El dia de los muertos: the death and rebirth of the environmental movement.

• Author: Gauna, Eileen

1. INTRODUCTION II. THE DEBATE SPARKED BY THE DEATH OF ENVIRONMENTALISM III. AREAS FOR FURTHER ANALYSIS A. The History Of The Environmental Movement, Broadly Defined B. Conceptualization of the Environment and Framing of Environmental Issues C. Role Of Technocratic Solutions D. Transformative Coalition Building IV. CONCLUSION [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

1. INTRODUCTION

   In Latino traditions, there is a day called "el dia de los muertos" or the day of the dead. (1) The artwork commemorating this day best illustrates its mood, featuring whimsical skeletons in brightly colored clothes, typically dancing, singing, playing music, and otherwise celebrating. The message is clear: don't take death--or yourself--too seriously. After all, death is part of life. The environmental community might want to similarly leave aside the more somber approach to its supposed death, (2) and look at its potential from a broader perspective.

   In the fall of 2004, environmental consultants Michael Shellenberger and Ted Norhaus, in an article proclaiming the "death of environmentalism," started a debate about whether the environmental movement, as known and understood in more conventional U.S. circles, is a failed strategy and should be pronounced dead. (3) They suggested that as it currently exists, environmentalism is structurally incapable of adequately addressing the most serious environmental issue to confront humankind--global climate change. (4) The article sparked a vigorous debate within the environmental community. While the controversy has long since subsided, the arc of this article and various responses to it is telling and merits further reflection. There were several interesting aspects of this debate. For example, it raised questions about who exactly is the environmental community, what are "its" strategies, are they successful, and where do we go from here? Issues of race, class, and equity came to the surface. This Article examines some of the strands of this debate and how environmental justice actors fit within the project of a successful response to climate disruption. (5) It is important to keep this issue in mind as the adverse effects of climate change--while uncertain in severity, timing, and precise location--will not be distributed evenhandedly. (6) Anticipating significant harm to natural resources and adverse health effects (such as heat wave related deaths, respiratory illnesses, vector-related diseases, and injury and death from climate caused disasters), this unpredictable phenomenon raises important discussions over how much of our resources should be devoted to adapting to what is likely to be inevitable, and how much should be devoted to an attempt to change the trajectory of climate disruption by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. Who gets to decide this, and by what processes? Will those most impacted have a meaningful say in the important decisions? This is the largely unarticulated backdrop to the "death" debates.

2. THE DEBATE SPARKED BY THE DEATH OF ENVIRONMENTALISM

   Back to the story. The authors of Death of Environmentalism offered several specific reasons for their assertion that the environmental movement had failed. The more central reason was that "environmentalism" was too narrowly defined to mean a "thing." (7) As such, the roots of environmental problems were poorly conceptualized and the solutions--largely within the technicalities of pollution control and set-asides of pristine areas--did not animate the deeper values that sustain critical political support over the long haul. (8) Instead of a values-based strategy, environmentalists opted for an "environmental protection" frame.(9) This was not without good reason. In the 1970s, conventional environmentalists--with exactly this frame--helped win the policy battles that ushered in an impressive regulatory regime. (10) However, environmentalists ultimately became complacent and, according to Shellenberger and Nordhaus, some perhaps a bit too arrogant. (11) The reification of the environment as a "thing" separate from humans, a thing protected by an elite group of technocrats, kept environmentalists busy over the next few decades quibbling over technical solutions, horse-trading on the Hill, and otherwise entirely missing the boat. (12) They failed to see the larger political, economic, cultural, and values-based context that generated environmental problems, and missed opportunities that could have planted the seeds of more holistic solutions. (13)

   As one example of this myopia, the authors of Death of Environmentalism illustrated how environmentalists failed to consider the concern of industry and unions that the high cost of health care is the biggest threat to the competitiveness of the U.S. auto industry. (14) Environmentalists therefore failed to cultivate the necessary alliances to collectively design win-win solutions and, as a result, the auto industry and labor unions dug in their heels, became adversaries, and were ultimately successful in slowing or halting important initiatives central to staving off global climate change. (15) Helping the auto industry address the health care issue could have made the industry and its unions allies on environmental issues--issues that, ironically, were relatively less important to these powerful interest groups. (16)

   At the same time that environmentalists were fighting the auto industry and its unions, neo-conservatives were busy cleverly constructing the intellectual framework for dismantling government, with environmental regulation as ground zero in this project. (17) The Death of Environmentalism authors suggested that the "environment," framed as a thing that had to be saved, did not have a chance when pitted against the right's strategists, (18) and against their intellectual brainchild of decades of think-tank incubation: an individualistic, market-captivated agenda of "smaller government, fewer taxes, a large military, traditional families, and more power for big business:" (19) In short, modern environmentalism is not capable of prompting the reform needed to adequately address climate change and should be pronounced dead. (20) Or so the argument goes, as put forth by Death of Environmentalism's authors.

   The executive director of the Sierra Club, Carl Pope, responded to the Death of Environmentalism critique in an equally vigorous manner. While agreeing with Shellenberger and Nordhaus that progressive movements generally, and environmentalists in particular, have inadequately mobilized the public by failing to present a more coherent vision, he believed the authors' analysis overlooked, simplified, and downright misrepresented. (21) First, he noted that the article was based on interviews with a relatively small group of the movement's more technically-oriented leaders (including Carl Pope himself). (22) Contrary to the Death of Environmentalism authors' characterizations, Pope argued, these environmental leaders do not blindly believe that the handful of technical solutions they proposed, such as hybrid cars and efficient light bulbs, will alone halt or reverse climate change. (23) He pointed out that the article also glossed over the fact that conventional organizations, like the Sierra Club, had for years pursued alliances with labor unions and other interest groups. (24)

   Equally important is that Shellenberger and Nordhaus failed to mention that other strands of the larger environmental movement--such as sustainability, deep ecology, and the environmental justice movements--do not necessarily accept the assumptions of the "environmental protection" frame as described by the authors. (25) But the perspectives of these groups were not included in the report. As Carl Pope noted, Shellenberger and Nordhaus seemed to define the entire environmental movement as the 25 people they interviewed, (26) along with a few conventionally recognized fathers of the environmental movement, such as John Muir. After defining history and the movement narrowly, the authors proceeded to attack it as being too narrow. Equally problematic is that within their critique, they failed to recognize that global warming is a very different kind of environmental problem. At least at the time of the Death of Environmentalism article, climate change was viewed by many as a more remote and abstract problem. (27) In addition, because of the scale of the problem the solution will necessarily demand a reorientation of basic values and an economic transformation of unprecedented scale; these are important reasons, by the way, why there has been a disappointing lack of progress on this front, despite the record of progress on more concrete and immediate environmental issues. (28)

   Environmental justice advocates also weighed in on the debate. In a response rifled The Soul of Environmentalism, a group of activists and scholars first set out to correct Shellenberger and Nordhaus' rendition of the history of the environmental movement. (29) They suggested that environmental justice advocates had been making similar critiques of the conventional strand of the U.S. environmental movement for decades, questioning its narrow focus on technical fixes, its failure to provide a coherent political analysis that provided adequate linkage to economic and social justice, and its inability to form respectful alliances with other progressive movements and environmentally impacted communities. (30) The Soul of Environmentalism also contained a political analysis of why the efficacy of progressive movements more generally had waned over the past years. (31)

   The authors of The Soul of Environmentalism also had some suggestions. Instead of being obsessed with narrowly defined problems and technical solutions, they argued, we need to take time to identify the big fights and the crucial intersections in progressive politics that will allow us to come together in new ways. (32)...