How the Environmental Movement Might Have Succeeded
By Lorna Salzman
Created Jun 30 2008 - 10:31am
Remember Earth Day 1970? Remember the joy, the unity, the sense of mutual
purpose? Remember the outcome? The passage of monumental federal laws on
clean air, clean water,endangered species, workplace safety,
toxics...followed by the establishment of state and local-level regulatory
agencies and statutes to protect wildlife habitat, rivers, wetlands,
endangered species and to enforce federal laws? Remember the explosion of
national, regional and local environmental groups to lobby, educate, and
enforce the new laws?
As of the 1970s, it was estimated that over 20 million people belonged to
these new organizations, with millions more who sup****ted their efforts
but
didn't donate. Congress and Pres. Richard Nixon could not ignore this
blossoming of concern, commitment and activism. It is arguable that
environmentalism became the most significant social justice movement of
the
20th century. Even now, in retrospect, looking at its accomplishments,
that
argument is still valid.
Now, things are quite different, because of external and internal factors
and pressures. Externally, the Reagan era that began in 1980 signalled a
strong backlash from big business, developers, industry, and their cronies
in congress, a backlash echoed in conservative journals and in the mass
media. On the surface, this backlash could be seen as a response to the
necessity for business to absorb the higher costs of environmental
compliance, thus cutting into its profits.
But this is probably not the fundamental reason for the backlash, given
that
environmental regulations are not only a tiny part of business expenses,
but
are more or less welcomed by business because regulation legitimizes
business and industry by setting the parameters for their operations. And
since the parameters, such as health and safety standards, were always set
loosely and thinly, so as not to disrupt or inconvenience business,
regulation actually worked in its favor, contrary to popular belief.
No, the fundamental reason for the backlash against environmentalism was
that industry and business recognized early on - as the left and liberals
did NOT - that environmentalism, when carried to its logical conclusion,
was
antithetical to economic growth and capitalism, and if embraced by too
many
Americans would seriously impair industrial expansion and just about every
other kind of development, large or small. In the end, the public would be
awakened to the full impact of uncontrolled economic growth and
development,
as it impinged on their communities as well as on the wilderness and
natural
resources owned by the public. This awakening may be starting now; whether
it is too late is a reasonable question.
All you have to do is look at the effect of high oil prices: on private
cars, commercial trucks, power boats, recreation and tourism, exurban and
suburban housing, food supply, electricity, consumer goods, to realize
that
anything that constrains consumption and growth is bad for business, that
is, for a system addicted to and wholly dependent on growth for its
survival. This is the capitalist system and it is now being threatened by
its own weapons.
In the 1970s this long-term impact could not be predicted. The laws passed
to protect air, water and wilderness were not enough to drastically shrink
consumption, because oil and energy were cheap, too cheap, and thus did
not
provide signals to the public that economic growth was not sustainable and
that society needed to go in a different direction, towards conserving,
not
spending. The failure of the system to implement full cost pricing is now
brutally obvious.
Two re****ts that came out in 1972, however, did tell a different story.
The
Limits to Growth (now updated twice) said clearly that a finite planet
could
not sustain infinite growth. The Blueprint for Survival, published by The
Ecologist in the UK, was far more im****tant because it extended the
analysis
of the limits to growth to all the parameters of society and proposed a
radical new model for humanity of conservation, frugality, political
decentralization, regionalization of economies, and creation of a
small-scale conserver society based on a steady-state model rather than
one
of economic expansion.
Not many environmentalists, much less elected officials or governments,
took
either re****t seriously. They faded into oblivion, at least in the United
States. After the 1970s, with the onset of Reaganism, economic expansion
as
well as globalization dictated by industry, government elites, technocrats
and financiers, all notions of conservation were thrown to the wind.
Materialism and
prosperity ruled the day. Even today technocrats like Nordhaus &
Shellenberger (in their absurd book, Break Through) preach Prosperity as
the
answer to our environmental and social problems...a thesis being warmly
embraced by deniers and doubters who don't want to hear the bad news being
brought to them by climate scientists. This is like curing smallpox by
spreading the virus more widely and hoping enough people survive. Come
think
of it, isn't this what the free market guys have always proposed? Survival
of the fittest?
A few glitches appeared here and there: the Santa Barbara oil spill, the
Arab oil embargo, a few wars, but little impeded the mad rush of consumers
to buy, consume and build. Rampant real estate development with low
interest
rates, cheap land, government-financed roads and infrastructure, cheap
im****ts, and above all cheap energy, became the American Way of Life.
