Collide-a-scape

Is the American environmental movement all but dead as a meaningful force for change? You have to wonder, after reading this Washington Post story from earlier in the week. Or, as the article suggests, are there larger forces arrayed against Greens, such as the deep economic funk much of America is still trying to shake off?

Five years ago, status quo environmentalism was given a similar obituary, which got a lot of hoopla.

Big Greens are like zombies, though. Just ask the donors, who can’t fight them off. But now, with Big Green’s inability to feed and propogate off the nation’s biggest environmental disaster, you have to wonder if their days are numbered.

As a parent of two small children, one who gives me grief if I forget to turn out a light in our apartment, I can relate to the eco-guilt heaped on this Economist blogger:

The kids bug me when I drive to the neighbourhood store rather than walking, because it “poisons the atmosphere”. They bug me about not recycling enough. They bug me about making sure our tuna fish doesn’t contain bluefin.

My son started razzing me about our car when he was four. And we hardly drive! Our vehicle is valued more these days as a second storage locker, for little bikes, trikes and overflow books. (That green urban lifestyle I’ve been going on about does have some drawbacks.)

Halfway through his post, the Economist blogger segues from his eco-conscious kids to a 1970s campaign that eliminated widespread littering in America. In other words, there’s good evidence for societal-wide behavioral change. And then he pivots to the news of Senator Lindsay Graham bailing out on the climate bill that Graham had helped to write. It’s all nicely connected, trust me.

It turns out that the Economist blogger shares Kevin Drum’s despair over the recent turn of events, which I discussed here yesterday. Like me, the Economist writer noted the salient findings from that Stanford poll. And he mines a great one liner from Drum’s post, which I took a pass on:

We are, in this case, getting exactly the government we deserve. A government of children.

To which the Economist writer/parent of little greenie kids politely demurs:

As far as I can see, that’s not the problem. The children seem to be obsessed with reducing CO2 emissions. If they were running the joint, we’d be doing fine. The problem is the grown-ups. We suck.

But that’s not right, either. Because little children, who want what they want, when they want it, aren’t yet faced with making the tradeoffs that adults have to routinely make. For example, if it was up to my son, he’d be lavished with a new toy every day. If he were running the joint (er, our household), he’d be eating poptarts every night for dinner, topped off with a daily ice cream cone.

Back to the littering analogy: I’m zealous about that. To the point of confrontation with degenerate litterers. It just pushes my buttons. Especially when the garbage can is right in front of the litterer. One of these days, I’m going to get stabbed over a candy wrapper, so I’ve got to get back in shape. Anyway, learning to put trash and recyclables in their proper place isn’t exactly a lifestyle sacrifice.

Now back to the family’s pollution spewing car, which my son has, on more than a few occasions, said is killing animals. He’s right, but how do I explain that one, as I continue to drive him to little league every weekend, or to his grandparent’s house in the suburbs? The problem is not the grown-ups. The problem is, life is complicated.

Hat Tip: Andrew

There’s an intriguing, somewhat dispiriting profile by David Owen in the current New Yorker ($ubscription) of an idealistic,  enviro-minded inventor who wants to do good in the world, but is having a hard time overcoming the “limits of innovation.”

The subject of the piece is Saul Griffith, who as recently as 2004 was a Ph.D. student at MIT. By all accounts he’s brilliant–heck, that same year he won a $500,000 MacArthur “genius grant” for an eyeglass invention that the judges thought would bring cheap, corrective lens to poor communities around the world.

It didn’t work out that way, and eventually the gifted inventor turned his attention to energy–how to make it both clean and affordable. Again, things haven’t worked out as he hoped, and now Griffith is thinking that the solution to climate change lies not with technology but human behavior.

He’s also become pretty cynical. Here’s some friendly fire that is sure to singe greenies from Berkeley to Boston:

I know very few environmentalists whose heads aren’t firmly up their ass. They are bold-facedly hypocritcal, and I don’t think the environmentalism as we’ve known it is tenable or will survive. Al Gore has done a huge amount to help this cause, but he is the No. 1 environmental hypocrite. His house alone uses more energy than an average person uses in all aspects of life, and he flies prodigiously. I don’t think we can buy the argument anymore that you get special dispensation just because what you’re doing is worthwhile.

