The Future of Environmentalism?

I wrote this in the Spring of 2005 in preparation for a panel at Earlham on the Future of Environmentalism so it is somewhat dated but I think it captures my attitude at the time. This was pre- Al Gore so I think as I look back on it I would have liked to have emphasized more of what we can do rather than all the doom and gloom.

“On The Future of the Environmental Movement”
April 2005

I’d like to begin by going back to my own experience with environmentalism in college. It was 1991- the 30th anniversary of first Earth Day and heady times for the new environmental movement. Along with a friend, I started Greenfire- an environmental group on campus named after the Aldo Leopold tale. During that time, We had organized several earth day celebrations, heard David Foreman of Earth First speak and David Brower of the Sierra Club. We were inspired by the new interest and support for environmental issues- renewable energy, wilderness protection, greenspace movement, indigenous rights, and rise of NGO’s like WWF and RAN. We felt on the cusp of real change both in the country and the world as it related to environmental awareness and action. Fast Forward to 2005- almost 15 years later…where are we now?

ANWR looks like it will be open for drilling despite a recent report I saw that indicated all the possible oil extracted from ANWR would stave off the world wide fuel supply drop by 5 months. The new Bush administration so-called environmental laws- “healthy forests” “clean air” and the new mercury emissions standards replace meaningful dialogue and problem solving on env. Issues with empty slogans more akin to commercial jingles than substantive reform. We have backed off the Kyoto agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And I recently saw my first Hummer on campus.

Even more alarmingly, the neo-liberal ideology- that champions free-market economics, individualism, and private ownership has increasingly colonized our public, democratic spaces. Whether it’s our public schools, social security, national forests, or salmon- now, more than ever, we are descending rapidly into a new “ownership” society. Transgenic frankenfish- Salmon “owned” by the Aqua Advantage corporation are now breeding with wild populations and out-competing with them. Farmers in rural Mexico are finding ADM patented corn in their fields- threatening centuries of genetic diversity and a cultural way of life. National Parks that are now more amusement than wild- with smog alerts, traffic jams, and the possibility of “seeing” Yellowstone without stepping out of your car. The term wilderness means “self-willed.” There is little that is self-willed anymore. We now must manage everything- our bears have radio collars on them, our parks have fences, and our forests need controlled burns.

All the while, environmentalists remain dangerously fragmented. We fight amongst ourselves in the academy deconstructing notions of wilderness and nature. We have allowed the movement to be painted with the broad brush of economic and cultural elitism. Apparently, all of us are well-off, white, tree-hugging, backpackers with a taste for granola and a liberal political agenda. We drive Volvo’s with Darwin fish on the back, shop at Whole Foods, and wear copious amounts of fleece. Most stereotypes have small kernels of truth behind the image and such is the case here as well. The fact is that we have been elitist. We are comprised of mostly well-off white folks. Environmentalism has been described as a “full-stomach” phenomenon. Only those with full-stomachs (food, shelter, etc.) can take the time to worry about and care about natural spaces.

So what has happened to the movement? Aldo Leopold once said that he feared in making ecological management easy to understand we have made it trivial. Reduce, reuse, recycle- a catchy but vacuous environmental ethic is just a symptom of the trivialization of environmentalism. Save a baby seal, defend the rainforest, recycle your cans and bottles. All of this ignores the greater threats and issues. Worse, real movements toward change have been co-opted and commodified. For example, the term organic is now a government certified label. Small, local growers are increasingly finding it difficult to go through the regulation and bureaucratization of having an organic label. Meanwhile, the greatest increase in the organic market comes from the large multinational food corporations. In the end, acting “environmentally” might mean buying an organic tomato shipped from California over a local “non-organic” one- which one is better? We don’t know are own local places. Few of us can name our local trees, birds, and other species. Few of us know the intimate details of an evolved cultural ecology in our local spaces. On Southwest Field Studies, our students always remark that they know more about the natural history of the desert Southwest than their own backyards. We grow increasingly more detached from community, from locality, from a real sense of space and communion with the natural.

