The problem with the contemporary environmental movement

It has become a plaything of the upper classes. Perhaps it always has been. This is not to say that it is wrong to care about the environment or that folks of little or no means don't care about the environment. Rather, the options and solutions presented by the environmental movement are weighted heavily towards the sensibilities, capabilities and comfort zone of the well off. Those solutions and options, grossly inadequate to cure what ails us, serve as naught but a balm for the conscience of those that can afford it. Never mind that most proudly live in suburbs, environmental disasters, invest in corporations which fuck over everything in their paths. They shoot off a check for the charismatic megafauna of the month, rally for the creation of parks and preserves, not understanding or possibly not caring that these feelgood measures will not "save" much of anything in the long run.

The environmental movement has stalled precisely because it is classist. The capitalists have taken good advantage of this, cynically using class to persuade working folks that environmental concern is an elitists hobby.

Immediate survival is the first priority. When people's needs are met then maybe they might have the time and means to care or work for environmental preservation and restoration. When care is taken with all of the environment and not just "vacation destinations" which can only be reached and afforded by the well off the poor might take the movement more seriously. The environmental movement must come to understand that without economic justice there is no chance for environmental preservation.

But they can tell their cronies how GREEN they are, even while they are checking out how much money they make from their chemical and pharmaceutical holdings.

"Poor - WHAT poor? We're going GREEN!" texted on an iphone. :puke:

That's not always the case -- especially outside America, where people have risked much, or even lost their lives (Chico Mendes, anyone?) pursuing both.

and even in the US this is true. since the major environmental issue of the day, climate change, will hurt the poor first, the fact people are spending money and working on it means something, right?

but the OP is only concerned with the funding sources, apparently. newsflash: rich people have the money. I know, I know, it's shocking to learn this, but it's a whole hell of a lot easier to raise a million bucks from 10 people each giving 100K (or better, one person with the whole thing) than it is to find 1000 people with $1,000 to give, or 10,000 people with $100 to give.

The ultimate measure of all things, good for the GNP. Does it do any good, other than allowing some people to feel better about themselves.

So, because the rich can easily afford to give some relative pittance do they get to call the shots, quietly ignoring the primary cause of environmental degradation, the insane accumulation of wealth by those same people? That's a problem.

spending money is important. who do you think pays for the people who come up with ideas? who pays to implement ideas? who buys land to preserve it? who educates consumers? who puts solar panels on houses? the green-energy fairy?

Educating "consumers" and putting solar panels on houses is probably a wash.

A solar panel on a house is ultimately a consumer toy.

Consumerism is fundamentally at odds with environmentalism.

I sure as hell can't.

And what good will solar panels do if only the rich can afford them? Nada.

As far the land goes, yes the Nature Conservancy does preserve some beauty spots, nice places to visit, if you got the time and money to get there. Devoid of the context of the greater landscape these spots will eventually become biologically depauperate, the island effect.

energy efficiency improvements could be underwritten and financed by the government to new and existing homes.

things that poor folk can't afford, they MIGHT be actually changing things.

Not to mention educating others about their own insular attitudes.

as with everything new.

but you are right, promoting energy conservation is a waste of time. advocating for increased public transit is a waste of time. higher CAFE standards? waste of time. cleaner air and water? waste of time. removing mecury from coal plant emmissions? waste of time.

How is it decided what gets made in the first place? Is it an items utility or its profitability?

I am not at all questioning the need for solutions, I am questioning the context in which these solutions are presented and promoted.

are both heavily subsidized by the Federal Government much of the time. but as more and more people are purchasing solar equipment, the price per unit is decreasing. yes, corporations are into making money, obviously, but demand can be created and enhanced by social pressure.

It is the artifical social pressure of advertising and television which has created this mess. To shame the poor into adopting practices which they cannot afford is low and counter productive.

Having profitability as a conditioning factor of the solutions that are adopted will likely mean that the solution is suboptimal. And just what does it take to make solar panels? How much raw material? From where? Are there toxic byproducts? How much water is used up?

would you rather it be taxed up the wazoo, making it more burdensome on the poor?

I would make something so essential a public good, nonprofit.

I would also reconsider the uses that energy is put to, making things just because they might sell, regardless of it's use, inputs and disposal is totally ass backwards. Planned economy, you bet.

works decently on a very small scale. not at all on anything larger than small village.

They provide a lot of the power in this state. I'm tickled pink with the lower cost and superior service, as compared to the big commercial provider, Duke.

low population density, even if there is a large size.

That was a bit more than "a small village".

You might want to reread that...

folk!

"As you do unto the least of these...."

"Why have we lost the poor vote?"

