by Charles
Nicholas Kristof was right when he wrote the following:
The U.S. environmental movement is unable to win on even its very top priorities, even though it has the advantage of mostly being right. Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may be approved soon, and there's been no progress whatsoever in the U.S. on what may be the single most important issue to Earth in the long run: climate change.
The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they've lost credibility with the public. Some do great work, but others can be the left's equivalents of the neocons: brimming with moral clarity and ideological zeal, but empty of nuance. (Industry has also hyped risks with wildly exaggerated warnings that environmental protections will entail a terrible economic cost.)
The basis for his op-ed is a lengthy article titled the The Death of Environmentalism, which attempts to analyze the root causes of the failures of the environmental movement's quest to quell global warming. The authors' main thesis is that the movement is a victim of its own success, that it needs to define itself more broadly and that it needs to find new ways to achieve political success. Personally, I think they're long on identifying the problem but frustratingly short and vague on ways to solve it. Heretofore my own disjointed and rambling thoughts on the problems of the environmental movement and what can be done.
The environment movement has already won.
Just as the civil rights movement has already won the war in bringing equality to minorities (for the most part), so has the environmental movement in its major battles (for the most part). Our air and water and soils are cleaner than they were a generation ago. What the movement should concern itself with now is overstepping. How many more regulations do we need in the United States before eyes are cast on significantly more serious problems found in Russia, China, India and other hot spots. How much more should we ding our own economy for reducing emissions that may have no discernible effect on the global climate.
While we do consume a disproportionate share of the resources, too often the view is too America-centric. China is a potential environmental catastrophe, yet we hardly hear about it. Rush Limbaugh joked over a decade ago that the way to compete with Japan economically is to export liberalism, that introducing liberal causes would slow their economy to a point where we could better compete. In that vein, perhaps exporting environmentalism to China and India could level the economic playing field. We need a neo-environmental movement! We need neocons, or neo-conservationists, that is. The point is that instead of fighting battles that have already been won in America, the more important task is to fight and win environmental battles abroad where the situation is much worse.
Too many hardliners in high-profile positions.
Again, from Kristof:
"The Death of Environmentalism" notes that a poll in 2000 found that 41 percent of Americans considered environmental activists to be "extremists." There are many sensible environmentalists, of course, but overzealous ones have tarred the entire field.
The loss of credibility is tragic because reasonable environmentalists - without alarmism or exaggerations - are urgently needed.
I suspect that this is the kind of news that puts "activists" in the extremist category, further fueling negative perceptions. Do mainstream environmentalists need to condemn the wackos in its fold? You bet they do. Early and often. The notion that there are no enemies on the left is a fatal one. The watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) need to be jettisoned. How much better Kerry would have done had Michael Moore not showed up at the convention.
Too many alarmists.
Kristof touched on this, referring to the movement's numerous "I have a nightmare" speeches on the environment. This is a common problem with the Left, all too often criticizing the current state of affairs but not offering reasonable alternatives. This article is a perfect example:
Even if people stopped pumping out carbon dioxide and other pollutants tomorrow, global warming would still get worse, two teams of researchers reported on Thursday.
Sea levels will rise more than they have already risen, worsening the damage caused by extreme high tides and storm surges, and droughts, heat waves and storms will become more severe, the climate experts predicted.
It's not good enough just to say that the sky is falling without offering sensible ways to keep the sky propped up. Worse, the scientists in the above article are saying that even if we take some drastic economy-gutting measures, it's not going to help anyway. That's really inspiring. The environmental movement typically goes only so far but does not take the next step. Offering bad news but foresaking hope is the wrong way to do business. Shellenberger and Nordhaus brought up the Reverend King's I Have a Dream speech as a template for effecting change. An excerpt from King's speech:
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
The words spoken over 41 years ago still ring, as does the rest of his historic speech. Martin Luther King didn't effect change just by lamenting the state of race relations, he offered a vision of what race relations could be. That was a winning strategy.
Environmentalists need their own "I have a dream" speech, painting a picture of how they want to see the world, a world that is unpolluted but still able to successfully accommodate human activity, a world that is both livable and technologically advanced. This was part of the appeal for me of the decades-long Star Trek series. Gene Roddenberry envisioned a universe where humanity solved the thorny problems of global war and environmental degradation and other seemingly intractable issues. He offered hope (cool gadgets and hot space babes in tight-fitting suits didn't hurt either). He saw a world transcended. What world do environmentalists want to paint? Far as I know, they could just as well want us living in grass huts in clustered communities, cooking on wind-powered stoves and walking to work. This is America. Most folks want mobility, space, comfort, affluence, security, and of course a clean environment to live in. That's a more compelling picture, so paint it.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
All too often the environmental movement pushes aside beneficial actions because they fall short of lofty standards. The failure to get the Clear Skies initiative out of a Senate committee is an example. Liberals, which includes the likes of Republican Lincoln Chaffee, have let wrong environmentalist propaganda take hold, allowing a good bill to fall by the wayside. NPR also bought into the party line, exemplified by Elizabeth Shogren referring to the bill as the "so-called Clear Skies initiative". It isn't "so-called", Lizzy, that is what it's called. Three months ago in the Washington Monthly, David Whitman made a convincing case that the Clear Skies initiative will provide a net benefit to the environment, more effective than existing the laws on the books. Sadly, overt partisanship and stubborn environmental groups decided to stand in the way of real progress. Writing in the Washington Post, Paul W. Hansen observes the following:
During the 1990s the major laws governing the fundamental environmental infrastructure of our nation -- the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and Superfund -- were all due to be reauthorized. All had been reauthorized before, some several times. But in the past 15 years, none of them has been reauthorized.
