Via the Global Warming Policy Foundation
A careful look at the history of environmental activism shows how the movement has been unravelling. Now it seems to be dead in the water.
In 2012, three years into President Barack Obama’s first term, green activists are asking, “What went wrong?” Where are all the new laws and regulations regulating energy use and the natural resource production? Where are the public-private partnerships signalling a new era of enironmentalist problem-solving? Where’s Al Gore? Shouldn’t he be lurking over President Obama’s shoulder, smiling, as the President signs yet another green jobs bill into law?
The question is a good one but one not easily answered. In the decades since the birth of the environmental movement, something’s clearly gone wrong. Other movements pushing for political and social change have altered the national discussion and elected candidates at every level of government.
Look at the Tea Party. Born only in 2009, it’s pushed back against the agenda of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, forcing Congress to heel and almost sending the federal government into default.
But the environmental movement seems dead in the water.
Environmentalism Fails: Legislation
In late 2010 Al Gore offered three reasons why the U.S. Senate failed to enact into law a cap-and-trade bill: Republican partisanship, the recession, and the influence of special interests. He had a point. Despite endorsements from such Republican senators as John Warner, John McCain and Lindsay Graham, every effort to pass comprehensive climate change legislation during the preceding five years had floundered in the Senate.
In 2007 Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman (Independent) and Virginia Republican John Warner introduced a cap-and trade bill called the Climate Security Act. Their Lieberman-Warner bill was approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee and sent to the floor by the committee chairman, Barbara Boxer of California. The bill’s advocates said “prompt, decisive action is critical, since global warming pollutants can persist in the atmosphere for more than a century.”
The Lieberman-Warner bill aimed to cap greenhouse gas emissions, lowering emission levels each year until 2050, when emissions were supposed to be down to 63 percent below 2005 levels. To achieve that goal, the federal government would issue right-to-emit permits to electric utilities and plants in the transportation and manufacturing industries. The bill also provided financial incentives to companies and families to reduce emissions.
The bill was doomed. Full Senate debate took place in the summer of 2008, when the average price of gasoline was well above $4 per gallon. Republican opponents successfully labeled it the biggest tax hike in history, one that imposed an enormous tax and regulatory burden on industries that would pass the cost burden onto consumers already struggling to pay for gasoline at the pump.
Republicans beat the 2007 climate change bill because they argued that it would raise gas and home heating prices, cost jobs and cripple the economy. It didn’t help that 31,000 scientists rejected the notion of man-made global warming in a letter signed and circulated two weeks before the start of the Senate debate.
The next attempt came in the summer of 2009. On June 26, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, otherwise known as Waxman-Markey after its authors, Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts. For the first time a chamber of Congress passed a law meant to curb carbon emissions linked to climate change. Yet the Senate once again refused to follow through.
The Senate version of Waxman-Markey was shepherded by Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, and Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman. (Sen. Warner did not seek reelection in 2008.) Once again, a complex and messy mix of partisan politics, constituent pressures, and special interests combined to thwart passage of the bill.
Even though the Senate was controlled by Democrats, the sponsors of the bill knew they needed Republican votes, which required that certain bill provisions would have to be modified or weakened. But every tweak of the legislation designed to placate a Republican risked losing a Democrat, and every Democrat lost meant finding another Republican.
Kerry, Lieberman and Graham began bargaining with lawmakers. Some Republicans wanted guarantees that the bill would subsidize nuclear power. Lawmakers catering to agricultural interests wanted incentives or offsets for farmers who would be required to purchase emissions-reducing equipment.
Gulf Coast state politicians wanted to protect off-shore oil drilling, and politicians from Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio refused to discuss anything that put restrictions on coal plants, which cap-and-trade does by definition. Every special interest had its own demands. For instance, the powerful Edison Electric Institute, which represents shareholder-owned electric power companies, wanted guarantees that carbon costs would never rise above a certain point. To cushion the blow of higher energy costs, it proposed that through the year 2030 electric power companies receive free emission credits worth billions of dollars.
The White House proposed a “grand bargain”: expand off-shore oil drilling in return for lawmaker support for cap and trade. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. A short time later an oil rig exploded into flames and the Deepwater Horizon well started gushing thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Under pressure from Senate Republican colleagues and his South Carolina constituents and suspicious of White House double-dealing, Senator Graham pulled his name from the bill, which eventually died without coming up for a vote.
Envirionmentalism’s Bright Beginnings Turn Pale
The sputtering of the environmental movement and the ignominious collapse of its signature legislation could not have been predicted. But a careful look at the history of environmental activism shows how the movement has been unravelling.