I'm well aware that working people here and elsewhere do great work towards preservation and restoration, at much greater personal costs, and sometimes as you mentioned, at the ultimate cost, much more so than your checkbook environmentalist.

This is about the over all direction of the movement, which is utterly constrained within a capitalists viewpoint. It is about so-called solutions being presented to us which seemingly always fall on the shoulders more heavily of those least able to bear them. It's like regressive taxation.

"viable" (in a Western context) while taking on consumerism/consumption, without appearing to threaten the overall economy... and rightwingers use that as a wedge to terrify enviros, as well ("You can't really save the Earth, cause these nuts don't want you to have a plasma TV!")

But not every group is a large, Washington-based one, trying to be "credible" in a mainstream context. There are smaller, activist groups everywhere making the arguments they need to make in behalf of the non-human world.

And more and more, the links between environmental and economic justice are becoming clear to activists everywhere...

Many grassroots level environmentalists I know and/or have met are not wealthy at all. Also, while there is a certain price tag to greening things - solar panels, geothermal, etc. - it's also true that the wealthy do tend to use more resources in general than those of us who cannot afford that level of consumption/waste, so encouraging them to be more green is good in that sense as well.

Honestly, while I agree on some level with what you are saying, part of that problem seems to be marketing, and sometimes I feel it is marketing done by those who do not wish to see any environmentalism succeed, such as the people who give Gore crap about his house. Much like with food issues - which are related to environmental issues - many people complain about the cost of eating better (organic) when sometimes they are overlooking the fact that simplifying and reducing excess will generally offset such costs. I cut down on eating meat because I could not afford it, not because I was rich, and eventually it grossed me out so I stopped buying it all together, and also started looking into just healthier eating in general. I used to not own a car for the same reason. Riding a bike/the bus and being a vegetarian are very green things to do, and I did those out of lack of money.

The complaints about Gore's house and such are indicators, if petty. The big problem with Gore is that he promotes the idea we can mitigate global warming within the context of a capitalist/consumer society. Hogwash, given capitalism's mandate of eternal growth that is quite impossible.

Since the payback period is a little as two months I am damn glad the government mandated the extinction incandescents.

I don't see why the concept of micro loans can't be used in the United States, since they apparently have met with great success in the developing world.

CFLs are a false solution, the mercury content, you see. You think they are being disposed of properly? Are batteries?

No matter, it gives somebody something to sell, people can feel better about themselves, the show goes on.

and we should remember that the most URGENT environmental issues, such as global warming, are NOT necessarily those that have immediate mass appeal. But that doesn't mean one should sneer at them; instead that presents us with an organizing problem.

(BTW -- when active in the movement supporting national liberation in Southern Africa, the problem that this issue didn't have immediate appeal also was a problem that had to be confronted. You should NOT simply dismiss an issue because it lacks "proletarian cachet".)

even smaller if such a broken light was to dilute the same mass of mercury in the air volume of a typical room.

Also assuming such a light was disposed of improperly, the mercury would either mix with the larger atmosphere or be confined to clay lined imprisonment of a landfill.




Since most people are some unknown distance from a coal power plant the total mercury pollution of environment(and most likely themeselves) would be less by using CFLs in place of standard light-bulbs.

its easy to have a CFL recycling program. Have the retailers put recycle bins for the old bulbs right in the store where people go to get new ones.

The pessimistic "nothing is worth doing because it causes a problem somewhere else" attitude bugs the shit out of me. It's defeatist and ultimately makes people feel like doing nothing. Or its used as a cop-out to do nothing. Its easy to make reasonable sounding arguments along those lines even if its inaccurate.

CFLs are a false solution, the mercury content, you see. You think they are being disposed of properly? Are batteries?

No matter, it gives somebody something to sell, people can feel better about themselves, the show goes on.

confounding resolutions of environmental issues

While I'm being overly simplistic the resolution of environmental issues requires:

1)the identification of environmental risks (which requires some erudition, education costs money)

2) the analysis of environmental risk (which also requires considerable erudition to understand as well as financial and technical support to pull together)

3) the management of risk (which requires erudition, and the development of societal standards for behavior involving governing bodies that must resolve values conflicts in creating governing laws, regulatory institutions that must adjust regulations and advise based on technical challenges to existing regulations and practices, and an executive determination to guide the judicial system to prosecute violators and to enforce social standards).

Each of these 3 things requires the decision makers/problem solvers dealing with them to have education and social status. It's unfortunate but true; and the outcome can be viewed under some perspectives as classist. Obviously implementations require _everyones'_ effort but the movers and shakers aren't poor, they are better off.

