign.

Do leading Democrats and enviros want a climate change bill so bad that they are being snookered by Republicans? Absolutely, argues Roger Pielke, Jr:

The take over of climate policy by the Republican agenda is the most over-looked aspect of this entire debate. Perhaps those covering the horse race can’t see the forest for the trees.

He’s referring specifically to the public land and offshore gas drilling concessions that Dems are eager to offer up. Roger then wonders

what will happen if drilling in ANWR were to become an explicit part of the climate bill negotiations? Are left-leaning Democrats willing to give that away in silence as well?

That aint gonna happen, Roger. ANWR is an environmental totem, too important symbolically to surrender. During the previous eight years, the Bush Administation played a smart game of bait & switch, suckering mainstream enviros into expending all their political capitol on saving ANWR while vast tracts of Western public lands in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah got carved up by gas drillers. Yeah, enviros put up a token fight, but they would have laid down their lives for ANWR, and the Bush team knew it.

Paul Roberts, in his 2004 book The End of Oil (which I reviewed here), noted a similar dynamic with respect to ANWR and fuel efficiency legislation:

Political strategists have long known that the Arctic Wilderness carried a far higher emotional impact among voters than does for fuel efficiency: even environmentally minded Americans would much rather save polar bears than conserve gallons of gasoline, and this is true even among the membership of big national environmental groups. Political strategists also know that many moderate members of Congress–the so called swing block–feel they can vote “green” on perhaps one big issue a year without offending their more conservative constituents and colleagues.

In sum, I’d be shocked if big Enviros handed over ANWR in exchange for a climate bill. They won’t go that far. Their memberships wouldn’t allow it.

UPDATE:  I should have noted that Roger realizes this as well, because he also wrote near the end of his post:

If Republicans want to blow up the bill, they probably just have to press loudly for this  [ANWR] provision.

A few years back, these two guys audaciously pronounced the death of environmentalism. That didn’t go over too well with established greens.

Since then, they’ve published a sequel and opened up a storefront to sell a new brand of environmentalism. All this has triggered an odd turf war, including drive-by blasts from the likes of this crotchety knuckle-breaker.

I’ve been alternately bemused and confounded by this passion play. As a progressive movement, environmentalism in principle should welcome multiple viewpoints, even those that suggest cutting off the head of a lumbering green giant that has grown fat and dull from a moldy diet of outdated credos.

But give the Bad Boys from the Breakthrough Institute some credit, because they keep trying to kill the corpse that won’t die. Their latest effort appears in the new issue of The New Republic, entitled, “The Green Bubble: Why Environmentalism keeps imploding.”

No sooner was the piece posted than this comment from sociologist Robert Brulle appeared:

This is the most ridiculous and non-factual analysis I have ever seen of the U.S. environmental movement. This interpretation completely ignores the refereed literature on this topic. Why is the New Republic allowing this sort of drivel to appear? Don’t you have any fact checkers?

Yeah, that’s hitting them where they hurt. Hey, Dr. Brulle, how about actually engaging the article?

It’s not often you see this issue examined, much less in a leading environmental magazine.

So what about that Presidential appointee merry-go-round, where industry and greens take their turns running the Interior Department, the Forest Service et al?

The High Country News story spurred a lively debate among its readers that seemed to illustrate, as Felice Pace, one blogger for the magazine noted,

the difference between special interests and the public interest.

In his post, Pace steers the debate into into a wider discussion of the Public Trust Doctrine, a concept most Americans know little about. Several years ago, Mark Dowie took a stab at making it more relevant here.

In a country such as the U.S., where the tradition for environmental protection and preservation is fairly well established, (however controversially implemented), I’m surprised the concept is not the focus of much greater debate.

From embarrassment.

Obama, it turns out, may not just herald a sunnier horizon for the environment, he may, as the subtext of this story suggests, be the last, best hope for mainstream environmental groups to diversify their memberships.

Among the many reasons why this has yet to happen, Carl Pope bizarrely focuses on “cultural barriers,” and offers this example:

If you go to a Sierra Club meeting, the people are mostly white, largely over 40, almost all college-educated, whose style is to argue with each other. That may not be a welcoming environment.

Hilarious. Carl, keep up the good work but here’s a news flash:  black and brown people don’t show up because of what white environmentalists mostly talk about at these meetings.

BTW, catchy slogans, such as “Connecting People with Nature“–which I’m intimately familar with–don’t seem to gain much traction with non-whites either, and probably won’t until all those new urban nature centers help provide inner-city residents with jobs and cleaner air.

Providing more than a token seat or two on the board wouldn’t hurt either.