To continue the conversation about the ostensible “death of environmentalism,” we invited four next-generation leaders to discuss the issue with one another via email. Herewith, in almost real time, we are publishing their thoughts in our pages. All the participants are fellows with the Environmental Leadership Program, which works with emerging activists and professionals to inspire social and political change. So is environmentalism bound for the morgue, or alive and kicking? Stay tuned this week to find out. Most recent post of the day.
From: Torri Estrada
To: Stephen Moret, Swati Prakash, Thompson Smith
Subject: Getting the ball rolling
Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2005, at 7:56 a.m. PST
Dear Stephen, Swati, and Thompson,
There has been too little debate within the environmental movement about who we are and where we are going, and too few reflections on our strategy for environmental and social change. In fact, sometimes I feel like the “environmental movement” is less of a coherent movement and more like a bunch of residents in an apartment complex; we all live together, but we probably do not know many of the people in the building — and maybe not even the people on our floor. Therefore, I have to applaud the authors of “The Death of Environmentalism” for fanning the flames of debate. Their arguments have some merit, and there are parts of the paper that I agree with. I would like to step back and highlight a couple of key points I have taken away from it.
First, I think we need to define what the environmental movement is. The DOE paper defined the environmental movement in fairly narrow terms, partly due to its primary subject matter (global climate change) and its intended audience (mainstream environmentalists and foundations working on global warming). But the DOE paper itself, as well as subsequent debates about it, left out many important parts of the environmental movement and their contributions to keeping environmentalism alive: environmental-health advocates, the environmental-justice movement, the international “sustainability” movement, and the dozens of other grassroots efforts related to the environment.
While DOE critiques the narrow frame of environmentalism (for excluding the “human environment” and failing to connect to larger social, economic, and political issues and dynamics), the paper and ensuing debate suffer from a lack of diverse voices in this ostensible autopsy of the environmental movement. In this debate and others, it is very important that we bring together a broad range of voices to evaluate our environmental work and figure out what we need to do to either revive it or build something new.
While I agree with the DOE authors that we need to connect environmentalism (narrowly defined) to larger movements for economic and social justice (and a broader, richer set of progressive values), we also need to address the issues that divide us: race, class, strategy, and power (or our tendency to confuse having power with rubbing up against it but not having it). In the United States, these dynamics divide the movement(s). How can we expect to develop a proactive vision and a common set of values when we are so divided along these lines? The environmental movement needs to refocus on building a broad grassroots constituency to build long-term political power. In this effort, we need to be able to speak with a wide range of people, from the inner city to the farm, from the working class to CEOs, and to people of color, immigrants, and everyone in between.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts,
Torri
From: Swati Prakash
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Thompson Smith
Subject: The things that matter
Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2005, at 11:40 a.m. PST
Hi folks,
As an environmental-justice activist, I must confess that I read “The Death of Environmentalism” article with the mild interest I might exhibit overhearing distant cousins arguing at a family gathering; I found it interesting, insightful, and even entertaining, but not compelling or new enough to draw my attention away from figuring out what’s for dinner. (Can you tell I’m writing this just before lunch?) By no means do I intend to trivialize the important insights communicated by Shellenberger and Nordhaus, nor do I underestimate the transformative potential of the article for a movement that often does seem mired in its own tactics. But for many frontline environmental-justice activists and organizers, these insights are neither new nor particularly profound.
To summarize three of the authors’ main critiques of the environmental movement:
- The environmental movement suffers from a myopic obsession with legislative and other technocratic policy “fixes” for environmental problems.
- The movement has failed to articulate a compelling and attractive vision for environmental progress, and fails to communicate in the language of values rather than obligations.
- The movement has grown increasingly isolated over the years, ultimately amounting to a self-replicating (and stubbornly homogenous) community that cannot forge long-lasting or effective alliances with other interest groups.
My perspective is that many people of color and indigenous people who have been disproportionately affected by pollution, and by the exploitative relationship human beings have to our natural resources, learned these lessons and were often arguing them years ago. The article would have greatly benefited from at least acknowledging that these critiques have been made before, and that many who fall at least under the broadly defined umbrella of “environmentalist” are already working with these lessons in mind. (Of course, as Torri points out, this raises the equally hairy question of what exactly “environmentalism” is, and whether environmental justice is indeed a separate movement.)
I’m going to focus on the second critique, and leave the other two for later discussion. One of the strengths of the environmental-justice (EJ) movement, which very broadly defines the environment as “where we live, work, play, learn, and worship,” has been its ability to articulate a powerful and compelling vision of human health, justice, and sustainability. As a movement that has put human beings at the center of our struggles and says that we all matter, EJ resonates among many who find themselves alienated by the message inadvertently sent by the environmental movement that we only matter inasmuch as we are the problem.