Is there a classist breakdown in environmental interests, yes. And as you imply it is partly an issue of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People can't deal with environmental problems until their personal proximate needs are met. Poor people are very likely to be stuck dealing with their immediate proximate problems. It is the better off who because of financial circumstance have secured educations to understand and personal food, shelter, health, and old age security who can turn their attention to the problems of "others" and "us."

As anyone who deals with environmental values conflict resolution has witnessed, it IS also a proximity problem. The big issues in public hearings are usually--Is it close to me? Is it unpleasant? Is it reversable? Is it gonna cost ME? . Everyone wants solutions but Not In My BackYard, especially if it's unpleasant and irreversible. No one EVER wants to pay taxes.

The better off _can_ afford to locate themselves away from environmental threats (as well as simply aesthetic unpleasantness). Which lowers the proximity and the urgency in resolving the problem. Of course the poor end up suffering the most because they are not in a financial position to relocate themselves or to protect themselves from toxic living conditions, poor food, and poor healthcare.

Sure there are greedy capitalists who do manipulate governance in ways that profit them at the cost of greater environmental threats. This is the standard of performance of the Kudlow-conservatives. Sure there are folks who live in the suburbs who maintain lifestyles while remaining blissfully unaware of the threats their lifestyles pose. Sure there are people who feel a check absolves them. But it is the educated, financially secure, politically aware and socially conscious people who also have the understanding and the numbers to effect government to get change accomplished.

There is a war on science; there is a war on the middle class (that btw enlists the poor to fight _against_ the middle). They are the same war. That war undermines the identification, analysis and managment of environmental risk. Do you wonder why? Because environmental values threaten the perception what the ignorant and out of touch consider their road to a good life. And, btw, there are rich and the poor are fighting on both sides of this war. The outcome depends on education and social awareness, and that in part requires a personal sense of security. Something once associated with the now disappearing middle-class.

Off-shoring, monetary devaluation, the generation of personal insecurity are the tools of the evil forces fighting that war. They are mostly fighting it against the middle class because the middle class values education generally, not merely vocationally, and the bunker of the middle class has been mostly food, housing and healthcare security. The consequence is that the much better-off chardonnay drinkers CAN be named as the forces of the environmental movement. And that characterization is intended to facilitate recruitment against environmental issues.

it seems that the educated are failing society in a rather spectacular fashion, both in the enviromental and political spheres.

They are working hard to further confound it.

Who are these "willfully and irreducably ignorant" of whom you speak?

We might have different ideas about that.

It's sorta like the situation with Christianity:

Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you this: a rich man will find it hard to enter the kingdom of Heaven. I repeat, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Mat. 19:24)

Every dollar carries with it some great environmental cost. A person with less money does less damage to the environment than a person with more money.

A U.S. citizen of the inner city, dependent upon food stamps, public transportation, thrift store clothing, and section 8 housing, is far "greener" than any Prius-driving jet-setting supporter of Greenpeace. A subsistence farmer in Mexico who owns no car, who enjoys no electric service, is doing less damage to the earth's environment than any affluent U.S. citizen.

The greatest problem with environmental organizations in the United States is that they cannot afford to offend the people who fund them. The Sierra Club is not going to tell it's members that they are among the greatest resource hogs on the planet. They are not going to cancel their international outings and recommend their members check out the opportunities available at their local Park and Recreation Departments.

Reducing one's own environmental impact seems opposed to almost everything the United States stands for. It's not about any work ethic, productivity or efficiency. Instead it's about living a good life with less money. Move to the city, get rid of your car, don't eat meat, don't fly, and work fewer hours.

Building new green houses, cars, and factories isn't the answer. Making existing housing green, increasing urban density, shutting down factories, and vastly reducing the total number of cars is what we need to be doing. Unfortunately "mainstream" environmental organizations won't go there because such actions threaten the current U.S. political and economic structure.

...by all means continue to sell the idea that it means that everybody in the third and fourth world will have to live in poverty forever and that the only thing left to do is for us "resource hogs" in usa, europe, and japan to join them in their misery

you don't create change by taking away all hope

travel for awhile in parts of africa where there is no electricity and no clean water, you will soon be relieved of the fantasy that being poor harms the earth less -- every tree is eaten until there is nothing left but thorn which is then eaten by the goats which somehow have the ability to change thorn to protein, i don't know what happens when even the thorn is gone, i suppose the growing subsaharan desert (haven't myself visited that region)

on another note, you say: it's about living a good life with less money. Move to the city, get rid of your car, don't eat meat, don't fly, and work fewer hours.