At the same time this was happening, various social movements were
expanding, against racial discrimination, poverty, and conflict in Latin
America, and for gay and women's rights, abortion and social justice in
general. Abroad the dissolution of the Soviet Union reconfigured the map
of
Europe. New op****tunities arose for liberals to organize, mobilize and
protest. Amidst the clamor for peace and social justice, concern for the
environment and nature was essentially forgotten; worse, those who were
still concerned about it were directly attacked for pur****tedly not caring
about the needs of minorities and the poor. Radical minority leaders and
groups accused the environmental organizations of elitism, exclusionism
and
even racism. Concerns for nature and habitat were derided as distractions
from the "real" problems of society, as merely hobbies of the middle and
upper cl*****.
Meanwhile, the large national organizations based in Wa****ngton DC, who
had
had growing member****p and influence on all levels of government, were
becoming heavily dependent not on member dues and sup****t but on large
"liberal" funders. Multimillion dollar grants from the Rockefeller and
Ford
foundations, to groups like Natural Resources Defense Council and
Environmental Defense Fund and others, enabled them to expand their staff,
pay high salaries, move to larger cu****er offices, and put prominent
cor****ate executives and attorneys on their boards of directors so as to
secure a direct line to cor****ate money.
At the same time this enabled them to cultivate the mass media and present
themselves as spokesmen for the environmental movement, a role they still
hold today. Gaining access to congressional committees as well as the
White
House was also a key part of their success. Once all of these links had
been
put in place, based on a continuing influx of foundation and donor money,
it
became evident that they were no longer in a position to rock the boat or
challenge industry and cor****ations, much less promote radical change.
Funders, media and congress alike would not accept radical divergence from
traditional reformism, much less any serious questioning of economic
growth
and the capitalist system. These national groups were now an accepted part
of The Establishment, and their credibility and very existence depended on
their compliance and sup****t of the system that they had been challenging
in
a piecemeal and "reasonable" fa****on since 1970. Their loyalty now lay to
their funders, not their members, and to solidifying their status and
credibility with congress and the media.
This is the situation today, and anyone who doubts it need only look at
the
knee-jerk sup****t of the major DC-based groups of the useless diluted
energy
legislation (Boxer, Lieberman, Sanders) under consideration, the continued
energy subsidies to fossil and nuclear utilities, the sup****t of carbon
trading (something welcomed by coal utilities as a way to continue
reliance
on coal), the refusal to impose carbon taxes or stringent mandatory
efficiency standards, etc.
But wait a minute. There are missing pieces...and they are the same pieces
that were missing in the 1970s: the peace groups, minority groups, unions,
leftists, women's rights groups, civil liberties groups...not the groups
per
se but rather their MEMBERS, which presumably constitute the liberal
segment
of American society. And we must not leave out the kneejerk sup****ters of
the Democratic Party, who have consistently refused to hold their elected
officials (or president) accountable on major issues like war, health
care,
and energy.
Here we find tens of millions of LIBERAL Americans who have studiously
placed "Environment" at the bottom (if at all) of their laundry list of
im****tant issues. One could argue that prior to the global warming issue
there was not such a sense of urgency and that there "other people" as
well
as a large, well organized environmental movement to take care of such
secondary matters.
Of course the urgency was always there but no one took it seriously, not
even after the Arab oil embargo of 1972-3, because the price of oil was
still low. Today it is ONLY the high price of oil that is riling
Americans.
As for global warming, most people believe what they read in their
newspaper
or see on TV or the internet, or are told by their friends and colleagues
(who know no more than they do). They don't believe it, or they think
technology will rescue us. Or the politicians.
Today Americans remain in serious denial about energy and global warming.
They really believe that oil prices will and SHOULD come down, thus
revealing their ignorance about the underlying cause of global warming:
cheap energy. They get angry at personal inconvenience and the notion that
solving the global warming problem will necessarily involve hard****p. As
their homes get incinerated, flooded and blown away, they demand that the
government help them rebuild in the same place. They demand and get
subsidized federal flood insurance. They demand the right to cheap
gasoline
and blame the oil companies for the high prices. They pressure their
representatives to tax windfall profits of oil companies, and in response
the legislators promote offshore oil drilling (which would not only add to
global warming but would not make any oil available for at least a
decade).