At the first National People of Color Environmental Summit held in Washington, D.C., in 1991, over 600 delegates from across the nation gathered and, over the course of five days, crafted 17 Principles of Environmental Justice. The principles are a combination of visionary statements such as those affirming “the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction,” and more pragmatic philosophies about how we do our work (“the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision making”). Although it’s a bit of a running joke within the environmental-justice movement that we’ve been able to agree on almost nothing since then, the stabilizing force of these principles has been a crucial anchor for the far-flung reaches of environmental-justice struggles. The powerful vision and values communicated in the principles are the foundation upon which all EJ strategies, goals, and tactics are built, and they confer a strength of conviction and integrity that I’ve always seen as a tremendous strength of the movement (the EJ movement, that is)
This point was also made, by the way, by Peggy Shepard, WE ACT’s executive director, at the Future of Transportation conference organized in Los Angeles this past weekend by the Labor Community Strategy Center. I’ll share more later about this amazing gathering of community activists from across the nation who came together to discuss strategies for addressing transportation’s undue impact on climate change, and on historically marginalized communities. Now that’s the future not only of transportation, but perhaps of the very idea of what we consider to be “environmentalism.”
OK, I spent way more time ranting than I intended to. Believe it or not I’ve got some nice stuff to say about the article … but back to work for now.
Peace,
Swati
From: Thompson Smith
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Swati Prakash
Subject: Re: Getting the ball rolling
Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2005, at 11:52 a.m. PST
Dear ELPers and Gristers,
Thanks to Torri for kicking off this discussion of the Shellenberger-Nordhaus piece with his usual incisiveness, and also his knack for doing it in a way that invites conversation rather than armed battle.
Certainly, Torri is right that the DOE piece defined environmentalism too narrowly, and that a wider vision of what constitutes the movement would have led S&N to more complicated conclusions. The environmental-justice movement is all about bringing together the usual green concerns with the imperative for social and economic justice. One of the central problems (which Torri was getting at) is that the various segments of the movement remain too segregated from one another, too unaware of what each is doing, too divided by the very barriers of race and class and gender we are working to overcome, too uncoordinated to really make effective use of the ideas and power that we might have in a more unified effort. I think the bridging of those divides is the most important contribution that ELP is making to the movement as a whole.
But I also think the problem runs even deeper. It is that too many of us fail to build into our work and our organizations a consciousness that the roots of our ecological crisis and the roots of our social inequities and injustices are deeply intertwined. The project of building a more sustainable society is ultimately inseparable from the project of building a more just society. This isn’t just a matter of philosophy. It is also about the concrete problems we must overcome and the strategy we must use to get there.
This is arguably less true in dealing with the narrower issues that the “big greens” have traditionally addressed: regulation of pollution, preservation of land, etc. It is perhaps more true when we are dealing with the bigger issues that now threaten the entire globe, such as global warming, mass extinctions, the collapse of ocean fisheries, soil loss, and freshwater scarcity.
In my work in Montana for local and statewide groups, I have often found myself struggling against the cramped vision that S&N so forcefully critique. In a number of interesting ways, I think that poses one of the bigger ideological barriers to getting these groups to develop broader and more diverse alliances and memberships. The grandest hope extended by staffs and boards was simply to slow down the pace of environmental destruction. Few if any were interested in a bigger strategy to create a sustainable society. They wanted to declare more areas off limits to development or resource extraction. Fewer were interested in challenging the way we live where we live. Most hoped to be a fly in the ointment, to stop bad things from happening. Fewer were interested in putting as much energy into making positive things happen. The standard M.O. was purely reactive. Whenever the occasional board member would advocate better planning, a more long-term vision, and proactive efforts, the old guard usually responded with angry, cynical sneers. They commonly defined their duty as “putting out fires,” and regarded anything less pessimistic as dangerously unrealistic, a waste of precious money and time.
But what we need to be doing is setting fires, so to speak. (Or in some cases literally, when it comes to the restoration of a healthy fire regime in the Rocky Mountain West. But that’s another debate!) As Shellenberger and Nordhaus imply, there are two ultimately unrealistic aspects to the old approach. First, a defensive strategy can never win a war. And second, we are dooming any chance of creating a sustainable society by never really trying to create one. We need an offensive program, aimed not just at slowing the pace of destruction, but at creating a sustainable society.
I have the greatest admiration for the work of many of the older national groups. It would be foolish in the extreme for any environmentalist to think that those groups are anything but absolutely essential and deserving of our eternal gratitude (and continued support) for the astonishing accomplishments of the past several decades. To me, the implication of the points raised by Shellenberger and Nordhaus are not that the Sierra Club should no longer haul in millions of dollars to do its work. It should, and it should get even more money. (But it should, in the process, dramatically broaden the diversity of its staff and membership, and strengthen its connection to other groups.) There is a finite universe of funds available for environmental work. We need to expand that universe, and add to it new kinds of organizations that clearly link social justice and environmental sustainability in their core missions — organizations that argue bluntly and boldly for the fundamental changes we actually need if we are to become a sustainable society.
