Green Groups at a Loss for an Agenda

• Author: Margaret Kriz Hobson
• Position: Staff writer covering environmental affairs at Congressional Quarterly
• Pages: 8-8

Page 8 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2011, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Sept./Oct. 2011

Green Groups at a

loss for an Agenda

The nation’s major environmen-

tal groups are at a turning point,

struggling to regroup after pouring

their blood, sweat, and tears into last

Congress’s failed campaign to pass cli-

mate change legislation.

With conservative Republicans

now in charge in the House, the ac-

tivists have no hope of passing legis-

lation to curb greenhouse gases — or

any other major environmental leg-

islation — for the foreseeable future.

Instead, they’re scrambling to prevent

Congress from slashing federal fund-

ing for environmental programs and

overturning EPA’s air and water pro-

grams. “ere’s a group of ideologues

in Congress who are very committed

to trying to reverse the environmental

agenda of recent decades,” says David

Goldston, director of government af-

fairs at the Natural Resources Defense

Council.

e groups are turning to the Dem-

ocratic-controlled Senate to block the

conservative bills coming out of the

House. ey’re lobbying the Obama

administration to keep its promises to

protect American waterways and wild-

life, crack down on industrial pollution,

and control greenhouse gas emissions.

At the same time, the environmen-

tal community is confronting a more

fundamental challenge. Last year’s de-

feat is forcing them to face their own

failings and to rethink how to connect

with Americans who are far more con-

cerned about their economic problems

than environmental issues.

“is is not something that we’re

going to get done in the next congres-

sional cycle,” notes Eric Pooley, the En-

vironmental Defense Fund’s senior vice

president for strategy. “is is obviously

an ongoing conversation and anybody

who says they know exactly what to do

next is kidding themselves.”

Environmentalists concede that

they’ve lost touch with Middle Amer-

ica. During last year’s climate change

debate, green leaders were focused on

the minutia of the cap-and-trade leg-

islation. ey failed to notice that the

American public was leery of the need

for another complicated new govern-

ment program. More important, they

became increasingly skeptical that cli-

mate change is a real problem. “We’ve

got to start from scratch in explaining

the science to the American public,”

says former New York Republican

Representative Sherwood Boehlert.

Political scientists say that the envi-

ronmental communi-

ty has also become too

closely linked to the

liberal wing. “ey’ve

really made them-

selves an adjunct of

the Democratic Party

in the same way that

the NRA is for the Republican Party,”

says Steven F. Hayward, a public policy

fellow at American Enterprise Insti-

tute. “I think it’s been a huge mistake

because there is zero upside for any Re-

publican” to work with them.

e environmental community is

adapting to the new political and eco-

nomic realities at a time when many

of the national environmental groups

are undergoing a generational shift.

At least f‌ive major groups — Defend-

ers of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth,

Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and World

Resources Institute — have hired new,

younger leaders or are about to see a

leadership change.

e new generation says that they

have a dif‌ferent perspective than their

baby-boomer predecessors, who looked

to Washington for solutions to the na-

tion’s environmental problems. “People

of my generation, we are trained to try

to f‌ind inventive ways to make prog-

ress when you’re not getting much help

or inspiration from either the White

House or Congress, which is seems to

be the state that we’re in today,” says

Michael Brune, executive director of

the Sierra Club.

ose new leaders are shifting re-

sources to grass-roots organizing and

state action. “e environmental com-

munity has to f‌igure out how to get

back into the street,” argues Erich Pica,

president of Friends of the Earth. “Our

strength is rooted in the fact that people

want clean air and clean water and safe

food. at’s what motivates communi-

ties. We just have to f‌igure out how to

channel that energy into political and

policy reform.”

Some environmentalists urge focus-

ing more time and money on elections.

“I’d like to see us have the whole move-

ment become more political and elec-

toral focused,” said Rodger Schlickeis-

en, who is retiring as

president of Defend-

ers of Wildlife. “After

20 years in this busi-

ness I really believe

that the environmen-

tal protection move-

ment’s biggest failing

is that we don’t have anywhere near the

strength that we need at the ballot box

and anywhere near the strength that

other movements have that are our

size.”

Pooley of the Environmental De-

fense Fund says the green groups are

taking stock of the political and social

issues that caused the climate change

bill to fail. But he adds that although

the political forces are against envi-

ronmental progress, “we’ve all been

through this before. e pendulum

swings and then it swings back again.

e fact is, climate change is not going

away.”

By Margaret Kriz Hobson

Margaret Kriz Hobson is a s taff writer

covering environmental affairs at Congr es-

siona l Qua rterly. She can be reached at

krizhobson@gmail.com.

T F B

ere is no hope

for a climate bill or

any environmental

legislation