Like the civil rights and antiwar movements, environmentalism’s origins lay in the 1960’s. In June of 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio burst into flames. Toxic waste had so befouled the water that it ignited.
Only six months earlier the nation witnessed a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, the third largest oil spill in American waters after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills. The imagery of burning rivers and miles of polluted beaches provoked public outrage and photos of dying sea birds covered in oily muck became a staple of nightly news coverage.
Highly visual incidents like the Santa Barbara oil spill and the burning Cuyahoga River didn’t create the modern environmental movement, but they were catalysts that thrust it into public awareness. Earlier, Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring had claimed that man-made chemical pesticides like DDT were killing birds and other wildlife, and issues like air pollution and toxic waste aroused public anxiety. Groups like Get Oil Out! (GOO) and the Environmental Defense Center were created in the 1960s, and in 1972 California voters approved a ballot initiative creating the California Coastal Commission with vast powers to regulate economic activities and land use along the state’s coastline.
In April 1970 the first Earth Day was proclaimed by city mayors and celebrated on college campuses. Green activists established radical nonprofits like Friends of the Earth (1969), the Natural Resources Defense Council (1970) and Greenpeace (1971) which challenged older conservation groups to become more aggressive in lobbying politicians and harrassing corporations.
At the federal level President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by executive order in 1970, and in that same year Congress authorized amendments to the Clean Air Act (passed in 1963) that imposed new regulations, the first of their kind, on industrial and mobile sources of air pollutants. The Clean Water Act (1972) and Endangered Species Act (1973) followed.
By the late 1970s environmentalists were trying to maintain their early successes, but the movement was increasingly institutionalized and bureaucratized. Most groups were headquartered in Washington, DC, where they spent their energies in fundraising and adapting to political pressures. The Carter administration created a Department of Energy and mandated corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards to make cars more fuel-efficient. President Carter tried to set an example by wearing sweaters and installing solar panels on the roof of the White House, but most Americans did not like being told to lower their thermostats and buy smaller cars.
In the 1980s and 90s environmentalism began to lose its glamour and popular appeal. Ronald Reagan put energy policy on the back burner when he became president in 1981 and he tried with limited success to emphasize deregulatory policies. Federal agencies were embroiled in constant litigation and controversy whenever they tried to limit environmental rulemaking. A new set of difficult and often unpopular issues-the ozone hole, global warming and population growth-crowded onto the environmentalist agenda.
The War on Terror dominated the public agenda during the presidency of George W. Bush despite efforts by Al Gore and others to focus public attention on global warming. Gore’s 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and his efforts to attribute Hurricane Katrina, melting ice caps and summer heat waves to man-made climate change failed to generate the crisis atmosphere needed to achieve social and political change.
These days surveys show Americans worry most about the issues of war and the economy. The environment is far down on the list of concerns. In 2010 a Gallup survey reported that 48 percent of respondents believed the threat of global warming is exaggerated.
Public skepticism has been growing steadily since 2006 when the Gallup poll first reported that 30 percent of those surveyed had doubts about global warming. (The figures increased to 33 percent in 2007, 35 percent in 2008 and 41 percent in 2009.) Similar results were recorded in a March 2011 Gallup poll that asked, “How much do you personally worry about global warming?” Only 51 percent said they worried a great deal or a fair amount, a big drop from the 66 percent in 2008 who were troubled by thoughts of melting glaciers and rising sea levels.
Another indicator of waning public interest in environmental issues is a 2011 Rasmussen poll that asked likely U.S. voters to consider what played a bigger role in global warming: solar activity or human behavior? Sixty percent said it was at least somewhat likely that solar activity plays a role in long-term climate change. Only 22 percent said it was unlikely. This gives no comfort to environmentalists like Al Gore who argue that human activity is the number-one cause.
The Movement Runs Out of Gas
Americans’ interest in taking action against global warming is waning, but environmental groups insist that public opinion plays no role in explaining Congress’s failure to enact comprehensive climate change legislation. Instead, green groups attribute the failure to achieve their goals to the money and power of their opponents. According to their reckoning, environmental groups are stymied by what amounts to a conspiracy of the oil industry, global warming deniers, and the Koch brothers’ vast right-wing network.