people who care about the environment and love the outdoors are cutting out their own hearts if they "move to the city," what life is that for an outdoor person? you are offering advice that would only be taken by someone who doesn't care about the outdoors anyway and soon will be off to follow another "fad"

if you want a blinkered life closed in by millions of other people, fine, but don't kid yourself that most people who sincerely love the outdoors will be happy in that kind of life

people don't care about what they can never experience, and if everyone is living in the city with no money or time to ever travel, why would you expect even one tree to be left unlogged or one mountain to be left unmined? completely unrealistic!

real change is going to be hard, not as cheap and easy as "sit on your ass, don't eat, don't work, don't bother," it's going to involve actively developing and using new tech, and it's going to involve actively promoting unpopular but basic ideas like abortion/birth control/family planning

You wrote that people should: "Move to the city, get rid of your car, don't eat meat, don't fly, and work fewer hours."

Those are all decisions the average working poor or lower middle class person can't make simply based on environmental concerns. Where they live and work is based on whether they can afford to move and the fact that in most cities you can't keep a job if you don't have a car. So what you're really saying is that you have to be in the upper middle class with some financial freedom in order to make the financial decisions to be a good environmentalist.

I have gotten many emails (saving paper!) from the Sierra Club suggesting ways to reduce my consumption of energy and reduce my environmental impact. They may not be everything you would like to see but asking the average person to quit their job, sell their home and leave their family to move to a bigger city they don't like for the sake of the environmental is pretty unrealistic to say the least. You have to get people started with smaller steps.

Single payer universal health care, living wages, full ride government grants for college and technical training, a thirty hour work week, and substantial improvements to the public transportation infrastructure -- all these things would take a serious bite out of our environmentally destructive consumer culture.

That's why we don't have any of those things. Our unjust and vicious economic system is carried upon the backs of hard working people who fear for their livelihoods.

I don't want this to turn into a flame-fest, but reducing or eliminating meat from diet is one of the most personal, easy, and far-reaching decisions which can be made, and quite easily. I'm not saying everyone has to become a level-5 vegan or anything but America's meat habits do more or as much harm as driving, and being more mindful of eating more locally - meat or veggie - is a good step in the right direction.

*I* am hypoglycemic,and need meat to keep from having that slide into diabetes.

I"m so very tired of people legislating how I should eat, when they aren't living in my body!

"Vegetarian - Primitive word for lousy hunter."

simply can't do, and then to look down superior noses at us.

I originally brought this up because of two big things.... the environmentalists constant push to raise gas taxes in the believe (erroneous!) that it would cause people to conserve. Studies have shown that to be untrue, but what DOES happen is that people can no longer afford to get to word, lose their jobs, and their lives, and that of their children, starts deteriorating. Not that that seems to matter to many muddleclass "environmentalists".

so some folks with money and power are taking more interest in improving the environment and that's a bad thing how exactly?

the environmental movement has stalled because the problem seems too big and it appears that there probably isn't much to be done that's useful at this point, the old "lost causes" effect, people prefer to get on a bandwagen that looks like it has a chance of success, as the saying goes if you're on the titanic might as well go first class

shitting on the few well-to-do friends we have willing to invest time and money helping the environment is just plain idiotic

i know lots of people who work to census and study wildlife and identity/rediscover new species, most of 'em aren't paid shit, some of them literally have received no salary at all for years and have to scrabble at such low paid jobs as leading bird tours or doing art to put food in front of them

we need more rich folks pitching in and writing checks, not less

I see the solutions in Social Justice movements.

Wretched poverty is an entirely different beast than an economic affluence not expressed by reckless consumerism.

Yes, you talk about Africa, but the greatest global extinctions caused by man, on par or exceeding other global extinctions of the geologic record, will be the direct result of climate change caused by fossil fuels.

Poor Africans burning every last stick do a lot of damage locally, but they don't kill off entire oceans or melt ice caps. It takes a much wealthier fossil fuel burning population to accomplish that.

I would not be writing this if I wasn't extremely concerned. However, the solutions provide by the movement do very little to fix anything and at the same time alienate folks who like a healthy environment as well as the next person, but given their struggle for daily existance reasonably resent having the burden being unfairly put upon them. From each, according to their means....

The foundations decide what kind of issue or campaign THEY want to see happen first and then ask environmental groups to apply. Funding for environmental groups is hard to find so they always apply for those grants. That means most groups work on national issues instead of local ones, and they focus on the issues and tactics preferred by the wealthy instead of the working class.

I'd be a lot more grateful to those wealthy donors and foundations if they gave their money without maintaining control of the movement and letting the members of environmental groups make the decisions instead.