During that time progress came to a stop on emerging issues, such as climate change -- which threatens the entire planet -- and on old ones, such as improving energy efficiency, which saves money, prevents pollution and reduces dependence on foreign oil. The Environmental Protection Agency tells us that 860 billion gallons of raw sewage still flow into our waterways annually. And while our air is cleaner, it is still not healthful.
All of the major environmental acts of Congress that we rely on were imperfect bipartisan compromises. In the current climate, however, we have, by letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, chosen in effect to accomplish nothing. When we stop compromising in a bipartisan fashion, environmental progress stops as well.
That being said, I'm not absolving the conservative wing for its own resistance to compromise.
Too few viable solutions and too few alternatives.
Let's face it. The Kyoto Treaty is a miserable failure. Shellenberger/Nordhaus:
That lesson was driven home to Clapp, Hawkins, and other leaders during the 1990s when the big environmental groups and funders put all of their global warming eggs in the Kyoto basket. The problem was that they had no well-designed political strategy to get the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty, which would have reduced greenhouse gas reductions to under 1990 levels. The environmental community not only failed to get the Senate to ratify Kyoto, industry strategists -- in a deft act of legislative judo -- crafted an anti-Kyoto Senate resolution that passed 95 -- 0.
The size of this defeat can't be overstated. In exiting the Clinton years with no law to reduce carbon emissions -- even by a miniscule amount -- the environmental community has no more power or influence than it had when Kyoto was negotiated. We asked environmental leaders: what went wrong?"Our advocacy in the 1990s was inadequate in the sense that the scale of our objectives in defining victory was not calibrated to the global warming need," answered Hawkins. "Instead it was defined by whatever was possible. We criticized Clinton's proposal for a voluntary program to implement the Rio convention agreement [that preceded Kyoto] but we didn't keep up a public campaign. We redirected our attention to the international arena and spent all of our efforts trying to upgrade President Bush Sr.'s Rio convention commitments rather than trying to turn the existing commitments into law. We should have done both."
Responding to the complaint that, in going 10 years without any action on global warming the environmental movement is in a worse place than if it had negotiated an initial agreement under Clinton, Clapp said, "In retrospect, for political positioning we probably would have been better off if, under the Kyoto protocol, we had accepted 1990 levels by 2012 since that was what Bush, Sr. agreed to in Rio. I don't exempt myself from that mistake."
The Muck and Mystery blog has similar opinions on Kyoto. Political mistakes were certainly made, but where are the alternatives, the re-worked solutions, the adaptations? When the Clear Skies initiative became locked up in a Senate committee, the administration had a backup plan, the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), an EPA regulation which will end up doing pretty much the same thing as the Clear Skies initiative. This is the type of creativity that should be embraced:
Jason Mark of the Union of Concerned Scientists told us that he has begun the search for more carrots to the Pavley stick. "We need to negotiate from a position of strength. Now is the time for us to propose incentive policies that make sense. We've been working on tax credits for hybrids. Now we need to come up with tax credits for R&D into reduced emissions, and something to ease the industry's pension and health burdens. No one has yet put a big pension deal on the table for them. None of this has yet been explored."
Poorly played out politics.
The reality is this. The country has politically trended to the right for the past twenty years, yet most environmentalists are still doggedly fixed on the political left. In order to effect change, the environmental left is going to have to work through conservatives to get what it wants. That means persuading and cajoling, not dismissing and not attacking and not demagoguing. Frank Lutz offered some ideas for better political communication.
Yet I would assert that "responsible exploration for energy," which includes the search for incredibly clean natural gas, is a far different activity than plunking down a well haphazardly and just "drilling for oil."
To me, calling for a "cleaner, safer, healthier environment" and supporting helicopter rides over the Grand Canyon and, yes, snowmobiling in Yellowstone Park is not a contradiction. I don't believe our nation's natural beauty should be locked up. The environment and commerce can and should coexist. That's why I am a "conservationist" rather than an "environmentalist." The difference? Conservationists are mainstream and environmentalists are extreme.
Agree or disagree with his politics, environmentalists can succeed in bringing "conservationists" to their side by using conservative language. Christians are natural allies with environmentalists since, after all, we are called by God to be good stewards, and to be wise custodians of the earth and of animal life for example.
Environmentalists also blew it on fuel efficiency standards. Shellenberger/Nordhaus:
Thanks to action by US automakers and inaction by US environmental groups, CAFE's efficiency gains stalled in the mid-1980s. It's not clear who did more damage to CAFE, the auto industry, the UAW or the environmental movement.
Having gathered 59 votes -- one short of what's needed to stop a filibuster -- Senator Richard Bryan nearly passed legislation to raise fuel economy standards in 1990. But one year later, when Bryan had a very good shot at getting the 60 votes he needed, the environmental movement cut a deal with the automakers. In exchange for the auto industry's opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, environmentalists agreed to drop its support for the Bryan bill. "[I]t was scuppered by the environmentalists, of all people, " New York Times auto industry reporter Keith Bradsher notes bitterly.