In the summer of 2011, Dr. Matthew Nisbet of American University released a pioneering 80-page report, which undermines this argument. Nisbet’s report, “Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate,” rejects the argument that the environmental movement has been outspent by right-wing donors like the Koch brothers. It says the data is inconclusive on how much supporters and opponents of a cap-and-trade bill are spending to affect the outcome. For instance, Nisbet compared the budgets of the conservative movement (think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations) to national environmental organizations. He found that in 2009, major conservative outlets took in a total of $907 million in revenue, and spent $787 million. By comparison, green groups took in $1.7 billion that year and spent $1.4 billion. Another $394 million went specifically to climate-change related programs.
Nisbet also looked at lobbying. In the aggregate, conservatives spent a bit more: $272 million vs. $229 million. But in election spending, they far outspent environmentalists in 2010. For instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $33 million, the Karl Rove-advised American Crossroads spent $22 million and its affiliated Crossroads GPS spent $17 million in political contributions. By contrast, the League of Conservation Voters spent $5.5 million, Defenders of Wildlife spent $1 million and the Sierra Club only $700,000.
However, state ballot initiatives tell a different story. California’s Proposition 23 is a case in point. The 2010 initiative, heavily funded by Texas-based oil companies, would have halted California regulations on greenhouse gas emissions until there was a decline in the state’s rate of unemployment. Supporters of the measure raised about $10.6 million. But opponents raised $25 million, with significiant sums from environmental groups. The National Wildlife Foundation reported spending $3 million, the National Resources Defense Council $1.67 million, and the League of Conservation Voters $1.1 million.
Nisbet also looked at foundation funding for climate change projects. What he found confirmed a 2007 study, “Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming,” which noted that philanthropists are strategic funders of environmental causes and seek to achieve specific policy goals.
It’s clear that overall, the environmental movement does not have a money problem. So what’s the problem? One prominent environmentalist, Daniel J. Weiss of Center for American Progress Action Fund, argues that the recession has played an outsized role in thwarting environmental goals. “It makes people more sensitive to the argument that various proposals will cost jobs,” says Weiss. “Oil and coal industries have made these arguments every timebut they’re falling on more receptive ears now.”
Tom Borelli, a climate-change skeptic at the National Center for Public Policy Research, agrees that a weak economy explains environmentalism’s downward spiral. “All along they were riding the wealth of our nation,” says Borelli. “Now the whole green bubble is exploding.” He points out that the movement’s energy agenda-the war on fossil fuels and the push for renewable energy-have always been unsustainable. “That’s where they failed.”
No One to Blame But Itself
But there’s yet another reason, one that activists are loathe to acknowledge, and it’s this: Their scare tactics have backfired. Environmental groups have done nothing but create enemies by labeling as “global warming deniers” anyone who dares to ask questions about man-made climate change. Critics like Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who in 2005 called global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” remain a minority in Congress.
Far more typical is Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who in 2009 said, “The scientific aspect that I’m still reserving judgment on is the extent to which it’s manmade or natural.” Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey actually agrees the data is “pretty clear” that there has been an increase in the earth’s surface temperature, but he adds that “the extent to which that has been caused by human activity I think is not clear. I think that is very much disputed and has been debated.”
Extremist rhetoric has badly damaged the environmentalist cause. The Danish environmental writer Bjorn Lomborg and two enlightened environmentalists at the Breakthrough Institute, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, put the blame squarely on the environmental movement. It has no one to blame but itself.
In his latest book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, Lomborg observes that that there are more important scientific problems to tackle than global warming. Activists should work to provide clean water and address public health issues around the world. By calling for government mandates costing billions of dollars in an implausible attempt to lower the earth’s temperature Lomborg says environmental activists are squandering the public’s goodwill and exhausting its patience.
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger urged environmentalists to abandon their doomsday fantasies in “The Death of Environmentalism,” a 2004 paper they wrote for the Environmental Grantmakers Association. It made them outcasts in the environmental movement. Last February, in a speech at Yale University, they revisited the paper and concluded that the problems they identified had only worsened in the years since.
Nordhous and Shellenberger said that when Al Gore attacks Republicans for waging a war on science and calls on Americans to “change the way we live our lives,” he is undermining the public’s “need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order” and guaranteeing that millions of Americans will reject his counsel.
Greens reacted to these developments not by toning down their rhetoric or reconsidering their agenda in a manner that might be more palatable to their opponents. Instead, they made ever more apocalyptic claims about global warming claims that were increasingly inconsistent, ironically, with the scientific consensus whose mantle greens claimed.
In 2012, it’s clear that scare tactics and apocalyptic predictions have failed to persuade. The environmental movement is not gaining traction with either legislators or the public. As Tom Borelli puts it, “They’re now going to be playing defense. And they’re not used to that.”
