The Death of Environmentalism

[ChunTzu]

Hey everybody-

 

I know this article/report made some waves when it was released in early 2005. I was just wondering if anybody around here had any opinions on it.

 

"The Death of Environmentalism" by By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus @ Grist.org. Click on 'Advanced' near the top of the page, under the banner and enter the title and authors' name (I can't post the link b/c this is only my 5th post).

 

I find myself agreeing for the most part with their thesis which can pretty much be summed up as:

"...As individuals, environmental leaders are anything but stupid. Many hold multiple advanced degrees in science, engineering, and law from the best schools in the country. But as a community, environmentalists suffer from a bad case of group think, starting with shared assumptions about what we mean by "the environment" -- a category that reinforces the notions that a) the environment is a separate "thing" and human beings are separate from and superior to the "natural world.'...Issues only matter to the extent that they are positioned in ways linking them to proposals carrying within them a set of core beliefs, principles, or values. The role of issues and proposals is to activate and sometimes change those deeply held values. And the job of global warming strategists should be to determine which values we need to activate to bring various constituencies into a political majority...Environmentalists need to tap into the creative worlds of myth-making, even religion, not to better sell narrow and technical policy proposals but rather to figure out who we are and who we need to be...Environmentalists find themselves in the same place today. We are so certain about what the problem is, and so committed to their legislative solutions, that we behave as though all we need is to tell the literal truth in order to pass our policies."

 

Any thoughts?

[Ganoderma]

see David suzuki as well.

 

right now there is a stink on vancouver island. perhaps some peopel remember a while ago tehre were ***HUGE*** protests against teh logging there. it was hippies and indians against the loggers, many people got arested and it ended up ebing one of the biggest protests of its kind (and also got some of the forest protected).

 

same area is under fire again (Clayoquat sound....Spelling???). this time its the indians that want to log it.....interesting twist. i guess europe has finally won in the fight to "domesticate" aboriginals in canada

[freeztar]

I'm not sure I understand what they are getting at. Why is the literal truth not enough?

[HydrogenBond]

An environmentalist is analogous to a right wing conservative when it comes to nature. They wish to stop time and maintain the natural past. Human progress is sort of the liberal analogy to this, wanting to change the natural past, without a long term vision of the future, beyond the short term change and fad.

 

When it comes to humans, the environmentalists become the liberals willing to alter the long term human propensities of long standing forests of tradition which the social conservatives protect, using short term changes that are designed to plow down this historical humanistic eco-system and put up a liberal humanistic mall.

 

I am a moderate and can see the good points within the two liberal and the two conservative points of view. The irony is actually quite funny.

[Ganoderma]

hydrogen, you may be very interested in the david suzuki foundation, they are exactly what you seam to be like....environmentalists in a realistic scientific way (ie still maintaining a good comfort level, but being good to the earth about it).....especially when it comes to agriculture and farming!

[Essay]

Thanks HB, as always... unique and insightful.

 

re: the OP....

The "literal truth" is only unavoidably convincing if one fully understands it within a broad context.

Conquistadors were first seen as six-limbed, two-headed armoured giants by indigenous peoples who did not have the context of horses, people riding horses, etc. That's how most folks see climate warnings, I think.

 

Science, history, and paleoclimate information provide a wonderful context to understand current climate predictions, but how many people have a broad background like this?

===

 

Certainly, defined as most seem to see an environmentalist, the death is welcomed only as a rebirth into neo-environmentalism is slowly being defined and realized.

 

New environmental principles include:

...seeing man (and civilization) as a part of nature, and trying to integrate sustainably, realizing our nature.

 

...seeing resources not as something to save for the charismatic rare species, but saving them for the huge value that they provide in services to our civilization (and the rest of the species too).

 

...seeing "natural" not as some primeval system defined as existing in balance only without man's presence, but seeing man's presence as important to maintaining a productive balance.

 

...seeing that civilization is a part of nature and creates a lot of change, and seeing that changes can have a beneficial, sustainable effect on the overall system, if managed well.

 

Well, I'm just babbling redundantly here, so I'll try to find a list; but like E. O. Wilson suggests, we should:

Not see civilization as something to help us rise above nature, but see civilization as an attempt to attain harmony with nature.

 

A neo-environmentalist is just anyone who sees the huge value that the many ecosystem services can provide, for free, for the mutual benefit of civilization and all life.

 

~ ;)

[charles brough]

Hey everybody-

 

I know this article/report made some waves when it was released in early 2005. I was just wondering if anybody around here had any opinions on it.