More from Paul W. Hansen:
For example, the Wilderness Act of 1964 was a compromise. It protected only a fraction of the land that qualified. But it did set up an inclusive process for adding areas, and every president since 1964 has signed bills protecting additional land. Few environmentalists would argue that passing the Wilderness Act was a bad idea -- yet, would they support this compromise if it were before them today?
In 1990, the last time the Clean Air Act was reauthorized, it was a compromise. Acid rain emissions were reduced by 40 percent, but not by the 60 percent that scientists told us was needed. Toxic mercury emissions were not controlled at all. It wasn't a perfect bill, but it reduced air pollution. Clearly, we are better off than we would be if it had not passed. But would such a compromise be acceptable if it were being considered today?
Before the 1990s, the leaders of national conservation groups took the political support and public opinion available to them and, in most cases, made the best deal possible. The nation passed some important, though imperfect, legislation.
In the early '90s, this dynamic changed. When Republican leaders attempted to roll back long-standing protections, national environmental leaders came under intense criticism from some local and more radical environmental groups for being too close to power, too accommodating and too compromising. This dynamic is reemerging today.
A lack of civility in the rhetoric and tactics used by some groups also has played a role in the stalemate on many current environmental issues. When communications about the environment are too extreme, too dire or too partisan, large segments of the public tune out and dismiss the message. Presenting solutions, expressing concern about lost opportunities or engaging Americans in "can do" thinking are better ways to generate interest in conservation.
The politics can be successful if done right. Again, from Paul W. Hansen:
Results from the last elections are a good case in point. Voters in 121 communities in 24 states passed ballot measures to create $3.25 billion in public funding to protect land as parks and open space. Since 1996, 1,065 out of 1,376 conservation ballot measures have passed in 43 states, raising more than $27 billion in funding for land conservation.
When given the chance, Americans vote for conservation solutions -- even if it means a tax increase. If you look at the campaign materials for these initiatives, you see little strident rhetoric and a lot of practical solutions.
One other helpful suggestion is to ignore the politics of Canada. If there is ever a country that would benefit from global warming, it is our neighbor to the north. Yet there they were, jumping in with both feet and codifying the failed Kyoto Treaty into Canadian law.
Failing to see the larger political and economic framework.
Consider this article from the Economist, which makes the case that Bush should go green:
Yet Mr Bush has a surprising amount of credibility with Main Street America on the subject. A recent Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll found that 49% of Americans approve of his handling of the environment. Moreover, the balance of power in the conservative movement may be changing. Some neo-cons worry about America's over-dependence on such an unstable region as the Middle East. Some fiscal conservatives worry about the impact of America's appetite for imported oil on the dollar. And some evangelical Christians worry that mercury pollution is damaging the unborn, and pointedly ask what Jesus would drive. Support for strict environmental regulation among evangelicals has jumped from 45% in 2000 to 52% last year.
Most of the environmentalist culture would collectively spit out its organically brewed coffee upon hearing that 49 percent approve of Bush's environmental efforts. What this means for conservatives is that conservation is ripe for the political taking, particularly since 41 percent think that environmentalists cannot be reasoned with. Shellenger/Nordhaus get it halfway right:
Whereas neocons make proposals using their core values as a strategy for building a political majority, liberals, especially environmentalists, try to win on one issue at a time. We come together only around elections when our candidates run on our issue lists and technical policy solutions. The problem, of course, isn't just that environmentalism has become a special interest. The problem is that all liberal politics have become special interests.
The problem is that the writers are so ensconced on the left that they only see the issue through a liberal prism. The factor working against the environmental crowd is, since the leaders and benefactors tilt so heavily to the liberal side, there is an inherent distrust of free market economies and the businesses that operate therein. It's no coincidence that the freest economies are the most prosperous economies. While they consume a higher proportion of natural resources, they use those resources much more responsibly. The major problem I see with the Shellenberger/Nordhaus thesis is that they're seeking to meld the environmentalist movement to the wider world of liberalism, embedding environmental issues with both the labor movement and with government, for example. Though a failed solution, it's not uninspired. Just as Bill Clinton succeeded politically at triangulation, the authors are proposing a similar strategy. However, they are going in the wrong direction, trying to move left against a rightward moving society. The solution isn't for environmentalists to back liberal causes such as universal health care. Rather, they need to embrace free markets and reach out to the conservative movement. The wealth generated from free market economies is what finances real environmental and scientific progress. This paragraph is revealing:
Environmental groups have spent the last 40 years defining themselves against conservative values like cost-benefit accounting, smaller government, fewer regulations, and free trade, without ever articulating a coherent morality we can call our own. Most of the intellectuals who staff environmental groups are so repelled by the right's values that we have assiduously avoided examining our own in a serious way.
Emphasis mine. How can the environmental movement make political progress when it fails to seek out common ground and fails to assess their own value systems? The Economist:
The emergence of a Republican environmentalism would not only be good for the party, but for the environment. The current monopoly of the subject by the Democrats is a triple disaster. It institutionalises policymaking gridlock. It marginalises environmental concerns. And it stultifies useful thinking. The greening of conservatism is a revolution waiting to happen.
If they truly desire progress, environmentalists should jump on board and help the conservationists make it happen. More emphasis should be placed on helping developing economies become more free, democratic and prosperous. Freer societies eventually become more economically successful societies. With expanded wealth comes more resources for improving air, water and soil quality.
