The Death of Environmentalism - I
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Forwarded message from Fidyl <fi...@yahoo.com>
[ Subject: The Death of Environmentalism - I
[ From: Fidyl <fi...@yahoo.com>
[ Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005
Don't Fear the Reapers
A special series on the alleged "Death of Environmentalism"
13 Jan 2005
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/doe-intro/?source=daily
Environmental leaders were rather dismayed late last year when
upstarts began offering high-profile obituaries of their beloved
movement.
Is environmentalism dead?We are reminded of a scene in Monty Python
and the Holy Grail in which a wizened old man is offered to the
collector of dead bodies in plague-ridden London.
"I'm not dead," the geezer wheezes. "I'm getting better!"
Replies the hulking young man trying to give him away, "You're not
fooling anyone, you know. You'll be stone dead in a moment."
Is environmentalism ready for interment?
That's the none-too-subtle conclusion of "The Death of
Environmentalism," an essay by Michael Shellenberger and Ted
Nordhaus, a pair of strategists and organizers who've worked with a
number of environmental groups over the last decade. As if the title
were not provocative enough, the authors added injury to insult by
releasing the paper at an October 2004 meeting of the Environmental
Grantmakers Association, a group with lots of hands on lots of purse
strings.
The paper -- based on interviews with 25 leaders in the mainstream
environmental movement (nearly all of them, like S&N, white men) --
argues that environmentalism is ill-equipped to face the massive
global challenges of our day, particularly climate change. The
movement has become a relic and a failure, the authors say, coasting
on decades-old successes, bereft of new ideas, made fat and
complacent by easy funding, narrowly defining "environmental"
problems, and relying almost exclusively on short-sighted technical
solutions.
Mainstream green organizations' varied legislative and legal
victories -- and their cumulative membership rolls of some 10
million-plus -- don't cut it for S&N. These achievements, they claim,
take place against the backdrop of a broader failure to offer the
American people an expansive, inspiring, values-based vision.
They conclude that the environmental movement should meet its
re-maker, as it were, and give way to a more cohesive, coordinated,
and ambitious progressive movement.
Naturally, the paper kicked up some dust.
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope wrote a long and scathing
reply, pointedly addressed, "Dear environmental grant-maker." The
kerfuffle got covered in The Nation and The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Several blogs have weighed in, and debate over the issue continues to
spread around the web faster than that Paris Hilton home movie.
Fanning the flames, enviro wunderkind Adam Werbach gave an
impassioned speech in early December to San Francisco's Commonwealth
Club entitled "Is Environmentalism Dead?" making a similar argument
with even more emotional fervor -- or histrionics, depending on who
you ask.
Of all the points made by S&N, perhaps the most telling is in a
follow-up post on the Breakthrough Institute blog: "Nearly every
profession, from public health to business to law, has research
studies, conferences, and peer-review journals dedicated to
evaluating what's working and what's not. ... The environmental
community has nothing like this."
End of forwarded message from Fidyl <fi...@yahoo.com>
Jai Maharaj
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The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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joh...@patmedia.net
success. They were successful in passing and implementing
environmental laws over the past 35 years. Now, the air and water is
significantly cleaner and people tend to lose the sense of urgency the
movement once had.
I'll tell you why environmentalism will never die:
1. It's now big business. There are major corporations involved in
implementing environmental laws now. There are billions to be made
from wind power to water treatment. Markets like that don't just dry
up. GE just brought into the wind business and it's growing by 30% a
year, hardly a sign of a dying industry.
2. Technological advancements are continually made that directly or
indirectly advance environmentalism. Sure, there was a time when it
could be argued that we can't do this or that environmental protection
because it is too expensive. But, technology is continuing to advance
to make environmental protection more efficient and less of a drag on
the economy. Not to mention all the jobs created in the environmental
field. Take wind, wind power is now cost competitive with dirty
electricity production in the 4 to 6 cent per kWH range. Why? Because
technological advancements have made wind turbines 30 times more
efficient than they were 20 years ago. Now, there's a race to install
wind farms. Even big companies like GE are playing a part.
Environmental cleanups are benefiting from technology as well, as new
methods such as bioremediation are implemented to speed up cleanups and
reduce the costs. Air pollution? Hybrids are helping to take care of
that environmental problem, and eventually fuel cells or electrics will
totally clean up air pollution problems from autos.
As much as some conservative elements in our society might wish it
would just go away, the environmental movement is now self-sustaining.
There's no way they are going to convince people to go back to the old
days of terrible pollution. There's just no justification for it. A
move like that would just be anti-technology. Who are the ludites?
Environmentalists or conservatives? In this case it would be the
conservatives who chose to ignore technological advancements that can
improve our environment and go back to the dark ages.