As economic growth has accelerated so, it appears, has the destruction of  [India's] forests. The Centre for Science and the Environment, a lobby group, reckons that the pace at which clearance permissions have been granted has doubled in the past five years. In 2009 alone, 87,884 hectares (out of a total of 68m hectares of primary and other forest) were approved for clearance.

Yet while growth damages the environment, it also nurtures a countervailing force: rising green consciousness. That tends to happen wherever economic dynamism threatens a country’s natural wealth, but maybe especially so in India. Environmental awareness lies deep in India’s political culture. Mahatma Gandhi was an early green, and the original tree-huggers were Indians: the chipko movement used Gandhian methods to prevent deforestation in the Himalayas in the 1980s. At the same time, India’s growth in the past 20 years has—while leaving many millions in poverty—produced a large, eco-sensitive middle class.

In his book, A History of Environmental Politics since 1945, historian Samuel Hayes wrote that

the environmental drive in modern society stems from new human values about what people want in their lives.

This became evident decades ago in industrialized Western countries, like the United States. The raft of foundational environmental laws (safeguarding air, water, and endangered species) in the early 1970s was the codification of these new human values in the U.S. Since then, however, enforcement (and expansion) of environmental legislation has been met with considerable opposition by parties driven by different values.

What interests me is how these competing values have turned landscapes into battlegrounds. For example, I’ve written a lot about a remote place in Utah called Nine Mile Canyon, where ranching, conservation, oil & gas development and historic preservation have long clashed. I’ve also explored how reconciliation of disparate values has been painstakingly arrived at in more populated locales, where business and real estate interests bumped up against ecological concerns.

India, as the Economist article puts it, is entering similar terrain:

The big question is how concern for the environment and a desire for growth will be reconciled.

That means India’s competing values will have to be reconciled, which, if the last thirty years of U.S. environmental politics is any guide, won’t be pretty. That also means, as the Breakthrough Institute’s Michael Shellenberger said in a recent interview with science writer John Horgan, that there will be uncomfortable tradeoffs people are going to have to accept:

We are now the dominant ecological force on the planet and that means that we must ever more actively manage our environment. It is both a responsibility and an opportunity and it demands that we actually make hard choices. If we want more forests and more wild places, then we’ll need more people living in cities and more intensive agriculture. If we want less global warming, then we’ll need to replace fossil energy with clean energy, including a lot of nuclear energy. If we want to save places like the Amazon rainforest then we have to recognize that, over the next 50 years, a lot of the Amazon is going to be developed. The choices will come down to where we want development, and what we might save in the process.

A larger debate over those choices and the values underlying them would be nice.

Meanwhile, the real battle front was out West, in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Utah, where coalbed methane and gas drilling was skyrocketing, with marginal regulatory oversight and comparably little pushback from national green groups. In the early to mid-2000s, I crisscrossed some of those states, writing about threats to wildlife and archaeology from unrestrained gas drilling. (As a senior editor at Audubon magazine at the time, I also assigned  related environmental stories.) Yes, the Western gas rush received plenty of local and regional news coverage, including from the terrific High Country News magazine. And big newspapers and magazines periodically parachuted into some of the hot spots. But Abraham Lustgarten at Pro Publica mostly had this story to himself, and man, did he own it.

As for national green groups, they kept up their costly vigil to save ANWR all through the 2000s, while drill rigs continued to multiply in the West’s fragile ecosystems, turning many thousands of acres of wildlife habitat into industrial zones. By 2008, one writer for High Country News had concluded that the Bush Administration’s ANWR ploy was a “straw dog.”

I got to thinking of this recent history after reading Bryan Walsh’s post on how the Keystone pipeline has become a symbolic, uniting issue for environmentalists today. He starts off:

Given that there are already more than 2.3 million miles of pipelines in the U.S.—carrying petroleum products, chemicals and natural gas—it might seem odd that so much political energy has been expended on a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline. Yet the controversial Keystone XL pipeline—which would cross the upper Midwest to carry crude from Canadian oil sands down to refiners in the U.S.—has become the single biggest environmental issue facing America.

Walsh goes on to analyze where the lines in the sand are being drawn (by the opposing sides) and how the battle might play out. To my eyes, it looks like the Keystone pipeline is the new ANWR for U.S. greens.

humans have been changing ecosystems for millenniums. We have learned that ecosystems are not — and have never been — static entities. The notion of a virgin, pristine wilderness was understandable in the days of Captain Cook — but since the emergence of modern ecology and archaeology, it has been systematically dismantled by empirical evidence.