The kicker is a beaut, and shows that Griffith is as brutally honest with himself:

Right now, the main thing I’m working on is trying to invent my way out of my own hypocrisy.

I’m a little jaded on the annual Earth Day love-in. If children showed appreciation for their parents only on Mother’s Day or Father’s day, the human race would be screwed. Is it a nice thing that we venerate our parents once a year? Sure. But who are we kidding: many of us approach these hallmark holidays like programmed robots. It’s Mother’s day: cue the flowers, the breakfast in bed, the Sunday Brunch.

So it is with Earth Day. Cue the park clean-ups, the lofty (and cautionary) speeches, the obligatory rallies. Yeah, been there, done that. Come the day after, it’s back to the same old, same old: taking the planet we live on for granted, just like we do ma and pa.

As The Washington Post correctly observes today in an excellent article, the original 1970 protest/celebration has now become

a national ritual halfway between a street party and a guilt trip.

What’s that you say, this one is special: 4oth anniversary. So was the 20th and here’s what legendary NYT columnist Russell Baker opined then, in an imaginary conversation between him and his editor:

Editor: If you intend to come out against Earth Day, go ahead and do it, but please, please, stop the hot air about public relations and get on with it.

Artist: You’d like me to come out against Earth Day, wouldn’t you? You think all humanity would be so horrified that they would rise up against me crying, ”What kind of monster would be down on Earth Day? What kind of paper hires such a beast?” Then you’d have an excuse to fire me – Editor (interrupting): If you want to write piffle nobody’s going to read, it’s no skin off my nose. I’m just advising you: If you’re against Earth Day, say so. If you’re not, just say whatever you’re trying to say and wind it up.

Saying which, the Editor walked away, shaking his head. How little he understands the literary art. Here am I, struggling to paint a portrait of a once great nation that has fallen prey to the public-relations plague, and all he wants is for me to take an editorial stand on Earth Day.

They just don’t make them like Baker anymore. In that same column, he expands on his thesis that a well-intentioned cause had become just another modern-day marketing extravaganza:

If good sense were involved here, of course I would be against Earth Day, for the simple reason that practically everybody else is for it. When you find something being supported by practically everybody, watch your step.

Anything that isn’t opposed by about 40 percent of humanity is either an evil business or so unimportant that it simply doesn’t matter. In the first category I list the Tonkin Gulf resolution, approved by every member of the Senate but two, which President Johnson later used to justify full-scale war in Vietnam.

The second category (simply doesn’t matter) is probably where Earth Day belongs. It’s a media event, which is to say a public-relations stunt for the folks of P.R. World.

So, anything different today? What’s the message enviro-minded citizens have internalized best after 40 years? According to that WaPo article, many people

have absorbed the lesson that the best thing for the environment is to buy things. This year, a poll conducted by professors at George Mason, Yale and American universities showed that respondents who were most alarmed about climate change were more than eight times more likely to express their concern through shopping for “green” products than by contacting an elected official multiple times about it.

Not today, though. It’s all about you, planet Earth.

I’m not sure how much you can read into one particular comment thread. But there has been a discernible anti-immigration zealotry expressed by Grist readers over the last week, in response to this post.

On the thread, Randy Cunningham pleaded with his fellow greens to be more compassionate. He finally gave up, despairing:

Most of the comments posted on this article have depressed the hell out of me. I love the environmental movement, and what I have been hearing here reminds me of when I used to hear my beloved grandparents use the N word. It embarrassed me. This conversation embarrasses me. It is a parade of our dirty laundry. If I were introducing someone to our movement, this is the last place I would want them to look. It feels mean. It feels selfish. It feels xeonphobic. It feels frankly racist. I want to take a shower after reading the latest entries.