Amanda Carey is a Washington, DC-based journalist and a frequent contributor to Green Watch.
page488 says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:37 pm
“Don’t ever count out the sixties crowd of tree-huggers until they die (and maybe not even then)
They were taught that change – any change – is good.”
Yes, but you forgot hope…it sounds more…Progressive don’t you think?
I noticed many here are stating the green movement is alive, well, and still kicking. Yes, they’re still with us but what many of these posting have left out is the vast majority of western humanity is tuning them out more than every before. Even under Obama the green movement suffered severe set backs with the Chevy Volt crashing along with Obama’s high profile failures at choosing green companies. With the elections for the US well under way the republican party is putting even more severe pressure on the green movement and no green legislation is passing congress.
Moreover, world wide there is NO green movement in China, Russia, the Muslims world, or India. The US IS the green movement – will remain the heart and soul of the green movement for decades yet to come. There IS NO green movement worth its salts outside of the US other than the UK and Europe – however, the heart and soul of the green movement is also THE US Achilles heel and will be for the foreseeable future. And there the greens have done more damage to the US than in any other nation on planet earth. Industry is at a complete standstill, new energy exploration is virtually none existent, and new and even more onerous US government EPA regulations have US industry a walking dead men. In the US it is especially virulent with greens using US courts to bludgeon America as a nation. No other nation has courts used in this manner which is especially destructive to the US nation itself. So – – – YES, the eco movement has won outright in the US, Britain, and Europe – but at what cost?
But we must keep in mind the green movement itself isn’t the real culprit. The US, UK, and EU governments are all for holding to a harsh green agenda at the expense of every other societal need. The proof? Across the US Northern border Canada is under no such illusion and is thriving under a realists conservative government who pay no attention to the greens what so ever. And as always it is ultimately governments who make the rules of the game.
page488 says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:37 pm
“So, Climate Stagnation it is. You saw it here first!”
I saw it here first…ok…Surely you know I am joking…”and don’t call me Shirley”…moving on…
Stagnation rhymes with Stagflation…note that anyone would notice…I think.
Green Movement dead in the water? – absolutely not. It still has a firm grip on the neck of Europe and it is running amok with power in Australia after infiltrating into government by stealth and cannot be removed for another 18 months.
Perhaps the Canadians have shown us another Juno beachhead but those that oppose Green fanaticism are looking to the USA for leadership as to how it determines the future priorities in world order.
The first test is NOW. Will the USA join Canada, China, Russia and India and the dozens of other countries and take decisive action to prevent the EU’s attempt to impose its regressive green energy tax on all airlines operating into Europe?
If not and the USA meekly surrenders then CAGW alarmism will be alive and kicking for at least another decade. If so and the EU fails to impose its will then it will certainly be more than the beginning of the end for CAGW and it will fade slowly away.
Both the environmental activists and the union organizers are losing the support of the common man for the same reason, they’ve gone from being the solution to being the problem. Both movements started to give power to the majority of the common man to fight abuses by a select few that were causing widespread harm. And as LamontT mentioned in an earlier post, that earlier effort was successful, probably a greater success than the original organizers could have ever dreamed.
But the problem is that both the environmentalists and the unions abused the goodwill that came with that success. And through that abuse they have both become that which they hated, a powerful minority causing harm to the defenseless common man for the sake of maintaining their own power base.
The environmentalist movement had produced changes that cleaned up the air and water and more importantly changed attitudes about what was acceptable behaviour when it came to our effect on the environment. But they didn’t stop there. Now they have moved on to ever tighter regulation that is beginning to cause more harm than good, and that is where they are losing the common man. People will be with you when you are stopping waste from being dumped in a river, but when you start telling them which trees they can cut down in their own yards, you’ve overstepped. It’s one thing to ask a large company to spend money to change their methods and stop methods that are actually making people sick by contaminating their water supply. It’s another matter when you doubling the cost of everybody’s water bill to remove some natural contaminant that can only be detected by increasingly accurate lab tests and hasn’t been sickening anyone except in similarly exaggerated dosages in lab testing. Environmentalists had the support of the common man when their actions were making our lives noticeable better. Now that those real problems have been solved, the environmentalists are stretching to find imaginged problems to rail against to maintain funding and power. And their solutions to those imaginary problems are making people’s lives worse instead of better, and that’s where they are losing the support of the common man.