Sorry, this is too long already! And I have a grant deadline! I look forward to hearing more later.
Tom
- – - – - – - – - -
Torri Estrada is a program officer at the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, N.Y., and co-director of Environmental Justice Solutions, which provides support to community-based organizations, social-justice groups, and the public sector in the areas of environmental justice and policy.
Stephen Moret is president and CEO of the Greater Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce and a former project supervisor with Trinity Consultants, where he advised industrial clients on air-quality issues.
Swati Prakash is the environmental-health director for West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT for Environmental Justice), a 16-year-old environmental-justice organization based in northern Manhattan.
Thompson Smith is director of tribal history and ethnogeography projects for the Salish-Pend d’Oreille Culture Committee, a department of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. Until 2002, he was executive director of the Flathead Resource Organization.
Playing Well With Others
From: Swati Prakash
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Thompson Smith
Subject: My Matchbox car is emission-free
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005, at 9:44 a.m. PST
Good morning folks,
Torri and Tom, I appreciated hearing your thoughts yesterday, and it got me thinking about what we need to do to overcome the many social obstacles and power differences we’ve identified as some of the root causes of the environmental movement’s problems.
The one strategy suggested by S&N that resonates very strongly with me is the necessity of working with the labor movement to be able to win on any “environmental” struggles. This is more than just a strategy that has long been used by many in the environmental-justice movement; indeed, it is a familiar way of life for many of us. People of color are disproportionately represented in the nation’s most hazardous and dangerous jobs, a fact that led to the articulation of the eighth Principle of Environmental Justice, “the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment, without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment.” The fact that people of color are more likely to face pollution and toxic hazards on both sides of the fence line has led to the evolution of the Just Transition movement, a natural forging of labor and EJ interests. Since 1996 this coalition of labor, economic and environmental-justice activists, indigenous people, and working-class people of color has been working to ensure the “just transition” of communities and workers from unsafe workplaces and environments to healthy, viable communities with a sustainable economy.
Here in New York City, WE ACT has worked with the Transport Workers Union Local 100 since 1997 to reinforce our demands that the New York City Transit Agency reduce the disproportionate number of dirty diesel buses garaged uptown in communities of color. Our shared perspective has always been that the health hazards created by diesel exhaust affect both workers and community residents, and a lack of accountability characterizes NYCTA’s relationship to both groups. Indeed, as we approach our second decade of collaboration with the Transport Workers Union, WE ACT is expanding our analysis of vehicle emissions from focusing on local health impacts to understanding the contribution of vehicle-related air pollution to global climate change. Consequently, we find ourselves with a tremendous opportunity to work with our labor allies to encourage the creation of jobs in the public transportation sector through increased public investments in clean, modern, efficient public transportation that is accessible to all.
Tom, yesterday you talked about recognizing that the roots of our ecological crisis and the roots of our social inequities and injustices are deeply intertwined. I think that transportation is one clear example of precisely this reality. Transportation is a sector with unmistakably linked environmental and social-justice impacts — or, more accurately, environmental impacts that can be at least partially traced to institutionalized social inequities (i.e., racism). The rise of suburbs and their supporting highway infrastructure in this nation was fueled in part by the post-World War II “white flight” of many middle-class families from urban centers. The redlining and economic divestment from the communities of color that were left behind in the city centers led to the deterioration of what, in many urban areas, had been a vibrant public transportation system.
The result is the well-known malaise of urban sprawl, which is understood and framed as poor planning or poor investment of transportation funding, but never as the result of the racism-fueled fear of cities.
However we choose to describe the root cause of this nation’s obsession with cars (and hey, being from New Jersey I’ll be the first to identify with that obsession, although my dreams of hydrogen-powered muscle car ownership remain in the realm of fantasy), the net impact is irrefutable — a society of increasingly isolated individuals driving in separate cars, with a growing, irrational personal economic and global environmental cost. I agree with S&N that forging effective alliances to focus on creating a sustainable economy is a keystone in the architecture of a “new” environmentalism. The challenge I’ll pose is whether the “new” environmentalism suggested by the authors, which operates on a national level and seems dominated by white men who already enjoy leadership positions, is sufficiently different from the old guard to avoid the many other pitfalls of old-school environmentalism — those weaknesses both mentioned and not mentioned by the authors of DOE.