Is ANYONE minding the store? Except for the re-insurance companies, who
wake
nights in cold sweats over global warming, no one is. What few people will
come out and say, even if they know it, is that we are now in a rapid and
likely irreversible convergence of global crises, all sparked and
exacerbated by the global economic growth model of capitalism:
a.. dimini****ng energy and mineral resources and the accompanying
increase
in cost of exploitation;
a.. huge industrialization and energy consumption expansion in China,
India and elsewhere;
a.. global-warming induced loss of of freshwater supplies, plus more
severe droughts, flooding, fires, heat waves, hurricanes, crop failures
and
food shortages;
a.. irreversible disruption of ecosystems, their natural services and
their component species, including im****tant pollinators of food crops;
a.. spread of insect-carrying diseases like West Nile virus;
a.. rising sea level, from melting ice sheets and glaciers, that will
envelop coastal areas, destroy settlements, fresh water and croplands, and
create a human exodus of hundreds of millions of refugees, as well as
threatening infrastructure in urban coastal areas (roads, power plants,
drinking water supplies, public trans****tation, sewage plants) thereby
endangering all sectors of the economy and social stability and committing
us to huge outlays of public funds to defend ourselves and our habitation,
as witness New Orleans and flooded communities along the Mississippi River
flood plain.
a.. unchecked population growth, especially in Africa and the middle
east.
The June 29th NY Times has a scary article on child marriage in Yemen, and
one man is interviewed...a man with 16 children by 2 wives. One cannot
help
but recognize that China's position today as the second largest world
economy would not have been possible without its one-child policy, which
was
long derided as authoritarian. Population growth forces people to
overexploit and deplete their local resources, such as wood, wild animals
and freshwater supplies, and resort to unecological agricultural and
harvesting practices.
We can blame our politicians for not wanting to stick out their necks on
things like carbon taxes or shutdown of coal plants. But in the end we
have
to blame ourselves. And this includes those members of the public who one
would expect to be in the forefront of radical restructuring of the
economy:
liberals. But where were they all since 1970? Where are they today?
They are dreaming on, of that joyful day when Barack Obama and the
Democrats
take control in Wa****ngton and save us from disaster. These are the people
that might have been, were they so inclined and a bit more educated on
nature and the environment, directly involved in the REAL survival issues
of
our day. Not in the usual fist-shaking anti-war demonstrations. Not in
heated and pointless attacks on Israel. Not in the wishy-washy pages of
The
Nation and In These Times. Not in the effort to purge the white man's
psyche
of racism (presumed to be in the gene pool of all whites if you believe
radical black rhetoric).
One hates to say to someone: drop what you are doing and do what I tell
you
to do. But any objective analysis of the global warming crisis would
completely justify this. In addition, the resolution of most social
justice
problems will in fact be SUBSUMED by an appropriate (and appropriately
radical) energy and economic agenda.
Such an agenda will, by decentralizing energy, take away power and profits
from the oil and nuke companies. Such an agenda will relocalize economies
so
they can feed themselves and rehabilitate their communities. Such an
agenda
will reclaim the vast tracts of exurbia so they can revert to nature (and
we
might help this along by ripping up lots of highways, thus allowing
greater
absorption of CO2 by soils). Such an agenda will shut down the malls and
theme parks and shopping centers out in the sticks and assist the revival
of
downtowns which are accessible by foot or bicycle.
Such an agenda will create jobs not only in renewable energy but through
massive recycling of materials and, above all, in public trans****tation,
arguably our most im****tant challenge along with renewable energy. Such an
agenda would move people and development back from the coasts and away
from
flood plains and fire-prone chapparal and dry deserts, thus saving the
public billions of dollars to protect and rebuild these communities, and
allowing these areas to revert to nature.
It will facilitate preservation of small farms that serve local
communities
and regions instead of mass markets (thus providing tasty healthy food
that
our supermarkets are incapable of providing). Such an agenda will lead to
renovation and rehabilitation of older buildings and reduce the use of
virgin wood and metals as well as carbon-intensive cement production. Such
an agenda will move towards an end to the era of plastics which are
killing
our oceans and marine species, filling our landfills, and lining the
pockets
of beverage companies.
But a cautionary note for those who focus only on technological solutions,
such as "green growth". That era will never emerge unless and until we
definitively kill off fossil fuels and succeed in reducing the threat of
global warming through massive and quick reductions in energy consumption.
Those promoting green jobs and growth need to first align themselves
unconditionally with those calling for a return to the 350 ppm CO2 urged
by
Jim Hansen and others, setting a target of an 80% reduction in CO2
emissions
by 2020, not 2050. By 2050 the game is over not only for green growth but
the planet. There is no smiley face of renewable energy. It can only
emerge
and thrive AFTER we end the age of carbon, not simultaneously.
The liberals need to get on board fast. It is time to stop blaming the oil
companies and look at ourselves. The responsibility for reducing energy
use - the BASIC one - lies with the consumer. High energy prices,
hopefully
higher ones in the near future, have started the ball rolling. Now all
citizens have to roll it faster, by demanding a carbon-free economy. Time
for them to understand that curbing global warming is the fastest, fairest
way towards a socially just AND sustainable planet.
--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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