Similarly, the unions were originally formed to support the common worker in fighting abuses. But once those fixes became widespread, the unions kept inventing new problems that needed fixing until they became an abusive power in their own right. Many current unions seem geared towards protecting the privileges of a select few workers at the expense of others who might do the work better and cheaper. Even then, the unions will often sell out their own individual members if it comes to a choice between protecting the power of the bureaucrats running the unions and doing what would benefit the individual worker.
One of the great self delusionments of every generation is that the social, business and economic structures and organisations that they created during their younger and more vigorous years and which they do their utmost to retain must and will be carried on by the next generation.
Usually they are sorely disappointed as the next and newest generation is busy creating it’s own version of the world and life and just pays lip service to the previous generation’s demands that much of the societal structures they created be continued on in an barely changed form.
Which is why all those mass movements from down through history have only had a very limited shelf life of perhaps 20 or 30 years before they were eventually just ignored and died out.
That 20 or 30 year lifetime of most mass movements is about the length of time that the creators of a mass movement retain their influence and authority over the movement until finally age and waning influence catches up with them.
So it will be with the global warming beliefs and eventually most of the strictures of the current environmental movement.
Global warming as a highly emotive and cult like semi religious ideological belief system has been on the go since around 1990 and many of it’s original promoters and adherents are now well into the peak of their working lives and influence.
Soon for most of the major promoters of global warming, retirement will be coming around and they will then lose the base for their power and influence and will be fading into the history.
This has already happened with the environmental movements.
Such movements like the environmental one will continue on from that now past first generation for another couple of generations if the wealth, power and influence of the movement can be utilised and harnessed by the morally and ethically challenged second and third generation of opportunists that have had few scruples in seeking and gaining power over the movement as the founders move on or out.
The original aims of such movements are then almost completely corrupted as the new controllers run the organisation purely as an end in itself and as a wealth acquiring and a power and influence base for their own selfish ends. They no longer give other than lip service to the goals of the founders of the movement.
We see this in the history of communism and various other “isms’ during the 20th century and now we are seeing the same type of scenario unfolding in the environmental movements as the original founders fade out and the opportunist move in and control the environmental organisations. The so called environmental movements no longer seem particularly interested in the environment except as a highly emotive propaganda influence and a wealth creating oppurtunity.
The goals of the environmental movement’s present controllers now are the gaining of political power and influence and for the modern environmental movement opportunist, nothing else really counts anymore.
Like wise with the global warming / climate change meme.
As new science on the global climate comes to the fore and as the strictures against any doubting or skeptical considerations about CAGW as applied by the immensly influential Team at the top of the climate warming tree starts to diminish and as the corruption of climate science and science principles are increasingly revealed by the likes of release of the CG1 and CG2 -e-mails, and as the close connections between the biased and thoroughly bigoted upper echelons of the media and this same politically powerful and influential group of climate warming “scientists” are increasingly revealed, one sure way for a new Editor of a major media outlet and / or a new reporter to make a name for themselves is to start to openly question the whole global warming meme.
Once the rot starts then it becomes much easier for others in the media to also start to dig for fraud and corruption to try and make sure they are not left out in the cold in the new unfolding anti global warming paradigm.
Here in Australia, the journalist and commentator, Andrew Bolt is a classic case of how to make a big name and reputation for oneself by questioning the accepted and heavily promoted and grossly green based and authoritarian catastrophic global warming wisdom.
The truth of the matter is that after some 20 years since global warming first came up on the media’s radar, the careers and working lives of many senior Editors and a large swag of reporters who have just accepted and gone along without any questioning of the basis of the green and global warming claims and have heavily promoted the catastrophic global warming meme are now drawing towards the end of their careers.
The soon to be seen next generation of editors and reporters of the major media outlets will follow a very different lot of news scenarios and the catastrophic global warming / climate change meme in general will slowly be confined to the scrap heap of media and science history as the newest and next generations move onto their own pet ideals and goals.
All aided and abetted by the rapidly increasing number of news gathering and opinion publishing blogs rising up to challenge the traditional news gathering media model.
The next generation of the more traditional media editors and reporters will have to be very innovative and deliver news and opinions in a way that the public expects and will accept.
They will not be able to dictate their own biases and bigotry to the increasingly sophisticated and better informed public as has the media of the past.
The alternative for news media that can’t make this transition is to just fade away and disappear from history.
The successful news media of the future will leave the beliefs and closely held ideologies of the past generations such as global warming and crass authoritarian environmentalism to fade as always, into an increasingly irrelevant past.
That is the lesson that history has for us if we only want to seek to learn from that history.
Seems like my last couple of posts including one only a few minutes ago have gone into the spam bin even though my address is still identical to my few past posts.