Peace,
Swati
From: Thompson Smith
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Swati Prakash
Subject: Re: My Matchbox car is emission-free
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005, at 10:39 a.m. PST
Hey Swati, Torri, and Stephen,
Swati, you took words right out of my mouth. Allying with unions in our effort to broaden and strengthen the movement is important in the ways you describe — as an essential part of diversifying environmentalism across both class and race, for both moral and strategic reasons. But I think it is also crucial in two other ways.
First, environmentalists, EJers, civil-rights activists, and progressives in every arena need to recognize that progressive work in general has been made much more difficult over the past quarter century by the decline of the union movement in the U.S. A big reason for the rightward lurch that S&N describe has been the evisceration of unions as a powerful countervailing force. Politically and socially, there is simply no replacement for a strong union movement.
This is obvious to some, but not to many enviros. We too often have a tendency, as Shellenberger and Nordhaus correctly note, to look at the trees rather than the forest. We see unions in specific cases taking obviously anti-environment positions, and we lose sight of the long-term importance of unions in fighting for a more progressive and rational country, and for a fairer distribution of power and wealth. That loss of vision is due in part, as Torri notes, to many enviros lacking a deeper systemic critique of the roots of the ecological crisis and its connection to the maldistribution of power and wealth.
As a result of that disconnect, we almost never see members of conventional “environmental” organizations walking the picket lines or helping workers trying to save or form unions. Here in Montana, we see workers picketing Stone Container or Louisiana Pacific one day for their crappy contract offers, and the next day they’re buying the corporate line about the need to clear-cut every national forest in sight. Yet I’ve found myself talking to brick walls in trying to get environmentalists interested in working on that contradiction. EJ activists do this all the time, as Swati can attest. It’s another reason why we need to bridge the yawning chasm between EJ and mainline environmentalism.
This leads to a second area of importance in developing alliances with unions. When unions were the heart of progressivism in the U.S., it meant that our movement as a whole was about protecting and enhancing people’s livelihoods. It was about bread and butter stuff. Now (for those not in the heart of EJ) we’re all about protecting life, but too little about livelihood. That is a big part of our political weakness. How are our groups, or the alliances we’re a part of, going to help somebody get a good job?
Swati, let’s continue the transportation angle on this, which I agree is crucial. And do we ever have stories of relevance to that issue from Big Sky country.
Onward through the fog,
Tom
From: Torri Estrada
To: Stephen Moret, Swati Prakash, Thompson Smith
Subject: Oh Death!
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005, at 11:36 a.m. PST
Good morning my verbose comrades,
Sounds like we all agree the DOE’s authors have not acknowledged the contributions, critiques, and visions of other key players in the environmental movement, defined broadly. I wholeheartedly agree with Swati that many of the critiques offered by DOE are not new (except for this discussion of values, framing, and vision, which I will prod us to discuss later), and I continue to be frustrated with the environmental movement’s knack of “talking around” its weaknesses and shortcomings (among itself) without a deep commitment to real institutional change.
This leads me to another issue, related to what Swati referred to as the environmental movement’s “obsession with legislative and other technocratic policy ‘fixes’ for environmental problems.” I support the work of many progressive organizations outside the environmental movement. Many of these organizations make broad, strategic alliances within and outside their movements for social justice. But rarely, if ever, do they work with environmental groups. So that leads me to ask: Why don’t other movements in the U.S. and abroad readily ally themselves in struggle with the environmental movement, especially the mainstream, national organizations?
I think part of the answer is that the strategies and tactics of the environmental movement are largely centered around legislative and technical fixes, while those of other movements are rooted in more structural/systemic change and issues of accountability. The environmental movement does not play well with others, partly because: 1) they think their work will be “diluted” and made less effective by taking on other issues; 2) they do not want to give up their agenda and their ability to control the debate on an issue (which may be partly driven by who funds them); and 3) they do not want to challenge their relationships to institutions, policies, and people who, in some cases, are helping to perpetuate larger social and economic problems that other movements are struggling to address. What do you all think?
I wanted to pose a few questions: Can you all identify the venues, alliances, and spaces where the environmental movement — again, defined broadly — is discussing and addressing its shortcomings? And where are the dialogues and alliances being built between the environmental movement and other movements, be it with labor, racial justice, etc.?
Too much to say … I am off to a lunch meeting.
Torri
From: Stephen Moret
To: Torri Estrada, Swati Prakash, Thompson Smith
Subject: Re: Oh Death!
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005, at 10:23 p.m. PST
Hello fellow ELPsters,
I apologize for being a bit late to the party. Things have been busy in Baton Rouge!
My read on the DOE article overall is that it would not have become such a big deal if not for its rather provocative title. Although I am not personally a member of the Sierra Club, I found myself largely convinced by the arguments in Carl Pope’s response letter. In particular, I agree with his assertion that the DOE article itself offered limited analysis to support its conclusions. This is not to say that I disagree with DOE’s central thesis that major changes are needed.
