The Green Bunker
There’s a passage in Ross Douthat’s NYT column today that struck me as analogous to the decline of environmentalism. So I made the appropriate word substitutions:
Thanks in part to this bunker mentality, American Christianity environmentalism has become what Hunter calls a “weak culture” “” one that mobilizes but doesn’t convert, alienates rather than seduces, and looks backward toward a lost past instead of forward to a vibrant future. In spite of their numerical strength and reserves of social capital, he argues, the Christian churches environmental organizations are mainly influential only in the “peripheral areas” of our common life. In the commanding heights of culture, Christianity environmentalism punches way below its weight.
But just like every generation experiences a revival of faith-based fervor and institutions, environmentalism also has an infinite capacity to regroup and recharge itself. It involves casting off some dead wood and recognising new realities, and there’s almost a touch of waiting for the generation in power to retire. But the potential is there and with the population increasing and developing, stress on the environment is not going to disappear any more than the search for meaning that leads so many to Christianity’s (and its competitors’) door.
I don’t think there is really any bunker mentality overall. Environmentalism as a movement has all varieties. It’s just the ups and downs that any broad issue has.
Dean and Tom make good points.
I’m still traumatized by yesterday’s Giants game. It’s possible I’ve got misdirected anger. Seriously, though, I do think environmentalism has grown stale as a movement.
Tom Fuller Says:
“December 20th, 2010 at 5:45 pm ” But just like every generation experiences a revival of faith-based fervor and institutions”
I would disagree with your characterization here. When we did the ‘lessons learned’ on what went wrong vis-a-vis the Iranian Revolution of the 1970’s the conclusion wasn’t that the Shah was the worst leader in the Middle East. The Shah, with all his faults was the most liberal leader in the Middle East.
The Shahs’ mistake was by attempting to transform his society at a pace that couldn’t be culturally absorbed by the population. Hence, in a desire for cultural stability the population moved dramatically backwards culturally.
The harder one pushes culturally, the bigger the backlash, if one pushes excessively hard the backlash can end up an order of magnitude larger then the push.
What environmentalism (and environmentalist affiliated movements) taught us in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s
Don’t trust government to protect our health
Don’t trust government approved pesticides
Don’t trust government approved food labels
Don’t trust government approved genetically modified foods
Don’t trust government approved nuclear power
Don’t trust government/industry partnerships
Don’t trust government cleanup plans
What environmentalism (and environmentalist affiliated movements) taught us in the 00s
Trust government. People that don’t trust government are deniers, anti-science, flat-earthers, anti-evolution, right wing, Exxon-loving morans.
Environmentalism seems to have been co-opted by the very same government it originally, (wisely?) recommended we be skeptical of.
I am curious as to your take on Orac’s take.
@kkloor:
“It’s possible I’ve got misdirected anger.”
Or, you’re trolling. Either way, you’re incorrect.
I do think environmentalism has grown stale as a movement.
That’s largely because of the enormous success it’s had over the years. Like civil rights issues, things that during the early 20th century were “extremist” for both environmental concerns have become incredibly mainstream- to the point where they’re no longer even thought of as “environmental” or “civil rights” anymore.
Vs. the US in 1900, how do US citizens feel about litter, pollution, species conservation, etc., Keith? Additionally, of the percentage that cares, what subset would consider themselves to be “environmentalists” over time? You want to bet that the trajectory shows “environmentalism has grown stale as a movement”?
Did the rot come in when all the groups became corporate…
effectively just environmental NGO’s
And nothing like their founders ideals.
#7. “when the groups became corporate.”
That was Mark Dowie’s contention in his book, Losing Ground.
Maybe the decline of environmentalism is just the same thing as the triumph of environmentalism? In the same way that good art tends to be borne out of discomfiture?
As time goes on, I find myself associating less and less with ‘environmentalism’. Am I getting old and apathetic? Or wiser and more discriminating? Maybe both? Mostly I find that I am becoming surprised by some of the answers to questions I used to ask myself about questions relating to various environmental problems. This has had the effect of keeping up my interest in these issues but at the same time I find myself less useful, confident or comfortable in activist roles.
Mostly I tend to just feel cranky about seeing the environmental movement flattening itself into a climate change movement.
(I think I’d like to become an activist in pressuring Keith to include an edit function on his blog)
There is definitely significantly greater consideration for environmental impacts in the consciences of people who are not themselves environmentally “interested”. That is to say that low environmental impact is widely presumed to be a necessary component in what makes, say, a development initiative a good or positive proposition, regardless of the individual’s political or ideological persuasion/drive. In this respect, I would consider environmentalism (and conservationism) to have gained significant ground over the past few decades. It is a positive shift and I think that it’s sufficiently subtle, probably, to be easily go unnoticed.