Ann In L.A. says:
January 6, 2012 at 10:15 am
This seems a strange piece in light of the new EPA guidelines which are going to shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants in the next few years, whether over particulates or mercury. The new regulations and laws are out there, and are going to hurt tremendously; to say that the movement is dead when their getting one of their fondest wishes realized is a bit strange.
Obama told the world he wanted to destroy the coal industry, and he is following through very nicely.
It really amazes me that, the mostly union miners – UMW, still seem to support Richard Trumka and Oman. Is it not the job, of the union president, to protect the jobs of his members? Where are his comments regarding the shut down of coal burning electric generating facilities? Will this not lead to his union members losing jobs? He says he has Omans ear, so what is he doing for you?
I believe Trumka does not give a big rat’s behind about his dues paying members. All he wants is some sort of political job in the present Dem administration or future ones. I seem to remember a quote from his saying that he never was a miner and didn’t want to be one. He wanted to be, paraphrasing, an activist just like his hero, Oman.
If you union miners still feel comfortable in paying this persons salary, while he connives with the Oman to eliminate your jobs, so be it.
.
I got to the 4th paragraph and choked over this:
“Look at the Tea Party. Born only in 2009, it’s pushed back against the agenda of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, forcing Congress to heel and almost sending the federal government into default.”…
That should really read: Pushed back against the agenda of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats SPENDING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INTO DEFAULT!!!!!!!
Cognitive dissonance that can’t tell cause from effect. The Tea Party pushed a lot of Republicans out the door also. There are plenty of people of all stripes that can clearly see the problem.
We need to put partisanship aside and save the ship of state from these big spenders that are bankrupting the government.
Feeling better now, thank you.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/01/05/what-financial-meltdowns-teach-us-about-the-ipcc/
Richard G says:
January 6, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Cognitive dissonance that can’t tell cause from effect. The Tea Party pushed a lot of Republicans out the door also. There are plenty of people of all stripes that can clearly see the problem.
We need to put partisanship aside and save the ship of state from these big spenders that are bankrupting the government.
Feeling better now, thank you.
http://www.greenspirit.com/key_issues/the_log.cfm?booknum=12&page=3
Excerpted from “Hard Choices for the Environmental Movement”
written in 1994 by Partick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society. Some of the features of eco-extremism are:
· It is anti-human. The human species is characterized as a “cancer” on the face of the earth. The extremists perpetuate the belief that all human activity is negative whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology; that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it. This aspect of environmental extremism leads to disdain and disrespect for fellow humans and the belief that it would be “good” if a disease such as AIDS were to wipe out most of the population.
· It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry they can fully support. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and “unnatural’. The Sierra Club’s recent book, “Clearcut: the Tradgedy of Industrial Forestry”, is an excellent example of this perspective. “Western industrial society” is rejected in its entirety as is nearly every known forestry system including shelterwood, seed tree and small group selection. The word “Nature” is capitalized every time it is used and we are encouraged to “find our place” in the world through “shamanic journeying” and “swaying with the trees”. Science is invoked only as a means of justifying the adoption of beliefs that have no basis in science to begin with.
· It is anti-organization. Environmental extremists tend to expect the whole world to adopt anarchism as the model for individual behavior. This is expressed in their dislike of national governments, multinational corporations, and large institutions of all kinds. It would seem that this critique applies to all organizations except the environmental movement itself. Corporations are critisized for taking profits made in one country and investing them in other countries, this being proof that they have no “allegiance” to local communities. Where is the international environmental movements allegiance to local communities? How much of the money raised in the name of aboriginal peoples has been distributed to them? How much is dedicated to helping loggers thrown out of work by environmental campaigns? How much to research silvicultural systems that are environmentally and economically superior?
· It is anti-trade. Eco-extremists are not only opposed to “free trade” but to international trade in general. This is based on the belief that each “bioregion” should be self-sufficient in all its material needs. If it’s too cold to grow bananas – – too bad. Certainly anyone who studies ecology comes to realize the importance of natural geographic units such as watersheds, islands, and estuaries. As foolish as it is to ignore ecosystems it is adsurd to put fences around them as if they were independent of their neighbours. In its extreme version, bioregionalism is just another form of ultra-nationalism and gives rise to the same excesses of intolerance and xenophobia.
· It is anti-free enterprise. Despite the fact that communism and state socialism has failed, eco-extremists are basically anti-business. They dislike “competition” and are definitely opposed to profits. Anyone engaging in private business, particularly if they are sucessful, is characterized as greedy and lacking in morality. The extremists do not seem to find it necessary to put forward an alternative system of organization that would prove efficient at meeting the material needs of society. They are content to set themselves up as the critics of international free enterprise while offering nothing but idealistic platitudes in its place.