At the same time, I think the response to the DOE article has provoked a very productive dialogue about the current and future status of the environmental movement, one that hopefully will lead to a better future for the movement itself and the environment.
While I’m not intimately familiar with the existing efforts to curb carbon emissions in the U.S., I was intrigued by the DOE argument that these existing efforts would do little to address the overall issue. If true, this would represent an indictment of the leadership of the environmental movement akin to Matt Miller’s criticism of the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties (i.e., that their proposals fall far short of addressing the problems they purportedly are designed to solve) in his book The Two Percent Solution.
I also agree with the point made in DOE that the environment has wide but shallow political support among the electorate. People want the environment to be better, and the air and water to be clean, but they implicitly make trade-offs in how they vote. Some of the topics advanced by environmental groups (e.g., issues like non-native plant species) do not resonate very much with the public at large. My opinion is that the lack of a groundswell for modern environmental policy issues is because the most pressing concerns (e.g., clean air and water) largely have been addressed by prior legislative efforts. Yes, there are still debates about coal-fired power plants, etc., but I believe the public at large has few urgent environmental concerns.
In my personal view, global warming is a different environmental issue than clean air, etc., in terms of the scale of the problem, the level of public understanding of it, and the tactics and strategy required to address it. To indict the entire environmental movement because it hasn’t convinced the American public to take a particular set of positions on this very complex issue is, in my view, a little unfair and naive. I personally am not yet convinced that we fully understand the scale of the problem and the full set of potential solutions. With more time, research, and communication, we may yet develop a much broader shared perspective on the issue, as well as new approaches to address it.
Too often, I have perceived the global-warming mantra to be focused on legislating behavior that we can reasonably expect to cause significant economic hardship. Shouldn’t there be some reasoned debate about the trade-offs, e.g., less access to health care for vulnerable populations? For example, all across the country, states are struggling to maintain their Medicaid programs due to spiraling costs. With less resources to go around, the poor are most likely to get hurt first and worst. Whatever solutions are proposed for global warming in the U.S. should be sensitive to this.
Heading to bed…
Stephen
- – - – - – - – - -
Torri Estrada is a program officer at the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, N.Y., and co-director of Environmental Justice Solutions, which provides support to community-based organizations, social-justice groups, and the public sector in the areas of environmental justice and policy.
Stephen Moret is president and CEO of the Greater Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce and a former project supervisor with Trinity Consultants, where he advised industrial clients on air-quality issues.
Swati Prakash is the environmental-health director for West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT for Environmental Justice), a 16-year-old environmental-justice organization based in northern Manhattan.
Thompson Smith is director of tribal history and ethnogeography projects for the Salish-Pend d’Oreille Culture Committee, a department of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. Until 2002, he was executive director of the Flathead Resource Organization.
Power Back to the People
From: Swati Prakash
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Thompson Smith
Subject: Re: Oh Death!
Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005, at 10:37 a.m. PST
Hi everyone,
On my way to work this morning (after dropping off my dry cleaning at the non-perc-using “Muhammad’s Environmental Cleaners” on my block in Central Harlem), I was mulling over what the term “environmentalist” really means, and what exactly we are referring to when we talk about “the environmental movement.”
How would many of us, whether we label ourselves environmentalists, environmental or social-justice activists, progressives, independents, or just regular folks with a conscience, describe what it is that we are working toward? Maybe we would use simple terms like wanting a world in which there is enough to go around, and where everyone enjoys the basic right to a healthy environment and livelihood. Many of us recognize the parallels between spatial and temporal inequities in the distribution of so-called environmental necessities like clean air and clean water. In other words, an economic and political system, and culturally-defined habits of consumption that give rise to gross demographic and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of pollution and environmental “amenities,” also encourage the depletion or disruption of natural resources today, with costs pushed off to some vague time in the future. For the nascent climate-justice movement, linking social justice with what we could call generational justice must be at the heart of any attempts to halt climate change. (For more on this, check out the “10 Principles for Just Climate Change Policies in the U.S.” articulated by the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative.)
Of course, it is only natural that people tend to prioritize the “here and now” over the “out there and later.” Rather than bemoan this human instinct to preserve what is nearest and dearest to us as precisely the kind of provincialism that undermines any attempts to tackle the global-scale, decades-long phenomenon of climate change, I think we should turn this into a strength. Returning to a more grassroots level, building a base, and encouraging sharp analysis of the relationship between our health and well-being, the health of the environment, consumption patterns, and politics will restore the onus of responsibility for environmental decision-making to everyday people. We need to reclaim this responsibility (and whatever power is associated with it) from the inner circles of the Washington, D.C., Beltway where we allowed it to migrate sometime between the first Earth Day in 1970 and the passage of the technically complex, nonprofit-influenced Clean Air Act of 1990.
