Is environmentalism dead?

• Author: Stone, Christopher D.

1. INTRODUCTION II. WHAT MOVEMENT, EXACTLY, IS FALTERING, AND WHAT SHOULD OUR EXPECTATIONS BE? III. INDICATORS OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE A. Indices of Public Knowledge: Environmental Literacy B. Indices of Attitudes and Preferences C. Indices of Willingness to Contribute to Environmental Groups D. Indices of Environmentally-Sensitized Individual Action E. Indices of Influence on Lawmaking F. Public Sector Funding G. litigation H. Indices of Miscellaneous Actions I. Actual (Direct) Indicators of Environmental Health J Efficient Pollution IV. SELF-PRESENTATION A. Alarmism B. Image V. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION

   A recent widely circulated paper has pronounced environmentalism dead. (1) The authors charge that after initial successes in public and legislative arenas, the movement has had strikingly little to show over the past fifteen years. (2) Much of the critique is driven by the continued failure to get the United States to move forward on climate change. But the authors consider the failure to deliver on climate change to be symptomatic of a deeper, terminal malady. They cite environmentalism for trafficking in "the fantasy of technical fixes," such as pollution-control devices and higher vehicle mileage standards, when they should aptly be providing "an inspiring vision. (3) There is a need, they say, "to rethink everything," while "letting go of old identities, categories, and assumptions." (4) "Modern environmentalism ... must die so that something new can live." (5) The authors decline to specify what this something new will be, only that it will emerge from teams, not individuals, in the course of the dialogue that it is the authors' intention to inspire. (6)

   Each chapter is introduced with its own portentous epigraph, mainly about death. These include: "To not think of dying is to not think of living"; (7) "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live"; (8) and "To be empty of a fixed identity allows one to enter fully into the shifting, poignant, beautiful and tragic contingencies of the world." (9)

   While criticism is always to be welcomed, one expects more constructive detail before writing off the whole movement--presumably including the leadership, the organizations, the broad agenda--especially when the death certificate is based so largely on the failure to deliver on climate change. Climate may be a crucial issue, but it is certainly not environmentalism's only vital sign. (10) There is evidence of lingering life, even strength, in the successful campaigns to sustain the oil drilling moratoria in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Western Gulf of Mexico, even in the face of public clamor over rising gas prices. (11) The International Whaling Commission's (IWC) moratorium on commercial whaling, widely regarded as an environmentalist trophy, remains intact, even against mounting assault. (12)

   Domestically, on the negative side, the United States' total carbon dioxide C[O.sub.2] emissions, largely unregulated at the federal level, were seventeen percent higher in 2006 than in 1990. (13) On the other hand, C[O.sub.2] emissions in 2006 were lower than they had been in 2005. (14) And, between 1990 and 2002, sulfur dioxide emissions were cut by one-third and nitrogen oxides by eighteen percent. (15) Encouraging reductions have been recorded in emissions of other air pollutants. (16) Environmentalists have hardly appeared bed-ridden--either in Congress (17) or in the courts (18)--in holding off efforts by the current Administration to lessen emissions controls.

   Moreover, some consideration has to be given to the fact that in fighting climate change, environmentalists have had to take on an especially well-financed, well-entrenched opposition. (19) Dirty water never marshaled such powerful patrons. And, the fact is, the keystone of the climate change movement, the Kyoto Protocol, is subject to legitimate criticism. (20) Climate change is a worthy fight, but a distinctly hard one, not likely to be budged by any grand, undefined "vision." (21) In fact, the movement is not skimping in the supply of visions--of drowning polar bears, melting icecaps, and storm-battered coasts. (22) If those visions will not work, what will? We should be no quicker to bury the environmental movement for the failure to stanch greenhouse emissions than to bury the human rights movement for the failure to stanch genocide.