There are other examples of how to do it right politically. Since it's apparently okay to link to journalistic hacks with questionable credibility on this website, I give you Dick Morris:
He's [Schwarzenegger] doing it by providing aggressive state leadership to open the way for hydrogen fuel cell cars. While President Bush speaks of the advent of these vehicles in the indefinite future, Gov. Schwarzenegger is bringing them to the here and now by converting gas stations along California's interstate highways to provide hydrogen fuel as well as gasoline.
With financing projected to come one-third each from federal, state and private sources, California will offer hydrogen fuel every few miles in urban areas and at least every 20 miles along the highway system by 2010. Eventually, he and the leaders of Washington, Oregon, Baja California and British Columbia will work together to create a "hydrogen highway" that will run from B.C. (British Columbia) to B.C. (Baja California).
The Schwarzenegger plan calls for state-subsidized production of hydrogen and for tax incentives for those who purchase hydrogen cars.
Replacing gasoline engines with hydrogen-fuel cells would eliminate two-thirds of America's need for oil — a demand that we could meet entirely with domestically produced oil.
Since California accounts for 20 percent of U.S. new-car purchases, the tail will wag the dog.
No nuclear energy on the horizon.
If environmentalists are serious about carbon emissions, why isn't nuclear energy being pushed? Peter Geddes:
Is it time we rethink opposition to nuclear power? James Lovelock, promoter of the Gaia hypothesis, believes so. He writes: “Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media.… [N]uclear energy… has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. I entreat my friends… to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.”
Nuclear energy is expensive to build and there are legitimate issues involving risk, security and disposal of spent fuel. But if reducing carbon emissions is of paramount importance, environmentalists should swallow hard and lobby for more nuclear power plants.
There are other issues besides global warming.
John Dowen writes this in the The Commons Blog:
In 1999, Yale economists William Nordhaus and Joseph Boyer estimated the net global cost of the Kyoto Protocol at $716 billion. By comparison (http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/), for less than $50 billion we could greatly reduce malnutrition and control malaria in the developing world. Kyoto enthusiasts retort that the Protocol is just a first step in establishing a framework for future emission reductions. In the meantime, those most vulnerable to drastic climatic events, the world’s poor, will not be any better protected by the developed world’s collective penance.
Bjorn Lomborg has become one of the most vilified academics in environmental claques, so many of his suggestions have been categorically dismissed. However, the statement from here makes eminent sense: "I try to point out the costs and benefits of our different policy choices, and yes, I point out that for the benefit of Kyoto will be to postpone global warming in 2100 by six years, whereas the cost of Kyoto each year will be as great as the one-off cost of giving clean drinking water and sanitation to every single human being, forever."
Jeffrey Sachs was been thinking along similar lines in his treatise on eradicating global poverty, proposing the Big Five development interventions: boosting agriculture, improving basic health, investing in education, bringing power, and providing clean water and sanitation. I would add a sixth: bringing freedom and democracy to the squalid countries. Without it, there is no guarantee that the Big Five would take. All too often, the resources get misallocated, squandered and pilfered when the presiding government does not respect civil liberties and political rights. Sachs underlying premise is that global instability is the result of poverty. There may be quite a few nations that need a leg up, but to me the underlying instability is the result of fundamentally unstable governments and the contempt they have for its subjects.
Okay, I'm out of words. For now. From my perspective, nothing would please me more than to see an environmental movement that is strong on science, big on bipartisanship, brimming with ideas for solutions, unafraid of free market economies, aware of costs and benefits, pro on freedom and democracy, committed to pursuing progress in more polluted countries, able to work with conservatives, and that has an attractive vision when portraying the future. That's not too much to ask, is it?
I don't have time at the moment to read this post in its entirety -- I'll do so later this evening -- but I do want to comment on the following:
It's not good enough just to say that the sky is falling without offering sensible ways to keep the sky propped up. Worse, the scientists in the above article are saying that even if we take some drastic economy-gutting measures, it's not going to help anyway. That's really inspiring.
This remark illustrates to me one of the key problems with anti-environmentalists (i.e. opposed to the current environmentalists, not the environment in general): it presumes that what's real is the politics of the situation rather than the science. That is, your complaint here is aimed at the fact that you think the scientists aren't being inspiring when they're actually trying to relay scientific facts. It's somewhat analogous to critiquing someone's fashion sense when they're screaming that we're about to plunge off a cliff; it may be completely warranted (fuuugly!) but it's also completely irrelevant to the factual matter at hand, which is that we can't survive the fall.
Now it may be true that the scientists in question are wrong on the matters of fact, in which case this needs to be demonstrated, and demonstrated factually. If it's true, however, then all the spin in the world won't palatize it without fundamentally comprising the ugly truth: we're deep, deep in the hole and there isn't a whole lot we can do about it, so what we can do becomes even more important. To say anything else -- no matter how sunny or optimistic -- is to eviscerate the message of the science.
[I note that your citation of MLK, though always welcome, completely and utterly misses this point: the Civil Rights movement was trying to change institutionalized racism, which was an entirely social construct and thus existed only because we granted it license, whereas the environmentalists are trying to limit climatological damage, which is governed by the laws of physics and thus not amenable to us simply changing our minds.]