· It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too “human-centered”. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism. The “planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself”.
· It is basically anti-civilization. In its essence, eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern life. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the earth from ecological collapse. No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
timg56 says:
January 6, 2012 at 10:14 am
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http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8719.html
The Long Thaw:
How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate
David Archer
“David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters.”
What went wrong with the environmental movement? Simple, they went off their rockers! They decided that the best “green” policies were those that destroyed the U.S. and other western economies. Using fraudulent “science”, they made a bogeyman out of a colorless, odorless trace gas. They made dire predictions about what would happen if their policies were not adopted – and none of their predictions have panned out. Slowly but surely, with the help of WUWT and other non-main stream media sources, the public is waking up to these fraudsters. And hopefully, at least for the U.S., next November we can toss enough of the watermelons out of Congress, and take the White House, to turn things around.
Interesting article and it may be somewhat truthfull in the USA but not here. In Australia the Green movement holds the balance of power in both the lower and upper houses of parliment and they are they determinded to see us leap back to the 1850’s as quickly as possible. Now I have no issues with thems that want to live in mud huts and commute to work by horse and buggy but that isn’t a life style I would choose for myself or my children to grow up in.
No, they are far from dead here.
In the 1970’s here in Oz we saw the radical greenies agitate for everything from “land rights for gay whales” to save the (insert cuddly animal here) campaigns, don’t dam rivers, don’t put a road in here and their latest lunacy is “Wild Rivers” legislation that even locks aborigines out of using tradional hunting and fishing grounds and so it goes on. Mostly they where ignored by the general population because it wasn’t happening in ‘my backyard’.
But now they have formed larger lobby groups and are bringing in groups such as PEW to lock up the Greart Barrier Reef. We have seen the sheep industry almost crippled by PETA etc so no they are far from dead here.
Various radical green groups have been threatening coal exports by chaining themselves to coal trains and machinery, painting the sides of coal carriers etc. A huge no no for the government as it relies so heavily on export dollars to prop up it’s failed social experiments that it has sent ASIO and Federal Police on to them to ‘monitor’ what they are doing. http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/government-looks-to-monitor-green-groups/story-e6frfku0-1226238675002 Yes it is only News.com.au and every story of theirs should be prefaced with “Once upon a time” but there maybe some truth to what they are reporting.
I believe that deep down greenies would do Australia some good. At about 8 feet down and 10 to the acre they would bring back some much needed trace elemnts for our poor soils.
Ann In L.A. said @ur momisugly January 6, 2012 at 10:15 am
“Obama told the world he wanted to destroy the coal industry, and he is following through very nicely.”
So did Maggie Thatcher… and she succeeded.
…and Sir Git…would Maggie’s support be an example of the Law of unintended consequences…or something like that…coal…nuclear energy is better because acid rain is bad…ummm oh and the CO2 is bad too…as an afterthought…or was it the NEW flavor of the…past few decades.
Something like that I recall doesn’t Mockton deal with this stuff?
If it is dead in the water, we need to drag it out of the water, shoot it to make sure it is dead, drive a stake through its heart, burn it, irradiate it, then bury it.
Two hundred years ago it was Malthus! Forty years ago it was Paul Ehrlich.with his “Population Bomb.” Today it’s the Global Warming team. It’s all aimed at reducing the population of the masses. The only problem is that the masses have gotten smart. When we were farmers we needed large families to work the land but now that agriculture is industrialized 12 kids are no longer necessary. Now they are a burden. In all industrialized (second world) societies the birth rate has fallen to near or below replacement. The global population will rise for a while longer then begin to decline. Insufficient labor will become a problem. At that point Malthus, Ehrlich, Gore, Mann, etc. will become irrelevant. Unfortunately we will also stop dreaming of reaching the stars. We won’t need ” Lebensraum ” as we will have more than enough space for our population. I had hoped to reach Mars during my lifetime but I don’t think it will happen. For that I am sad. I had dreams……
Green Movement dead in the water?
Too many pistachios in their diet.
Time to flush and wash up…
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since. Everything in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white walls, staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from which verdure was burnt away. The only things to be seen not fixedly staring and glaring were the vines drooping under their load of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, as the hot air barely moved their faint leaves.
There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbour, or on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two colours, black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not pass; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed. Boats without awnings were too hot to touch; ships blistered at their moorings; the stones of the quays had not cooled, night or day, for months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles, sought the shade alike—taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire.