   Nor can an imminent death be foretold by a flight of resources. (23) While environmental group membership and focus varies from country to country, on a global scale membership is thriving. (24) One study concludes that in eighteen countries for which the authors collected longitudinal data beginning in the early 1980s, membership had more than doubled. (25) Between 1990 and 2004, philanthropic giving to environmental and wildlife groups in the United States increased from $2.5 billion to $7.6 billion, a pace faster than the average of all recipient categories. (26)

   On the other hand, one cannot reliably read proof of success from fluctuations in interest group membership. (27) Standing alone, membership and contribution figures are ambiguous. A decline in membership of any nonprofit sector may signal the groups' collective failure, or it may indicate that the originally motivating circumstances have been brought under control, reducing the demand; presumably contributions to suffragettes dried up with passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Conversely, an increase in membership is not inconsistent with, and might even be fueled by, organizational shortcomings. It might indicate that a worsening environment is falling behind the public's demand; hence, the critics might say, a sign that the groups are not doing their job.

   As a result, one cannot dismiss the critics' challenge that the movement's leaders should have more to show for the added bucks, although the authors might have done themselves a service by phrasing the charge more temperately: Is environmentalism misguided or faltering?

   But however we phrase the charge, the appropriate starting point is to ask: what are the criteria of success and failure by reference to which the movement should be judged? My response takes the form of identifying a set of specific goals activists appear to have embraced. I ask, for each, whether the goal is worthy, and if so, can we say, based on the available data, whether it is being reasonably met. I do not claim thoroughness. Hopefully, this small effort will help steer the dialogue along more productive lines. It does not reach conclusions on a number of issues that have rightly been raised, but may clarify them. These include: have environmentalists been pitching the wrong cases in wrong ways to wrong audiences? Should they seek more alliances with other interest groups? Should they work within existing political parties, or break away as American Greens? Has the movement an image problem? Should environmentalists be fostering new technology or a new vision of the human spirit?

2. WHAT MOVEMENT, EXACTLY, IS FALTERING, AND WHAT SHOULD OUR EXPECTATIONS BE?

   But first, what is the "environmental movement," the state of which we are to examine? There is no monolithic environmental movement. Even the boundaries are unclear. Do we count the campaign against malaria in the environment column or in the health column? Is the banning of nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere to be chalked up to the environment or the peace lobby? Anywhere we draw the boundaries of environmentalism, the "movement" is destined to include an assortment of factions, including various conservationists (each with its own potentially conflicting clients), sportsmen, animal rights advocates, and people whose primary concern is with resource sustainability or public health. The conservationist-hunters wing is destined to clash with the animal rights wing. Those who set out to save seals also menace fish stocks. (28) Indeed, why should anyone expect unity on such controversial issues as nuclear energy (given nuclear's advantages carbon-wise) (29) or genetically modified crops (given the advantages of reduced pesticide applications)? (30) We should therefore not be surprised to find different--even conflicting--goals, agenda, and tactics.

   Even if, for purposes of discussion, we postulate a general, overall movement, those who judge it a failure ought to consider: a failure relative to what? A thorough evaluation of environmentalism would have to draw comparisons with other progressive social movements; for example, the labor and civil rights movements, abolitionism, universal suffrage, tax reform, and abortion. Among the insights, one would discover a number of reasons to judge environmentalists with some lenience.

   To begin with, all these movements vary in the clarity of the goal sought. Both the suffragettes and the abolitionists enjoyed the advantage of rallying for well defined and realizable endpoints. Because the finish line was more or less clear, the advocates knew when they had succeeded and could turn their efforts elsewhere. (31) By contrast, environmentalism's goals typically have no finish line. The fight to preserve species and glaciers has to be sustained forever, (32) and is fated therefore to deal with distraction and fatigue.

   The comparison with the suffragettes and abolitionism reveals another comparative advantage of the predecessor movements: the moral clarity of discourse. Both projects could be advocated in the appealing language of universal rights. By contrast, the movement to decarbonize the global economy cannot really rest on an appeal to rights and therefore must face up to complex and fractious issues of risk, relative costs and benefits, and the allocation of burdens. (33) Indeed, one might recall that even with all the moral clarity on the side of the suffragettes and abolitionists, (34) neither battle was won without considerable pain, and, indeed, in the...