I happen to agree with you that the environmentalists typically aren't the most perky of speakers and that tends to hurt them somewhat in the US -- although I don't really know why as we as a people are, historically at least, highly susceptible to the rhetoric of fear; I suspect the timeframe is at fault here -- but what you're asking isn't just putting the cart in front of the horse, it's shooting the horse dead in the street and then arresting the cart for loitering. The correct version of this principle, IMO, is to convince people of the gravity of the situation and, in particular, get them to rid themselves of the childish notion that the future will have to be "attractive"; how they manage to do is entirely beyond me, but I suspect it's one of those things that can only happen spontaneously once it's too late.
Posted by: Anarch | March 22, 2005 at 02:25 PM
Myself, I tend to give a wide berth to any report that propagates an easy to check myth as the touchstone of the report. The bozometer pings softly when that silly meme is front and center.
Posted by: Hal | March 22, 2005 at 02:38 PM
Interesting points but based on a few fallacies that are repeated as gospel for the right wing. First off, the failure to reauthorize environmental laws in the 90's (and the failure to implement the Clean Air Act reauthorization passed under Bush I) was because of the neglect of environmental issues by the Clinton administration. Clinton and Gore may have talked a good game but like Bush and his social conservative base on the environment they were all talk and no action. "Clear Skies" is demonstrably worse than existing law.
As for the third world, American trade agreements have consistently refused to consider labor and environmental standards. Being able to ignore environmental concerns allows offshore manufacturing to compete. This is unacceptable and must stop. Major corporations may talk a good game but ignoring environmental considerations overseas increases their profits.
Posted by: Freder Frederson | March 22, 2005 at 02:38 PM
Interesting essay. I'm not sufficiently educated in the details of the relevant issues to comment on your specific points. Nevertheless, your final paragraph outlines a goal I could get behind (speaking as a liberal supporter of environmentalism).
Posted by: tonydismukes | March 22, 2005 at 02:40 PM
Minor useful points are made in this post, but it fundamentally misses the point.
The same forces that made environmentalism succesful in the past are still present today -- it did not suddenly morph into something different from what made it a success. It is phony to blame the movement for recent reversals when the answer is looking in your mirror every morning.
To borrow your MLK analogy, what has happened here is as if the enemies of the civil rights movement re-took power and proceded to re-institutionalize racism. If that happened, no one with any sense would blame the civil rights movement but would instead blame the racists. Also, no one with any sense would blame the civil rights movement if it became more heated in response to new racism. Maybe you could criticize a few poor tactics, but like I said above, we are talking about minor points and not the big picture.
The Republican party is profoundly anti-environmentalist; read Christie Todd Whitman's new book if you have any doubts. And the reversals regarding environmental causes are due to that ascendency, not the problems with environmentalists. If you are dismayed by the reversals in environmental policies in recent years blame the people who are advocates for overturning those environmental policies -- don't feed us phony baloney about how the cause is the inadequate advocacy by the environmentalists.
Posted by: dmbeaster | March 22, 2005 at 02:58 PM
Some do great work, but others can be the left's equivalents of the neocons: brimming with moral clarity and ideological zeal, but empty of nuance.
I thought right-wingers were into moral clarity, no matter what?
Posted by: NeoDude | March 22, 2005 at 03:04 PM
To put it politely, I disagree that there's some vast left-wing conspriacy of environmentalist who are standing in the way of "an environmental movement that is strong on science, big on bipartisanship, brimming with ideas for solutions, unafraid of free market economies, aware of costs and benefits, pro on freedom and democracy, committed to pursuing progress in more polluted countries, able to work with conservatives, and that has an attractive vision when portraying the future."
I mean, have you paid any attention at all to this Administration's record on science?
And who do you think controlled Congress when trading of SO2 credits was put into the Clean Air Act?
Who do you think has been trying to get enforceable environmental standards into NAFTA and other our trade agreements?
Oh yeah, and I remember when all those enviros came out against democracy. I'll try and make sure that never happens again.
I agree that not everything has worked out well for enviros, and I think there a lot of factors behind that (some of which you identify), but one of the largest is that enviros have gotten demonized by the Right (I'm sure they deserved it for opposing democracy though), and Republicans have preferred to serve their corporate constituencies rather than take a broader view.
This just basically seems like "blame the victim" to me-- if Frank Luntz has succeeded in propagandizing the word "environmentalist" it must be the Greens' fault for not using the word "conservationist."
Posted by: Doh | March 22, 2005 at 03:06 PM
A few points of disagreement.
1. The evironmentalists have not won, per se. Nixon envisioned the movement (as outlined in his mission statement and goals for the EPA) as one that was working toward constant improvement, especially as he recognized the need to be on the lookout for pollutants/contaminants we might not be aware of yet. There's plenty of work to be done, despite the progress that's been made.
2. You imply it's the Left's responsibility to both find the solutions AND not hinder business, whereas it's the Rights responsibility only to not pollute past the legal limits until they can change those. Your suggestion that
This is a common problem with the Left, all too often criticizing the current state of affairs but not offering reasonable alternatives.
is laughable in light of the fact that, among other things, Bush suggested it was OK that the US was not signing the Kyoto treaty because he was about to offer a better alternative...the world still waits for that, you know.
3. The phrase "so-called" implies there's a bit of irony to a name, not that the name is actually something else.
4. Nice dream...what's the Right gonna do to facilitate it, now that they're in control of the entire government, that is?
