In my last column, I criticized our congressman, Richard Pombo,
for pushing a dangerously short sighted energy program. He has
defaulted on his own party
’s Contract With America. In “To Renew America,” Gingrich warns
that “The American public will not allow us to turn back on the
environment.”
In my last column, I criticized our congressman, Richard Pombo, for pushing a dangerously short sighted energy program. He has defaulted on his own party’s Contract With America. In “To Renew America,” Gingrich warns that “The American public will not allow us to turn back on the environment.” Gingrich talks of the need to study all of our species as, in the age of molecular medicine, those very species could hold the cure for many diseases. The policies coming out of this Republican Congress fail to keep faith even with their own contract.
We should now be asking how the environmental movement has allowed this government, with a Congress led by people like our congressman, achieve so many easy victories. Pombo has managed to frame the debate over resources in terms of economic growth vs. environmental controls. If anyone got the message of the first Clinton / Bush campaign, it was Pombo. He frames his policies with full knowledge that “it’s the economy, stupid.”
If one looks at the history of the environmental movement, its victories have come through a policy of confrontation, either through demonstrations or the courts or both. Yet, a recent poll by Grist Magazine found that only 3 percent of the responders said “great” when asked how the movement was doing. In fact, 50 percent felt that the question was a “stupid, simplistic question about an extremely complex topic.” Maybe so, but that level of response says to me that something is not right.
Last October, Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus delivered a bomb shell report proclaiming The Death of Environmentalism. Schellenberger and Nordhaus were focusing on the issue of Global Warming. After some 15 years of work on the issue, with treaties signed and campaigns run for more fuel efficient transportation, the environmental movement had little to show for it. They concluded that the movement is failing because it is applying the methods which were successful in that past to new situations for which they are no longer appropriate.
The problem is that the environmental movement has treated the environment as a “thing” and has invoked a tactical process to solve the current problem with the “thing.” Unfortunately, the American public has a lot of things and while most support a good environment, that support is not very deep.
Maybe it is time for a reminder here. One of the effects of Global Warming was the collapse of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is driven by the fact that colder waters in the North Atlantic dive to the bottom of the ocean to return south. There is evidence that this is no longer happening with the possible consequences that both England and New England soon will find themselves in very different climates.
The Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Carl Pope, responded strongly. According to Pope “They (Schellenberger and Nordhaus) suggested that failing environmentalism should submerge itself in successful progressivism, but I would argue that the environmental community is one of the more successful parts of the progressive movement. You know, the last decade has been a very rough time for all progressive social movements that are focused on justice. The areas where we are failing and the areas where labor is failing and the areas where the civil-rights movement is failing and the areas where the anti-war movement is failing are all the same, so the problem cannot be the way we define the environment.” (http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/little-responses/#pope)
I would question how a growing Sierra Club, and a growing National Resources Defense Council could have declining effect on political decisions. Could it be that it really is the economy?
The Sierra Club, for all of the great educational work that it has done and the public campaigns that it has sponsored, still fails to realize that “it’s the economy, stupid.”
On the other hand, some environmental organizations are getting it right. It was not so many years ago that the name of the United Fruit Company called up images of American Agribusiness Dollars propping up banana republic dictators while their banana plantations polluted the land and their workers had no other options. Things were so bad that the United Fruit Company tried to change its image by changing it’s name to Chiquita Brands and it was still going bankrupt.
Enter the Rainforest Alliance. Rather than organizing boycotts and taking Chiquita Brands to court, they sat down an convinced management that there was a better way. As a result, Chiquita Brands changed it’s agricultural practices, reduced pesticide use by 80 percent, restored natural buffer strips along drainages and streams and in doing so restored the company to profitability.
It is hard for an organization to come to the realization that the methods of its success are no longer working. It is hard to say that major changes need to be made, but that is exactly what Shellenberger and Nordhaus were calling for. In the mean time, those who would dismantle environmental protections are counting on nothing happening.