Yes, it’s time we made peace with this fact. That doesn’t mean throwing in the towel, the authors write:

We can accept the reality of humanity’s reshaping of the environment without giving up in despair. We can, and we should, consider actively moving species at risk of extinction from climate change. We can design ecosystems to maintain wildlife, filter water and sequester carbon. We can restore once magnificent ecosystems like Yellowstone and the Gulf of Mexico to new glories — but glories that still contain a heavy hand of man. We can fight sprawl and mindless development even as we cherish the exuberant nature that can increasingly be found in our own cities, from native gardens to green roofs. And we can do this even as we continue to fight for international agreements on limiting the greenhouses gases that are warming the planet.

The authors go on to suggest that it’s time for “a new, more positive and forward-looking environmentalism” to be built:

This is the Earth we have created, and we have a duty, as a species, to protect it and manage it with love and intelligence. It is not ruined. It is beautiful still, and can be even more beautiful, if we work together and care for it.

But can environmentalism rise to this challenge? Can it abandon doom and gloom over what’s done and move on to a new narrative for the new epoch?

For example, Monbiot this year has shredded European greens for their anti-science position on nuclear power, and laid out the implications of this for climate change. (I wrote about his methodical takedowns here.) He’s at it again in his latest column, with a damning indictment that begins:

It’s a devastating admission to have to make, especially during the climate talks in Durban. But there would be no point in writing this column if I were not prepared to confront harsh truths. This year, the environmental movement to which I belong has done more harm to the planet’s living systems than climate change deniers have ever achieved.

As a result of shutting down its nuclear programme in response to green demands, Germany will produce an extra 300m tonnes of carbon dioxide between now and 2020. That’s almost as much as all the European savings resulting from the energy efficiency directive. Other countries are now heading the same way. These decisions are the result of an almost medievel misrepresentation of science and technology. For while the greens are right about most things, our views on nuclear power have been shaped by weapons-grade woo.

The U.S. green movement isn’t infected with the same strain of anti-nuclear hysteria (at least not anymore) as its European cousins. But it’s still surprising to see baseless nuclear fear-mongering from self-professed champions of science who counsel urgent action on climate change. When it comes to peddling disinformation on risks and harms associated with nuclear power, the anti-nuclear crowd, as Monbiot says in his column, is second to none:

Anti-nuclear campaigners have generated as much mumbo jumbo as creationists, anti-vaccine scaremongers, homeopaths and climate change deniers. In all cases, the scientific process has been thrown into reverse: people have begun with their conclusions, then frantically sought evidence to support them.

Remember, this is coming from a card-carrying environmentalist, who worries as deeply as anyone about the health of the planet and the threats posed to it by climate change.

Were there only more like him, speaking truth to green woo.

In the UK, however, there is George Monbiot and Mark Lynas, each who have earned high-profile reputations as advocacy journalists. In recent years, both have made mea culpas on core green issues. With Monbiot, it’s been nuclear power, which I’ve written about here and here.

Lynas has undergone a similar transformation–perhaps even more so: He now embraces nuclear power and GMO’s, positions he explains in his new book, The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans.

I recently interviewed Lynas for Yale Environment 360, which you can read here. He talks about the consequences of his turnabout on nuclear power (“I’ve lost friends”), the irrationality of some anti-nuclear activists (“these people are nuts”), the concerns about GMO’s (“clearly overblown”), and a notorious pie-throwing incident ten years ago.

Check out the full interview here.

Will it take hold? Let me know what you think over there.

Just one problem: some of our most famous eco-metaphors have not held up to the test of time.

At the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, I suggest that some of the more popular ones stick around past their expiration date. Have a read and let me know over there if you agree or disagree–and if you think any other eco-metaphors should be retired.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Since the late 1800s, the notion of wilderness as nature incarnate has been an animating force in American culture. A host of seminal, hugely influential environmental writers and activists, from John Muir and Aldo Leopold to David Brower and Edward Abbey, have idealized and championed wilderness.

In the 20th century, the wilderness ethos gave rise to the Sierra Club and the first wave of nature-centric environmentalism, energized the nascent conservation movement and influenced the emergent science of ecology.

The ideal of nature as undisturbed by humans and civilization was codified in the 1964 Wilderness Act, which defined the characteristics of wilderness as

an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain; an area of underdeveloped federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation and which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.

Before going any further, let me just say that I’m as big a fan of wilderness protection as anyone. So is environmental historian William Cronon, who sits on The Wilderness Society’s Governing Council, but who also published this provocative 1995 essay. Here’s his thunderclap of an opener:

The time has come to rethink wilderness.

This will seem a heretical claim to many environmentalists, since the idea of wilderness has for decades been a fundamental tenet—indeed, a passion—of the environmental movement, especially in the United States.