That means the work they do fits the agenda and tactics preferred by the upper class. It won't change until an environmental group is able to find another way to fund itself besides appeals to foundations and wealthy donors.

But are the middle and working class ready to pay the equivalent of union dues to an environmental group?

Changing our tax code to provide incentives for having none or one, vs its current model which rewards you more for the more kids you have.

Sometime in the near future, someone's going to have to pick up this political hot potato.

The problem with financial carrots and sticks is that they are unfair to the poor.

I believe that our species is past carrying capacity but I recoil at the thought of our capitalist, classist society dealing with it. The results would be racist, classist injustice.

Only in an egalitarian society might this be addressed with any hope of justice. And even then only the choice of the individual, tempered only by persuasion, is to be sovereign.

It's gonna be a long walk down that hill but I believe it can be done. A proper allocation of resources would do much ease the pain and encourage family planning.

What types of humans are willing to throw away the freaking planet because oh, you know, I like my huge ass SUV too much? Suck it, all other living beings and future me - where does thinking like that come from?

I just can't comprehend the mindset of "My current comfort is more important than the planet that I live on being able to continue to support life." I mean, damn, if you don't care about any other living thing, at least you would care about yourself and not want to suffer the effects of what we're doing to the planet in the somewhat near future, right?

I mean, it can't just be psychopaths, because you guys are talking like the majority of humans put their current comfort over everything else up to and including life itself.

My God. I'm not a member of this species. Can whatever alien species dropped me off come pick me up now? I want to go home, and this place sure as hell ain't it.

And your characterization of environmentalism as a classist movement cannot be further from the truth. One of the banes of our environment, and our society, is the rampant consumerism that has taken hold in this country. By the very nature of being poor or lower middle class, consumerism goes straight out the window. People in these lower classes don't make frivolous purchases, and those that they do make they also make last. Furthermore, they look for items that are, in the long term, economically cheaper, which in many cases also means easier on the environment. For instance how many poor folks do you know going out and purchasing a Hummer? No, not many. Most low income folks purchase a car that is not only cheap, but also is cheap to operate. Generally this means that this will be a vehicle that gets good gas mileage. This also applies to other areas of conservation and environmentalism also. Poor folks turn the lights off, don't leave the TV running all the time, conserve the energy that they have to pay for, and with material goods, they make them last.

You also seem to imply that only the well off are educated about, and do something about, the environmental crisis. That is the wrong implication to make. When I look around at local environmental groups, it isn't composed of the rich and well off. It is composed of the poor, the middle class, and perhaps a smattering of the well off. These people may not be writing the checks for the big bucks, but they are out cleaning up the community, heading recycling drives, planting trees, and all of the other myriad of needs that need to be met.

Do we need to meet the needs of the poor and lower class? Surely, but delaying action on the environment until we do so is foolish and assumes that we cannot undertake these two actions at the same time. If we wait on the environment, we will wait too long. So rather than doing so, rather lets work on improving both at the same time.

I applaud any and all environmental work on the community level. Any time the community comes together in an endeavour to improve their living conditions and maintain the environment, how can that be anything but good?

As you say, the poor are intrinsically better environmentalist from the git due to their lower consumption level. Well and good, unless that lower consumption rate is imposed by an unjust society as a function of class or race.

My beef is with the national movement, with the dictates and proposals coming out of offices in DC, ideas which might have had good purpose in origin but are so mangled and transmogrified as to be functionally useless and presented in a way as to be offensive to a good portion of the populace. What I'm talking about is the suburban, upper class bias which pervades the assumptions coming from those offices and affects the orgs downstream, particularly in the burbs. There is an underlying assumption coming from those places, "why can't you people be more like us." It is paternalistic, class arrogance. No, my complaint is with the educated who form an environmental policy replete with class prejudice, who blame everyone but themselves, who refuse to face the fact that it is our economic system, not the people, which is the greatest threat to the environment.

The average muddleclass people if they have a small, economical car, will hold on to it, and the gas-guzzlers will go on the used market.

That lack of choice has already been a problem, and will get worse.

One more way poor folk don't have the choice.

We have done what we could with the means that we have; which is mainly using CFL's ,but the really wonderful options are way out of our means. I would love to replace our old windows, install solar panels (or at least a solar water heater), buy a new washing machine and replace our 36 mpg Galant with a hybrid. I know that Bush has these things but then he had help.

:kick:

Thank you so much for posting this!

Unfortunately, I'm too late for a Rec! :(

:applause:

Glossy mags to save this or that, eco-tours blowing holes in the ozone to ogle critters in Costa Rica is a wee bit on the hypocritical side eh?

Lifestylism.

Thanks for putting this into perspective!