I’ve previously explained my negative personal reaction, post-Climategate, to the realities of the subversion of science by “my side”, and to the discovery that the cancer of advocacy had encroached on scientific endeavour in “my name”. I don’t think that I described the “second hit”, for me, which was the discovery of the paradigm shift of environmental activism – i.e. WWF, Greenpeace “going corporate”. This really constituted a “double whammy” for me. I was gutted.
Stu at #9, It could also be the triumph of the environment, in the sense that many of the signature issues from the 70s actually have been addressed with varying degrees of success. Just as politics has gotten more partisan as the number of great issues has declined, environmentalism may get more strident as the issues become more narrowly focused and of less general interest.
“…politics has gotten more partisan as the number of great issues has declined…”
Tom – I suspect this isn’t a novel idea, but haven’t run across it previously. Mainstream poli.sci.? Do you have a reference? Thanks.
I want to say it’s Drucker from Post Capitalist Society, but I might be wrong. I certainly didn’t come up with the idea, and I’ve seen it echoed elsewhere. Sorry I don’t have a cite locked down.
Thanks, Tom. Here’s a prophetic (1993) quote from Drucker on a great issue that remains:
“No class in history has ever risen as fast as the blue- collar worker and no class has ever fallen as fast. All within less than a century.”
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.03/drucker.html
Tom and David: “politics has gotten more partisan as the number of great issues has declined” sounds suspiciously like Sayre’s Law, named for W.S. Sayre (1905-72), a political scientist, who said, “The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low.”
I think several commenters have touched on this. The issue is that, in real terms, the environmental protection movement has been very successful. Looking at just water and air quality from 1970 to now (in the US and Europe at least) is a night and day difference (Thank God). All relevent measures show a vast improvements. However, the most vociferous of those concerned with the quality of the environment seem to view anything less than 100% success as abjecty failure. So, despite great successes in improving the quality of the environment over the last 40 years, we are subject to the constant calls of an ever-worsening condition which inures the vast majority of people to whatever real dangers exist.
Thanks, Jonathan.
pace Douthat, I’m old enough to remember when Christianity was all but pronounced dead (late 60’s/early 70s) and then came back to life (late 70s into the Reagan years). I wouldn’t be so quick to count environmentalism out, especially as the effects of AGW become less deniable in the coming decades.
I just hope it doesn’t assume the form Christianity did in its renascence — the Moral Majority and its attendant self-righteous anti-intellectual godawfulness.
There is much navel gazing among what I would loosely call “the left” these days. For instance here’s an article lamenting the “death of feminism” http://www.thestar.com/article/309685
In the example of feminism being on the decline, I ask: “If the movement is successful in it’s aims(equality) then shouldn’t it logically follow that it will eventually become obsolete or at the very least of less pronounced importance?”
I believe that similar issues underlie the Environmental movement. Here’s a decent article that I think get’s the history of the movement more or less correct but then misses the point entirely:
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~brullerj/Contexts%20-%20Fixing%20the%20Bungled%20U.S.%20Environmental%20Movement.pdf
As the article points out in the 1970’s the environmental movement had no problem getting legislative victories in congress (The EPA was founded by Nixon for cripes sake).
As Brulle puts it:
“Part of the problem is that the environmental successes of the 1970’s were over issues that might be considered “low hanging fruit” -easy wins against problems that were plain as day to the average citizen and politician. Dumped chemicals casued rivers to catch fire, major cities’ air quality was so poor you could see it in the sky and feel it in your lungs, and waterways simply weren’t suitable for fishing or swimming.”
As the 80’s came along and the previous decades issues were addressed legislatively, the issues environmentalists chose to rally around were far larger, more complex and many times harder to regulate: AGW, biodiversity etc.
As Dan Sarewitz put it recently:
“For 20 years, evidence about global warming has been directly and explicitly linked to a set of policy responses demanding international governance regimes, large-scale social engineering, and the redistribution of wealth. These are the sort of things that most Democrats welcome, and most Republicans hate. No wonder the Republicans are suspicious of the science.”
Environmentalism has lost the battle for the public mind by getting behind an incredibly difficult, if not impossible to sell argument (AGW) and then becoming increasingly insular, partisan and wedded to shrill apocalypticism the less it’s heeded.
p.s. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!