And indeed, such a claim was treated as heresy of the highest order. Cronon argued that wilderness, while intrinsically valuable, was nonetheless a cultural construction that encouraged a romanticized view of nature.

The blowback at the time was fierce (which Cronon responded to here), foreshadowing a similar outcry that followed ten years later, after this larger critique of environmentalism appeared. To me, the respective environmentalist tantrums of 1995 and 2005 exhibited a green movement stuck in a state of arrested development. (For more on why this is still the case, look for a follow-up post later today that will serve as a bookend to this one.) Alas, in the uproar over Cronon’s demythologizing of wilderness, this other important point he made in his essay got lost:

…the convergence of wilderness values with concerns about biological diversity and endangered species has helped produce a deep fascination for remote ecosystems, where it is easier to imagine that nature might somehow be “left alone” to flourish by its own pristine devices.

What’s the problem with this, you ask? Later on in his piece, Cronon writes:

Without our quite realizing it, wilderness tends to privilege some parts of nature at the expense of others.

Fortunately ecologists have matured, as I noted last year in a discussion of this article on urban ecology. More evidence of an important paradigm shift underway comes in this NYT piece on Emma Marris and her newly published book: The Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World.

In the NYT interview, Marris says:

We’re at a moment in ecological and conservation thinking where this notion of the “wild pristine” gets pulled apart, and we see that wild and pristine are almost opposite. You can never have 100 percent pristine, you can only approach the pristine. It’s a little bit of any empty concept in some ways because it presupposes that there was some sort of magical moment when everything was right.

And because everything has been a moving target forever, there was no real magical moment. So “pristine” is a word that we use when we mean things looking like they did at the beginning of our cultural memory, which tends to be very short.

I’m thrilled that we’ve finally arrived at this moment in time, where our ideas of nature and ecological restoration have become more sophisticated. I just wish there was more public discussion accompanying this shift in cultural and ecological consciousness.

Because as ecologist Daniel Botkin writes in the postscript to his pioneering book, Discordant Harmonies:

Nature in the twenty-first century will be a nature that we make; the question is the degree to which this molding will be intentional or unintentional, desirable or undesirable.

Similarly, here’s an observation from a reader who resides in another well-to-do community:

I live in a very ‘eco friendly’ community just outside of Seattle. Styrofoam cups have been banned, various street signs are solar powered etc etc etc.

The community soccer field is about 1/2 a mile down the road. I’ve never seen even a single econobox parked in that parking lot. It’s GMC Yukon city at soccer practice time. There are plenty of ‘no war for oil’ bumper stickers on the back of those GMC Yukon’s.

That’s political reality. The very demographic that should be the most supportive of action on climate change (upper middle class, educated, liberal) is completely blind to the fact that their lifestyle’s are the problem.

Until someone figures out how to make a vehicle as safe, convenient and comfortable as a GMC Yukon that doesn’t guzzle fossil fuels, action on climate change is going to be limited to ‘feel good’ measures.

This generation really needs someone like Phil Ochs, my all-time favorite folk singer.

Keith Kloor, Mark Lynas, Steve Nordhaus, and Roger Pielke Jr. share several characteristics: rudimentary knowledge of climate change (absent any scientific discipline), a way with words, and, worst of all, rank careerism. Each has tried to carve out a niche by covering the middle ground, thinking that this will gain them credibility. The problem is that each time they try to do so they betray their glaring weakness, which is knowledge of the actual science.

They deserve zero respect, and should be ignored. The world is careening toward a crisis on an unimaginable scale. Their petty and ill thought out solutions gain nothing except ceding ground to the oil, coal, and gas companies. These corporate horror shows will seize that ground and launch giant tanks from it.

The funny thing about this comment is that it doesn’t even speak to the issue of GMO’s, which is the topic of Andy Revkin’s post. It’s just an absurdist rant. I mean, as Revkin responds:

How in the world can you possibly place Mark Lynas in the climate “middle ground”? Because he’s okay with nuclear power, or…? Have you read anything by him?

Heck, has the commenter read anything by me, other than what appears in this blog?

Anyway, as nutso as this comment is, it’s not the most disturbing one on this particular Dot Earth thread. I’m still trying to comprehend this response from NYT food columnist Mark Bittman, who wrote:

The one thing you might have left out is “does this GM stuff do anyone any good?”

I agree there’s no reason to attack the stuff. I agree the fears are likely unfounded. I think the GM boom is likely unfounded also – what has it done so far, besides produce herbicide resistant seeds that have spawned herbicide resistant weeds?

Does this GM stuff do anyone any good? What has it done so far…?

This has to be a statement borne of willful ignorance. But for anyone who wonders the same, here’s some good answers.