 

"The Death of Environmentalism" by By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus @ Grist.org. Click on 'Advanced' near the top of the page, under the banner and enter the title and authors' name (I can't post the link b/c this is only my 5th post).

 

I find myself agreeing for the most part with their thesis which can pretty much be summed up as:

"...As individuals, environmental leaders are anything but stupid. Many hold multiple advanced degrees in science, engineering, and law from the best schools in the country. But as a community, environmentalists suffer from a bad case of group think, starting with shared assumptions about what we mean by "the environment" -- a category that reinforces the notions that a) the environment is a separate "thing" and :shrug: human beings are separate from and superior to the "natural world.'...Issues only matter to the extent that they are positioned in ways linking them to proposals carrying within them a set of core beliefs, principles, or values. The role of issues and proposals is to activate and sometimes change those deeply held values. And the job of global warming strategists should be to determine which values we need to activate to bring various constituencies into a political majority...Environmentalists need to tap into the creative worlds of myth-making, even religion, not to better sell narrow and technical policy proposals but rather to figure out who we are and who we need to be...Environmentalists find themselves in the same place today. We are so certain about what the problem is, and so committed to their legislative solutions, that we behave as though all we need is to tell the literal truth in order to pass our policies."

 

Any thoughts?

 

What the writers said and intended to get across seems to me to have so far been missed here. What is key to their position is this sentence:

 

"Environmentalists need to tap into the creative worlds of myth-making, even religion, not to better sell narrow and technical policy proposals but rather to figure out who we are and who we need to be."

 

What that means, I think, is that environmentalism functions now as a sort of fringe cult---like animal rightists and even perhaps gay rights---causes, in other words, that are weakening. They seem to say that it should instead be a part of a whole balanced world-view and way of thinking---which all mainstream religions are. I doubt very much they are thinking that protecting the environment has to be connected to belief in spirits, however, and it need not at all! We do have a secular ideology, but environmental concern is not a basic, fundamental part of it---as are "rights," "democracy," capitalism etc. What they are saying is that we need environmentalism to be the centerpiece of an advanced new and complete ideology so we wont see it fade away along with other more extremist secular cults in the next wave of religious reaction.

[freeztar]

Environmentalism taken to the extreme has always been a fringe cult. Take a look into the history of Greenpeace.

 

That doesn't mean that environmentalism is dead or that it is bad. Yet, maybe it's so dead it is green. :rose:

[Ganoderma]

with wars come environmentalism again. jsut prior seems to be a mass worldwide money grab, then when it all crashes people tend to rethink their morals. sing some hippy songs, unite make a few new good regulations and go back to the money grab.

 

repeat.

 

 

same as now. we will likely see some decent sized wars in the near future, and there seems to be a push for more environmental things. seems to go hand in hand. we need to protect it because we are destroying it so bad. when we destroy it, our economies eventually start failing, perhaps unrelated, and thus a collapse of greed and a surge in love happens, then the pendulum swings the other way for a bit.

 

thats how it seems to me anyway. Earth's menstrual (hormone) cycle. instead of 30 days its 30 years.

[belovelife]

i think we should look and see if we are termites

are we killing the tree?

likewise i believe that the "spirit" of nature has a different "spirit"than the city

i know it sounds like a bunch of tree hugging hippie crap

but really, everything has its own energy

 

but also things like logging

i have pondered for many years on the subject

and i think we should have crop circles

something like a growth cycle

and follow it like a radar

so one time around the circle is the time it takes for the tree to grow to its potential

then this would allow for more growth to happen

like the shaman in the old days, they would wander the forest and trim dead branches, scatter seeds, and all that cool shaman stuff

like in oregon

the forests were so bled, that the new growth was not in harmony with eachother

so the trees don't grow as well, and they are more succceptible to disease

but if the trees were in harmony, (planted at the max root circumfrence potential ) and periodically trimm the dead branches, add back the animals similar to woodpeckers and insect hunters that look for it them in bark

it would stabalize

i have been to many forests that were to be clear cut because of infestations

i mean could we just breed the insect hunters that are natural to the area and send them in instead of clearcutting

 

needless to say i have so much to say on the thousand envyromental issues

 

but let me say this

have you heard of haarp

this could be used in conjunction with hurricanes to produce a conveyer belt of clouds that could be steered across the world where water is needed

and help slow down the dessertification process

this along with having mulch cnd organics collected and dispursed

would be nice although the mulch idea would be very difficult to actually do save land fills