As for the environmental movement growing increasingly isolated over the years: we should note that many large environmental organizations remain more or less as distant from the people and communities that are the most affected by environmental damage as they were in 1990. That is the year that the Southwest Network for Environmental & Economic Justice sent a letter to the “Group of Ten” (the 10 largest environmental organizations in the country) criticizing the racism inherent in each organization’s activities. Notably, this letter argued that a “resolution of the environmental crisis,” could only come about through “a people’s strategy which fully involves those who have historically been without power in this society.”
Poor people, working-class people, and people of color are certainly at the heart of this category. But I would warn us against repeating the fallacy of viewing progress on climate change (or any other environmental issue) as a trade-off to other basic human needs and rights, like access to affordable health care. Stephen, I’m not sure I understand how transitioning our economy to one that produces fewer greenhouse gases requires the siphoning of public resources away from other fundamental rights such as basic health care — although I do agree that our response to global warming can’t be about legislating behavior (unless it’s corporate behavior, where I’d say legislation absolutely must be a key tactic). Indeed, the heart of S&N’s argument, which I thoroughly agree with, is that one of the major weaknesses of the environmental movement has been allowing environmentalism to be framed as somehow about preserving the rights of nonhuman elements of our world (like “climate”) at the expense of people’s basic needs.
The truth for me is that healthy jobs that pay a living wage, access to affordable health care, and the right to live in a world where our homes are not at risk of being destroyed by the vagaries of anthropogenic climate change are all basic, attainable rights that are part of one package — not a “pick your poison” deal.
Well, I’m off to scrounge up some lunch before the snow hits New York.
Peace,
Swati
From: Swati Prakash
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Thompson Smith
Subject: Who’s moving these discussions?
Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005, at 11:29 a.m. PST
Torri,
Yesterday you asked who was having the conversations within the environmental movement about alliance-building and moving forward with new strategies — and then the very next email I got was from the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. The email was announcing a conversation their director will be participating in next Wednesday with one of the authors of “Death of Environmentalism” and a leader from the Movement Strategy Center in the San Francisco Bay Area, with the whole thing being moderated by a leader from Redefining Progress. (Yeah, yeah, we all know the Bay Area leads the way with everything pertaining to the environment and social justice.) The conversation, called “Headed to an Early Grave or a New Lease on Life?,” is striking in its illustration of how people of color, women, working-class people, and others who have historically been left out of the center of conversations about environmental goals and strategies should be (and already are) leading the way out of the “movement’s” current identity crisis.
Still lovin’ my city,
Swati
From: Thompson Smith
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Swati Prakash
Subject: Re: Who’s moving these discussions?
Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005, at 12:01 p.m. PST
Dear folks,
As usual, I’m grateful to be in conversation with my fellow ELPers, and for the chance to engage with such trenchant questions and insights. Here’s another two cents’ worth:
First, Swati’s right on about the need to turn the localism of much of our environmental work into a strength rather than a limitation. Interestingly, Swati, you’re echoing Carl Pope on that score. But if we’re going to do that with the problem of global warming, which manifests locally but can only be assessed in its global dimensions, we have to face the special problems that entails. (Like the Michael Crichtons of the world, who distort the issue by seizing upon local anomalies that seem to suggest global warming isn’t happening, when the patterns can only be discerned by looking at the world as a whole.)
All of this means the alliances among local groups (as well as between local groups and national/international groups) have to be strengthened immeasurably. That’s going to be one of the most crucial tasks facing us, and one of the greatest funding priorities, if we are really to deal with a problem so awesome in scale and complexity that it often seems just too overwhelming. Stephen’s right that global warming is a different kind of problem.
One crucial typo I made in my first email was in saying that environmental funding is finite. I meant to say it’s not finite. Just a minor boo boo. In fact, I think both S&N and Pope are wrong in implying that it is finite. One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to get into a fight for money. We need to increase the overall pool of money. We need the Sierra Club. We need WE ACT. We need ELP. And we also need some new organizations that lack the baggage of the old ones and can help build effective, powerful alliances. I have personal experience in seeing the futility and wasted time and energy that can be consumed in trying to change the identity and culture of a long-established organization. We should realize that the more effective and energized the movement as a whole becomes, the more money it will attract.
[Adam] Werbach suggests reshaping the Democratic party. That’s a debate that needs to happen. My only reaction to that idea is that it would be disastrous if it means no longer even trying to talk to the huge swath of red-staters who hear only from Rush Limbaugh. (Montana is a good example of how more fluid things are politically than they may appear — in 2004, Bush won about 60 percent of the state, but by nearly the same margin, we rejected an industry bid to re-legalize cyanide heap leach mining, put a Democrat in the governor’s mansion, and restored Democratic control to both the Senate and the House.)