The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea, but it softened nowhere else. Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hill-side, stared from the hollow, stared from the interminable plain. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts, creeping slowly towards the interior; so did their recumbent drivers, when they were awake, which rarely happened; so did the exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or grew, was oppressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were panting.
Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out the stare. Grant it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a white-hot arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of the twilight of pillars and arches—dreamily dotted with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and begging—was to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, with occasional jangling of discordant church bells and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day. In Marseilles that day there was a villainous prison. In one of its chambers, so repulsive a place that even the obtrusive stare blinked at it, and left it to such refuse of reflected light as it could find for itself, were two men. Besides the two men, a notched and disfigured bench, immovable from the wall, with a draught-board rudely hacked upon it with a knife, a set of draughts, made of old buttons and soup bones, a set of dominoes, two mats, and two or three wine bottles. That was all the chamber held, exclusive of rats and other unseen vermin, in addition to the seen vermin, the two men./
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/963/963-h/963-h.htm
So what you are saying is that it is ‘the best of times and the worst of times’ for climate change…I think.
DonB in VA :
“For that I am sad. I had dreams……”
Maybe not in our lifetime, but our species has exploration in it’s blood. Once the current (and etremely counterproductive) fear based culture subsides, we will once again become curious and will probably settle the moon first. Perhaps Mars next. Not because we have to but because we want to.
There are some very fine and perceptive posts on this thread, and thanks to Anthony for initiating the discussion. The article itself is pretty lightweight, except that it provides a readable chronology of events in the US political system.
The parallels between unionism and environmentalism are illuminating. Both arose in response to a need for redress, and enjoyed broad support while they were doing that. But, both eventually entered the territory of diminishing returns, and became instead a haven for people seeking well paid jobs as a stepping stone into even better paid jobs, or politics. One feature they have in common is that governments took over their roles.
As a result, many environmental groups have been hijacked by extremists, desperate to find a role. Today I read in the Australian MSM that security and intelligence services are tracking groups that sabotage coal export facilities or try to prevent coal from reaching power stations. Immediately, the usual suspects claim that this is an outrageous attack on political freedom. Trying to cause power blackouts or costing the economy millions of dollars to no effect has nothing to do with political freedom, IMO.
In Australia, the union movement is split between the extreme green/marxist faction and the old fashioned let’s look after the workers faction. But a changing world will probably obliterate both of them (in the union sphere).
The discussion also highlights how genuine conservationists are fed up with the debate about the environment, climate change etc being framed in left/right terms. It is a pathetically inadequate explanation for people’s motivations and views. There are plenty of authoritarians at both ends of the political spectrum, and I for one want nothing to do with any of them.
“Lomborg observes that that there are more important scientific problems to tackle than global warming.” What’s even scarier, there are problems that are being attributed to global warming which, if that isn’t the real cause, are being left untreated, and will probably only get worse. Whereas if people searched for the real cause of such problems, there might be a fix.
For example, suppose coral reef bleaching really is a growing problem, and something else is the cause–perhaps overfishing, leading to some sort of ecological imbalance in reefs. If that is the case (and I have no idea, it’s just a what-if), then the reefs would truly be in danger.
JimOfCP says:
January 6, 2012 at 10:25 am
This woman complains about the failure of the environmental movement while the EPA and other federal agencies destroy the US with onerous regulations? What does she want, the government to just bomb us and get it over with?
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It would be quicker and more merciful if they did. Death by regulation is slow and painful.
But I do care for my environment. I prefer to have it free of stinking stuff & poisons & deadly diseases, just don’t buy I have to go back to medieval practices to achieve that, for at that time the environment was full of all the maladies mentioned above while right now it looks neat and nice, with healthy trees & bushes all over the city. They are definitely greener than I remember from my childhood, even the heavy smoke of coal fired household stoves is gone.
CO₂ is the very raw material of life while fire use is the basic defining feature of human anatomy. Without it atrophic human masticatory muscles were entirely dysfunctional, therefore it would be impossible to maintain an enormous skull free of muscle cover, housing an able brain. Attacks on CO₂ emissions are attacks on human existence itself. We don’t just use fire, we have it in our hearts.
As for its overproduction, just wait for several decades until technology catches up with God’s molecular nanotechnology. As soon as it happens, airborne CO₂ becomes the single most valuable resource for economy (as it always was for ecology). Then we can start worry about abrupt CO₂ depletion of the atmosphere and develop procedures to replenish it as needed.