From my perspective, nothing would please me more than to see an environmental movement that is strong on science, big on bipartisanship, brimming with ideas for solutions, unafraid of free market economies, aware of costs and benefits, pro on freedom and democracy, committed to pursuing progress in more polluted countries, able to work with conservatives, and that has an attractive vision when portraying the future.
subpoints:
a. We need a president who's pro-science even when it doesn't fit his political agenda
b. We need a president who cares about bipartisanship
c. We need to stop assuming all the environmentalist responsibility falls to the liberals
d. An attractive vision for the future is relative. This will be a constant battle. I believe there are folks who don't mind the idea of total development. Others are clearly horrified that we'd drill in ANWR. I see no way to get past this difference of opinion so long as industry breaks its promises to use the so-called green technology it suggests it will use once it gets the permission to develop previously protected land.
If the Right will start with building a bit of faith that they'll make industry use this super technology that's become the cornerstone for insisting regulations are too strict, I'd support the Left reconsidering the regulations.
Also, this bit was a cheap shot:
Since it's apparently okay to link to journalistic hacks with questionable credibility on this website
And in much the same way that calling Bush a psychopath leads folks to dismiss the perhaps valid points of one's critique, cutesy digs like this work against your stated goal of bipartisanship. There are times to just rise above it all...this seemed like it should have been one of those times FWIW.
Posted by: Edward | March 22, 2005 at 03:08 PM
Some minor useful points are made, but the overall thesis of this post does not make sense. The environmental movement has not suddenly morphed into something different from what has made it a success over the years.
To borrow your MLK analogy, what has happened is that the racists have re-taken control and are re-institutionalizing racism. No one would blame the civil rights movement if that happened -- they would blame the racists. Also, no one would fault the civil rights movement if it became more heated in response to such measures. Minor points might be made about the effectiveness of that more shrill response, but the root cause is still the racists who are making policy.
The Republican party is profoundly anti-environmentalist, and its most profound anti-environmentalists are making policy. Go read Christie Todd Whitman's book if you have any uncertainties about this. Therefore, if you are going to ascribe a cause for recent environmental reversals, blame it on the people who are steadfastly and successfully pushing that agenda and not on the degree to which environmentalists are less than perfect advocates.
For example, the global warming issue is not ebbing at the moment because of failings by its advocates. Indeed, the uncertainties regarding the issue is at the root of why there is no clear remedy being advocated -- people are still struggling for better understanding and searching for reasonable solutions. What is preventing more action is that control is in the hands of those who believe that nut-ball Michael Creighton's State of Fear is "truth."
Posted by: dmbeaster | March 22, 2005 at 03:11 PM
The phrase "so-called" implies there's a bit of irony to a name, not that the name is actually something else.
Like I said, Edward, she bought into the propaganda. Read again the WA Monthly piece. We disagree on pretty everything else, too.
Posted by: Bird Dog | March 22, 2005 at 03:22 PM
Thank you for this post. I, too, need time to read it carefully--I only really read one section in detail. I think that, unfortuantely, the environmental movement has been successfully defined as a special interest group. We might be seeing a change in this mislabelling, however. The last three issues of Audobon magazine have featured Republican writers or Evangelical Christian environmentalists, for example. The new Democratic governor of Montana got elected by going to the gun groups with the message that Republicans are bad on environmental issues. Obviously hunters have a stake in habitat projection. I do think there is a bit of blame-the victim in your piece, Charles, because there has been an orchestrated effort by extreme rightists to mislabel environmentalists as anti-gun, or even as "ecoterrorists". I wish I could provide concrete evidnce of this, but I'm at work and don't have the time. There is an article about two months back, in Audobon magazine, about misinformation being spread to hunting groups about specific environmental groups, for example.
I do agree that it is time to rethink the delivery of the message, which is why I hope inside-the-beltway Democrats will notice how Montana's governor got into office. (Scheizter? Schweicker? Something like that).
Again, thanks. I'll read your post again this evening.
Posted by: lily | March 22, 2005 at 03:45 PM
Sorry for the double post (you can delete the first one) -- my initial attempt resulted in a message that the site was not responding. So I retyped it and resent it, only to discover....
P.S. -- environmentalists viewed the Clear Skies initiative that died in committee as an abomination, and the result a victory. You contrary analysis is unsupportable -- try to find cite to any main-stream environmental organization that believed the measure was acceptable or even tolerable. Whitman is an outlier -- compare the puff piece cited in the post (which is full of unsourced "facts") with this or this. Most egregious is Whitman's general claim that the Bush plan would lower emissions standards -- except it increased them.
Oh, I forgot. The Sierra Club or NRDC are not "main-stream" in your playbook, so they can be ignored.
Posted by: dmbeaster | March 22, 2005 at 03:47 PM
Charles, I know what you're trying to say with "so-called" but you're not actually saying it:
NPR also bought into the party line, exemplified by Elizabeth Shogren referring to the bill as the "so-called Clear Skies initiative". It isn't "so-called", Lizzy, that is what it's called.
To make your point here more clear, try this instead:
NPR also bought into the party line, exemplified by Elizabeth Shogren referring to the bill as the "so-called Clear Skies initiative". It reveals an unprofessional editorialization to preempt it's real name with "so-called", Lizzy, given that that is what it's called.
