environmental movement
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Whither the environmental movement? III
(Part I is here; part II is here.)
I was going to do a policy post next, but an insightful comment from reader Sandy M got me thinking again about framing.
The second piece of unsolicited-with-good-reason advice I'd give the environmental movement, with apologies to Apple computer, is: Talk different.
It's time for enviros to think in a more careful and calculated way about the way they frame their issues. Progressives are forever wedded to the idea that the unvarnished truth is all we need: Give the people the facts and they'll draw the right conclusions. "That," says UC Berkeley professor and newly minted pundit George Lakoff, "has been a disaster."
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Whither the environmental movement? II
If the U.S. environmental movement was unwise enough to ask me my advice, I could summarize it in two words: Go local.
At the moment, several things stand in the way of environmentalism coalescing as a coherent, effective national movement.
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Whither the environmental movement?
This post, and this one, and this discussion are part of a larger conversation going on among left-leaning types about how to react to the recent electoral ass-whooping we received. Initially, a lot of the talk focused on the "moral values" voters who came out to prevent the cosmic apocalypse that is gay marriage. Least that's what the exit polls seemed to show. However, this article, and several like it, cast substantial doubt on that theory. In fact, there doesn't seem to be much of a rational pattern. Bush gained among Hispanics and women, actually went down among rural voters and up among urban voters, lost among self-described moderates, increased the turnout of rich people, won on terrorism despite majorities who said he was screwing Iraq up ... in short, there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet theory to explain the loss (more on all this here). It was a hotly fought ground war, a game of inches, and Bush's team got lots of things right, pardon the pun.
Nonetheless, the question of where the environmental movement goes from here is still relevant. I think we can all agree that, regardless of this election, environmentalism is not where it should be. Nobody, after all, cites the environment as a reason that any candidate won or lost. Nobody much cites it at all as a player in electoral politics, aside from a few extremely narrow issues like Yucca Mountain, which is more of a "don't dump radioactive crap in my back yard" issue than a strictly environmental one.
So, I've got some thoughts on the matter. I'll do my best to get them down in a series of posts, starting with the next one. I hope it sparks some pragmatic discussion, because I gotta tell you, whatever this is, most of it isn't particularly pragmatic.
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Green groups work together to counter the Bush attack on the environment
It’s been nine weeks since voters turned the national government over to Republican lawmakers, many of whom explicitly vowed to help President Bush and his industrial allies complete what former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) failed to do in 1995: dismantle the nation’s basic protections for water, air, wild lands, forests, and public health. […]
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Beltway green groups need to turn up the heat
Inside the Beltway, the climate movement is comatose. During the Clinton-Gore years, while the U.S. dragged its feet in international climate negotiations, the major national environmental groups allowed themselves to be used by the administration. Seduced by the former vice president’s rhetoric, the groups watched their issue disappear from the political arena when Al Gore […]
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The environmental movement calls it a day
Surprising both longtime allies and adversaries, the environmental movement announced yesterday that it was sick of nature’s indifference to its work, and would be wrapping things up Friday. “We’re not mad, we’re just … moving on,” a movement spokesperson said. “We’re going to buy some nice clothes and go spend a few months in the […]
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The blue-green relationship hits the skids
The Washington, D.C., headquarters of the AFL-CIO, which represents 13 million workers in the United States, is on 16th Street just a couple of blocks north of the White House. On the morning of Sept. 11, some of the U.S. environmental movement’s most influential leaders — John Adams and Robert Kennedy, Jr., of the Natural […]
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Links related to The Skeptical Environmentalist
For those of you who still haven't gotten enough of the Lomborg controversy, look no further than your browser. We've compiled a collection of links to sites that praise the man, haze the man, and walk the middle ground.
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On Bjorn Lomborg's hidden agenda
Here is Denmark, that harmonious northern country known for its curiously vanilla accomplishments (comprehensive social welfare, pastry, Hans Christian Anderson), and here is its latest export, Bjorn Lomborg, come to announce the good news that we live in a fairy-tale world.