This underlying sentiment of many population ideologues–what I call “green bigotry”– is what I discussed here in reference to the Grist post. I’m guessing it’s a hold-over from the Abbey-Brower-Foreman wing of the environmental movement, and that the hardcore sentiments on population are felt strongest by greens who came of age in the 70s and 80s.

Steve Bloom, a a long-time activist with the Sierra Club, who is also a frequent blog commenter (and a frequent critic of mine), tries to downplay this prevailing enviro mindset, in a comment at my site:

Grist threads in general have been infested by wingnuts for some years now, so I don’t think there’s much special going on with this one.

In other words, nothing to see here, just a bunch of crazies foaming at the mouth. If only that were the case.

Goes to this post at Green Inc.

And quoting a well-known American environmentalist, there’s this catch-all reasoning, which only die-hard greens will embrace and which will alienate most everyone else:

Overpopulation is the driving force behind virtually all environmental problems — air pollution, water pollution, the extinction crisis, global warming , yet it is rarely ever addressed by conservation groups. They are really afraid of touching the issue and appearing anti-human.

That’s from Kierán Suckling, the executive director of the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. I’ve covered endangered species issues in the West for many years. Overpopulation is not the problem–not by a long shot. Mostly, it’s the sprawl of residential and commercial development that has chewed up wildlife habitat. Not teeming hordes of people. Just their wasteful, highly consumptive habits.

There’s a number of good reasons why overpopulation (and its toxic surrogate, immigration) is the third rail of American environmental discourse. Just ask the Sierra club.

That’s the headline, and this is the best quote:

I grew up in the city; I wasn’t a girl scout; I didn’t camp; I wasn’t a skier; I wasn’t an avid hiker—but the environmentalism I came to know was more about the effects of pollution in society.

Meet Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator. She says her goal is to put the agency

in the minds of the American people, and not just those who consider themselves environmentalists.

If only the nation’s leading environmental groups strived to reach beyond their white, upper middle class demographic, more Americans would consider themselves environmentalists.

I kinda knew that Joe Romm wouldn’t find the Super Bowl Audi commercial funny. He’s humor challenged. But David Roberts at Grist? Jesus, can’t you guys just chill and see past your environmentally correct navels for once? Dudes, it was satire! It worked. Hell, I bet Al Gore laughed. If you’ve ever seen him on late night shows, you know Gore has a wicked sense of humor. He knows how to poke fun at himself to good effect.

The world is full of stereotypes. Sometimes parody is the best way to deflate them.

UPDATE: Romm’s readers seem evenly split on the ad.  Many are offended. Plenty others echo my thoughts and suggest that people lighten up.

UPDATE 2: The majority reax by libertarians over at Reason’s Hit & Run blog is notable for it’s antipathy towards environmentalists. They loved the commerical’s mockery of greens (taking it at face value), then felt betrayed at the end by the endorsement of a “green” car.  But I think the libertarians at least figured out that they aren’t Audi’s target audience.

UPDATE 3: Okay, it’s official. I’m obsessed with the polarized reaction to this commercial in the green community. I’ve been scanning comments throughout the day on various sites where greenies congregate. Here’s the best damn comment I’ve read. It captures my sentiments precisely. So is the ad offensive?

I think this is pretty much the same question as asking if Chris Rock is funny or offensive. If you think his jokes reinforce stereotypes, then you probably don’t understand the audience. “Grandpa” isn’t going to become MORE racist after hearing a Chris Rock joke. Personally, growing up in a rural, almost exclusively white area, I think it was better that I got those stereotypes from Chris Rock on TV than a racist neighbor. The framing is important. Similarly, it’s better this idea is attached to a “greenwashing” car company than the crazy extremist who actually believes it’s going to happen and says, “we shouldn’t start down the slippery slope of environmentalism!”

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.

It’s hell on the planet, sadistic to our fellow creatures, and bad for your health. Nothing in this WaPost essay is new, but the main point is worth pondering:

What I eat influences you. What you eat influences me. Our diets are deeply, intimately and necessarily political.