Otherwise, you're confusingly arguing one of two things (or both) that are unrelated: 1) that the initiative actually will make skies blue or 2) Lizzy mistakingly used the phrase "so-called" (which you haven't shown that she has).
We disagree on pretty everything else, too.
Not as much as my comment might suggest. I agree that the trend started by Gore and Clinton to ease out regulations where technology advancments have made that more economical (while still protecting the environment) is the way to go, but there's a definite cart/donkey chronology in that that Bush seems to get a**backwards, if you will.
Posted by: Edward | March 22, 2005 at 04:04 PM
first link fixed
Another interesting link
Posted by: dmbeaster | March 22, 2005 at 04:04 PM
Well, just to be contrary to those attacking this article, I thought it was pretty well argued. I generally don't find Mr. Bird too persuasive, but I think he makes some good points this time, and the reactions to this article seem to pretty much exactly illustrate the points he is making.
Posted by: John Biles | March 22, 2005 at 04:14 PM
that the initiative actually will make skies blue
Or clear, as it is.
Posted by: Edward | March 22, 2005 at 04:15 PM
BD:
Saw your post to Edward. I did read the WA Monthly piece, as well as several others. Key point in the WA Monthly article is the claim that Clear Skies would have lowered emissions by 70%. From scienceinpolicy.org:
The Bush administration heralds the Clear Skies Initiative as improving air pollution standards (established under the current Clean Air Act) by decreasing power-plant pollution by 70% through the creation of "national pollutant caps." This statement is both vague and misleading. Rarely are scientific comparisons made at all between the Clean Air Act Standards and the Clear Skies Initiatives and when they are made (or implied), by policy makers they are always vague and usually misleading or invalid. The main difference between the Bush administration's plan and the Clean Air Act is not the inclusion of better national caps but how these caps are calculated. Both Acts set caps on individual air pollutants, most of which are actually less stringent under Bush's plan (see below for specifics), but the two plans calculate the caps very differently. Under the Clean Air Act, pollutant caps are set based on the amount of a single pollutant in the air at a given location over a set amount of time. That means the "cap" is the highest federally acceptable amount of a pollutant to which a person should be exposed to where they actually live and work. Under this system, no matter where you live, you live under the same stringent (if not more stringent, in states with stricter laws) air pollution controls as everyone else in the country. Under the Bush administration's plan, the national caps are averages across the entire country, summing the amount of air pollution caused by specific industries across towns with and without those industries. Thus the level of smog may decrease over the entire country but you personally may experience higher levels of that pollutant if you live in a town with an industry that produces high levels of that pollutant. More accurately, under this plan, air quality is likely to remain the same or improve more slowly in specific locations than under current regulations.
Voila -- less overall emissions, on average. Also, Clear Skies would have pre-empted state laws that were more stringent -- a favorite use of federal power by polluters.
Who is buying into propoganda?
Posted by: dmbeaster | March 22, 2005 at 04:25 PM
Clear Skies is a lousy piece of legislation. There is nothing wrong with the Clean Air Act that was passed under Bush I other than the big coal using utilities don't like it because it will cut into their profits. They have been trying to dodge the requirements to lower emissions required by the Clean Air Act for 35 years by upgrading plants instead of building new ones. It is time they faced their responsibilities.
Posted by: Freder Frederson | March 22, 2005 at 04:36 PM
Hmmm ... it occurs to me that perhaps the best way to achieve an environmental movement that is "big on bipartisanship" and "able to work with conservatives" would be for more conservatives to join in and become active in said movement. (As opposed to griping about the liberal bias of those already working in the environmental movement.) How about it, C.B., you want to jump in and work for change from the inside?
Posted by: tonydismukes | March 22, 2005 at 05:05 PM
Of *course* the first article linked under "too many alarmists" doesn't propose any solutions. The authors of the study are climatologists, whose job is to tell us what the climate will do. Figuring out what to do given those climatological facts is the job of social scientists and policy analysts.
Posted by: Stentor | March 22, 2005 at 05:08 PM
Whitman is an outlier -- compare the puff piece cited in the post (which is full of unsourced "facts") with this or this.
Your first link didn't work, and Whitman already answered the very same issues that NRDC raised. If you haven't (and it looks like you haven't), I suggest you actually read what Whitman wrote:
NRDC and mouthpiece RFK Jr. are part of the problem.Posted by: Charles Bird | March 22, 2005 at 06:55 PM
From my perspective, nothing would please me more than to see an environmental movement that is strong on science, big on bipartisanship, brimming with ideas for solutions, unafraid of free market economies, aware of costs and benefits, pro on freedom and democracy, committed to pursuing progress in more polluted countries, able to work with conservatives, and that has an attractive vision when portraying the future.
Yeah, let me know when you find Republicans in positions of power that the Democrats can be bipartisan with. Environmental regulation, virtually by definition, is a liberal cause. It limits the the freedom of action of industrial corporations and adds to their costs. It increases the size and cost of government as well. Granted, the choice of regulation has an impact on the size of the costs, but the direction is always the same. In the current political atmosphere, I don't see much pent-up support for environmentalism of any sort within the Republican corporate funding base.
It also turns out that believers in End Times theology are likely to be indifferent if not opposed to environmental regulations. This article by Bill Moyers explores this to some degree. Moyers wears his biases on his sleeve, but I don't think that's reason to dispute his take on the implications of what belief in the Rapture means in this regard. So, another linchpin of the Republican base is also uninterested in any bipartisan efforts.