All of us, as well as S&N, Pope, Grist, you name it, seem to agree that we need to define our vision and effectively communicate it at the level of basic values and emotions. But before we jump into questions of what that vision should be, we need to ask how are we going to define it. The process is crucial, and offers a great opportunity to begin forging the very alliances we are talking about. I believe there should be a series of expertly facilitated regional meetings around the country, involving the direct participation of all these groups, working through a well-proven process that will help us arrive at a common vision. I would recommend the oddly named “Technology of Participation,” a wonderful technique developed through the Institute of Cultural Affairs in inner-city Chicago. Their method really makes everyone feel they have a stake, and results in usable strategic action plans, not just a document that sits on a shelf and gathers dust.
We also have to keep in mind just how basic we have to get in defining that vision. Swati, I think the simple terms you mentioned are a good start, but I would argue we have to get to something even simpler — single words: Fairness. Respect. Life. Responsibility. This is Kristin Grimm Wolf’s thing in helping design effective media campaigns. Once we’ve defined that “vision thing,” she and similar folks should be engaged in helping design our short-, medium-, and long-term public-education campaigns. They know what works and what doesn’t far better than we do.
Advertising and messaging experts can also help us address the ways we start out at an inherent disadvantage in combating the right. One reason why they can speak in bumper stickers more easily is that they are flowing with the cultural milieu. Let’s face it, in some ways, we’re trying to change basic aspects of mainstream U.S. culture, and the sooner we face that, the more effective we will be in working on it. Since at least the early 20th century, mainstream U.S. culture has been consumer culture. For far longer than that, it has been an aggressive culture that prizes risk and competition. Carl Pope talks about the need for us to champion the value of prudence/prevention over risk/retaliation. That’s tough work in the arena of mainstream U.S. culture, but his comments don’t seem to reflect an awareness of that difficulty. The GOP and the corporate advertising that drowns us every day are championing risk, competition, consumption, and self-interest, while we’re trying to pull us toward different values — ones that are indisputably a part of U.S. culture, but which have been increasingly marginalized for the past century (and especially the past 25 years). The last time Americans collectively embraced sacrifice was World War II. That’s a long time ago, and we need to understand the obstacles to resurrecting that rather lost aspect of the national culture.
Stephen, I think your point is important about the danger of advocating solutions that won’t deliver what we’re claiming they will deliver. That deserves more discussion.
OK, I’ve got one elder in here describing the logging of the old-growth ponderosa pines here in the early 20th century, and another elder telling a story about playing hooky in first grade. She didn’t speak English too well, and thought her classmate was inviting her to play a game. I’ve gotta record ‘em –
Hasta luego,
Tom
From: Stephen Moret
To: Torri Estrada, Swati Prakash, Thompson Smith
Subject: Re: Who’s moving these discussions?
Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005, at 1:58 p.m. PST
Dear ELPsters,
Thanks, Swati and Tom, for your thoughts. As someone not intimately engaged on a day-to-day basis with the broader environmental movement, I really value what I’m learning from you.
Swati, you implied I think that there would not necessarily be a significant economic cost to addressing the global-warming issue in the U.S. Do you have any sense of what the cost would be of the most plausible solutions? My concern about Medicaid was that if economic activity was significantly curtailed, then there would be less tax revenues for state (and federal) governments to fund Medicaid, not to mention other programs that serve vulnerable populations. Before our country engages in a highly costly solution (if that is the case), we need to consider the trade-offs and whether additional research could lead to a better answer. Maybe I just need to be educated on the actual costs.
Every day I interact with CEOs and other executives of large banks, manufacturing firms, law firms, entrepreneurial organizations, etc. To reach these groups will require a fairly succinct and fact-based description of the problem and potential solutions, including the likely cost and impact on their businesses. Has the environmental movement done this? I don’t think so. Just like the email thread so far, most of the discussion focuses on how to drive a certain set of actions that are implicitly in line with the overall solution. But what, roughly, is the cost? What will be the impact on the private sector (and others)? Isn’t there some pain involved? If so, how much and who will feel it? Can this be described fairly clearly? If not, how can the coalition be broadened? Too often I fear that the environmental movement is spending most of its time talking to itself.
Another concern I meant to note earlier is how the “far right” or “radical right” has been portrayed. Is someone a member of the “radical right” if they have not yet been convinced of the science behind global warming or of the proposed solutions? Is the “radical right” the majority of the population that recently elected George W. Bush? A huge portion of this country is better described as disengaged and/or unconvinced of the arguments associated with global warming. How can those folks be reached?
Incidentally, I should offer a footnote here that I am representing my personal perspective, not that of my organization.
Stephen
From: Thompson Smith
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Swati Prakash
Subject: Any economists out there?
Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005, at 2:28 p.m. PST
Stephen and other ELPers,
That’s a great point about the need for clear, concise, and extremely well-documented materials to help someone in your position explain to business leaders the economic impacts of various responses to global warming. Clearly, it’s going to take a lot to overcome the resistance of those who are, in the short term, benefitting most from the existing system. I would add that you would also need materials explaining the best estimates of the economic impact of doing nothing or of accelerating the warming of the planet. From what I’ve seen, the social costs will be staggering even in the most optimistic prognoses — that is, even if we act aggressively and immediately — and will soon overwhelm the growth-related benefits of a carbon-intensive economy.
Any help out there, econ-enviros?
Tom
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Torri Estrada is a program officer at the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, N.Y., and co-director of Environmental Justice Solutions, which provides support to community-based organizations, social-justice groups, and the public sector in the areas of environmental justice and policy.
Stephen Moret is president and CEO of the Greater Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce and a former project supervisor with Trinity Consultants, where he advised industrial clients on air-quality issues.
Swati Prakash is the environmental-health director for West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT for Environmental Justice), a 16-year-old environmental-justice organization based in northern Manhattan.
Thompson Smith is director of tribal history and ethnogeography projects for the Salish-Pend d’Oreille Culture Committee, a department of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. Until 2002, he was executive director of the Flathead Resource Organization.
Building a Better Babel
From: Swati Prakash
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Thompson Smith
Subject: Re: Any economists out there?
Friday, Feb. 25, 2005, at 1:51 p.m. PST
Stephen,
You’ve raised a very valuable point about my needing to be able to speak in the language of dollars and cents, and I’ll commit to trying to figure this out more in the context of climate change.
The problem is that the concept of public revenues is, in and of itself, a multiple-language, territorial thing. For example, the dollars that would be saved by the public health-care system (including Medicaid) in reduced visits to emergency rooms for asthma attacks, or the dollars that would be saved by private companies with less work and school time missed due to respiratory illnesses, are not factored in to the New York City Transit Agency’s budget when they’re telling us they can’t afford not to use diesel fuel — or into the board of education when they say they can’t afford to install pollution-control devices on school buses.
Also, as Tom points out, there is a very real (and currently hidden or publicly subsidized) economic cost to climate change that has to be a point of reference for any estimates of financial costs of preserving environmental and public health and well-being. Although I don’t know much about how the whole “public tax revenue base” is related to public benefit programs, I do know that here in Harlem, there seem to be an awful lot of development projects — like the Home Depot that will bring hundreds more cars and trucks into the neighborhood every day, or the General Motors car dealership that will sell more of these cars — that are receiving hefty public subsidies in the form of tax waivers.
Maybe this mega-eco-economics analysis we set out to do could include an estimation of how that both adds to the economic costs of climate change, and subtracts from the public coffers with the disproportionate socioeconomic impacts that you point out.
More to come,
Swati
From: Swati Prakash
To: Torri Estrada, Stephen Moret, Thompson Smith
Subject: Onwards!
Friday, Feb. 25, 2005, at 1:55 p.m. PST
Happy Friday everyone,
Oooh, just as the conversation is getting nice and juicy, we’re at the end of the week already. But, as you point out, Tom, we have to be having these conversations on more of a local level as well as in forums like Grist. And by “conversations,” I don’t mean the self-satisfied academic banter that often characterizes panels of speakers (who often look mighty similar) talking at each other and then going back to their own worlds with an interesting story to tell and no other evidence of having been out of their office for several hours. I mean the more deliberate and thoughtful self-reflections that most of us and our organizations — already overcommitted and under-resourced — find ourselves sacrificing by default. I mean conversations (or better yet, facilitated dialogues) that bring together an unconventional array of groups and individuals with a shared commitment to giving priority to voices that are not often heard in public venues, and to setting aside both defensiveness and overconfidence and being willing to engage in real learning.
I’m wondering how we, the environmental movement, could be engaging in more fundamental political analysis/political education in developing a theory (or theories) of how the world works, of the root causes of social and environmental problems, as a way to reinforce the foundation of our work. My subway reading last night was revisiting a favorite — Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy — in which Rinku Sen writes, “It is virtually impossible for an organization to achieve long-term change without a coherent picture of the world and a theory of how change is effected.”
The same goes for a movement, however diffuse and broadly it is defined. A part of our current movement paralysis is, perhaps, the ever-decreasing numbers of people, organizations, and perspectives engaged in articulating the “environmental movement’s” theory of change. Broadening the base and scope of this kind of political education and analysis helps local struggles from falling prey to NIMBYism. For example, the community leaders WE ACT works with to demand accountability from the New York City Transit Agency for cleaner and healthier fuels have made the connection between diesel fuel and the social and racial justice impacts of the oil industry at every point in the life cycle of oil and diesel, and have made the connection between local oppression and the oppression of other communities of color.