So, where is the hope? How do we resist the trivialization of the environmental movement? How do we find alternative ways of valuing rather than the normalized free-market, ownership society we are currently experiencing? How do we shift environmental concerns from the movement of the elite to the cause of the many? I have several suggestions. One- this has been said elsewhere but it is worth repeating- we must repair the symbolic and real damage done by the falsely constructed binary between nature and culture. Ecosystems include humans and human activity. Michael Soule, the noted conservation biologist makes the point that most wilderness areas- at least in the US- have been “managed” and controlled by native Americans for quite sometime prior to the arrival of Europeans. Additionally, voices from the developing world remind us that separating humans from nature is a uniquely western construction. Models are legion of ecosystems and environments that are actively managed by human populations in a long developed relationship that has benefited both parties. Gary Nabhan in his book Cultures of Habitat talks of the correlation between how long a human population has lived in the same place and environmental problems. In turns out that if you overlay data showing the rate of stability of human inhabitance with locations experiencing environmental stress of one kind or another, a pattern emerges. The longer a people stay in one place, the better stewards they tend to be. We are losing much of this indigenous knowledge with the idea that “protected” land must, by definition exclude humans. Wendell Berry writes of renewing a type of agroecological ethic- where intimate connection and relation to land become the very foundations of culture, of citizenship, and of democracy. How can we reconnect with the local? Perhaps we need to start acting globally by thinking locally rather than the other way around.

Second, we must capitalize on a broader, more flexible construction of the human-environment relationship through the forging of alliances. The synergies between social justice issues and environmental issues have been well documented in the last 10 years and represent a real and developing coalition. National and global poverty issues, air quality, access to clean drinking water, affordability of energy, and the differential effects of global climate change to those on the margins all suggest a common agenda for the vast majority of the world’s population. This does not mean that we are a homogeneous group. There are real differences between many in this new, potential coalition. But we need not think of new environmental coalitions as some monolithic voting bloc. Ephemeral modes of resistance can be incredibly powerful. Let’s take a central ecological principle to heart- diversity equals strength. Alliances can develop and disperse while still continuing the common cause. A recent essay in Audubon reveals this potential: “Every time sportsmen and environmentalists get together, you are marshalling a minimum of 65 percent of the population” -Ted Williams. We need to be more strategic and actively seek those alliances when it serves the greater good. When a duck hunter and an urban single mother and a college student are all fighting a common cause- “Katie bar the door” as they say in Wisconsin because we got power.

Finally, we must speak truth to power. The environmental movement is not an elitist movement. Just as an example, a poll from Zogby international in 2003 revealed that 54 % of Republicans favored more wilderness protection, 66% of independents, and 75% of democrats. Polling by the National Hispanic Env. Council in 2002 showed over 70% approval for more wilderness protection in CA, AZ, and NM. The US Forest Service’s own data shows that only 7-18% in the US oppose more wilderness protection either in their own state or nationally. We need to re-brand ourselves to borrow from the corporate world. If Martha Stewart can do it, so can we.

To conclude, I guess I have hope but not optimism about the future of environmentalism. I remember feeling, after listening to Dave Foreman speak passionately at an Earth First rally in Wisconsin back in college that we could change the world. I’d like to think that we still can.

A Bridge To Nowhere

In New Zealand, there is a tourist attraction called The Bridge to Nowhere. In lies within Whanganui National Park on the south island. Back in the early parts of the 1900's, white New Zealanders, flush with notions of progress and technological might, built the bridge across the Whanganui river in anticipation that human development and taming of the wilderness would follow. It was sort of the first version of "build it and they will come." Well, they never came. The bridge still exists, a bizarre architectural oddity in the middle of a national park. It is also, of course, a symbol of the folly of human short-sightedness and our ability to create do things before, as Rachel Carson once wrote, thinking about whether we *should* do things.

In many ways, I see No Child Left Behind as a "bridge to nowhere." All of us agree that our children ought to "achieve" and that a challenging, enriching, and engaging curriculum is a huge part of that. But the real question is, what kind of achievement? Certainly, the bridge to nowhere in New Zealand was an "achievement." But is it the kind of achievement we want? In looking at the many challenges before us as we look forward into the 21st century, it seems clear that the kind of achievement we are foisting upon our schools is a bridge to nowhere. It neither connects us meaningfully to our past nor does it enable us to consider a more hopeful future.

What might we do otherwise? As I have stated before on this blog, I would like to advocate for a No Planet Left behind educational intitiative. I see at least two significant issues that ought to focus our attention to a new kind of bridge:

1. The emerging challenge of global climate change
2. The rapid amplification of globalization

Both of these connect to issues of equality, global pluralism and multiculturalism, and the need for a re-imagination of notions of citizenship, knowledge, and social justice. This is not just a leftist project. The growth of the economies in India and China are a stark reminder that we, as Americans, will not be able to control our destiny much longer if we continue on our present path. Schools (and our government) are lagging behind curriculum innovation that meets these challenges.

Training everyone up to be the best achieving capitalist they can be is simply unsustainable. It is a race to the bottom. It is building a bridge to nowhere.