Posted by: JerryN | March 22, 2005 at 07:24 PM
.. [environmentalists] need to embrace free markets and reach out to the conservative movement.
I’m not at all convinced the conservative movement actually embraces market principles with respect to environmental issues. It is a basic market idea that those who use resources should pay for them. Unaided markets often do a poor of job of implementing this principle with respect to environmental damage. It usually requires government intervention to get it right. Yet I don’t see a big push from conservatives to make companies pay for the damage they cause. Superfund is bankrupt, and the Bush Administration opposes taxing polluters to pay for cleanups, to cite an obvious example.
Perhaps the economic arguments are not all on one side.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | March 22, 2005 at 07:50 PM
My impression from my environmental scientist friends is that the nature of the environmental movement has changed: it has better science these days. "Wilderness" projects are less about preserving a healthy ecosystem to support human life than they are about preserving beautiful landscapes and a incarnated vision of what life before humans looked like: pretty trees, moral lesson. Conservation implies a rear-guard defense: we will save that one, probably doomed species.
Environmentalists have been doing real studies that show how human impact is unpredictable. Here are some examples of things we didn't know in 1964. That pretty forest in the wilderness area is no longer populated by its native fauna because the migration path has been interrupted by suburbs. That beautiful desert area has been invaded by a foreign grass that chokes out the original species, meaning that the native fauna are thrown out of balance. Most of the beautifully conserved Grand Canyon is obscured by smog from LA. A great deal of the carbon-dioxin-sucking properties of a forest are due to delicate fungus and root systems in the topsoil rather than in the more visible leaf systems (suggesting that there's something about undisturbed forests that's more palliative to too much cardon dioxide than new forest). And this is just ecosystem stuff. We're still trying to trace the impact of the chemical revolution on human life.
I agree with you about many points in your post. For example, any environmental action needs to be weighed in a pretty hopeless cost-benefit analysis. Everything we want as humans--and yes, especially as Americans--is pretty harmful to the environment. We want "growth," and as we've "grown," we've poisoned our own ecosystem. There's not a lot we can do to reverse that trend. What we can try to do is make smarter moves about how we're going to "grow" in the future and perhaps to scale back the dimensions of our desires.
This is where you and I diverge somewhat. I see the Star Trek expansion into space as less than ideal. I can't help seeing it as something of an escape into a no longer possible horizon of limitless space, where no man need ever make compromises with necessity. Move on, keep going, keep burning, the next planet will have welcoming natives.
Posted by: Jackmormon | March 22, 2005 at 08:00 PM
" It is a basic market idea that those who use resources should pay for them. Unaided markets often do a poor of job of implementing this principle with respect to environmental damage. It usually requires government intervention to get it right."
Good point. The economic interests pushing for increased logging of public lands, and mining of public lands, and livestock grazing on public lands, pay a laughable pittance for the privilege of so, nowhere near a "market" price. They also resist efforts to make them pay for the damage they leave behind.
Posted by: CaseyL | March 22, 2005 at 08:42 PM
I have to take issue with the paragraph sited above. The environmental movement is strong on science. The Bush admi. pretty consistantly ignores the science it doesn't want to know about. I really don't know how a case could be made that environmentalists are weak on science unless one goes to fringe groups like the Fund for Animals that don't use science as a basis for their goals or appeals anyway. The Audobon Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and, yes, the NRDC, are very much tied into genuine quality science.
The vision of the future is clear and positive: reduce fossil fuel dependence, limit population growth and mitigate its effects, save what we have for our children, manage our resources for the longterm benefit of everyone, and not just short term benefit of special interests groups. I honestly can't see how anyone could have even a limited acquaintance with mainstream environmental groups and not know very clearly what the vision is.
The free market is good for some things and not for others. Markets tend to satisfy short term goals, sometimes to the deteriment of longterm well being. For example, the development of sun coffee is good for well established large busnesses but a disaster for small coffee farmers and migrating birds. When the free market has the effect of promoting something which should not be promoted, we need to regulate the market. That's why cocaine isn't legal. Perhaps sun coffee shouldn't be either. My point is that free trade isn't a religion. It won't solve everything and can do harm. It isn't a sin to limit the market when it needs to be limited.
I do not understand at all the suggestion that the environmental movement is lacking in respect for freedom or democracy. I do think the environmental point of view frequently involves limiting the self-centered choices people might want to make and promoting choices for the common good, but that's just what people have to do to get along.
As far as bipartisan appeal: yes. Under the current leadership of the Republican party this will have to happen by Republicans voting Democratic or by a ruthless housecleaning by Republicans of their own leadership. Democrats can poach across party lines on this issue. I gave the example upthread of the Montana Democrat who got elected governor by seeking votes from gun club and hunting organizations.
Thanks again. I'm glad to see environmental issues under discussion here.
Posted by: lily | March 22, 2005 at 08:58 PM
As a practioner in the field, my response is phooey . . . mostly.
Given that the Rs control both houses and the presidency, the responsibility for introducing responsible legislation lies entirely in that party. As to the defeat of Clean Skies, the story is much more complicated than Easterbunny makes it out to be.
Most importantly, it is widely conceded that the EPA has totally flunked in enforcing title V of the Clean Air Act. So, the first hard question is "what is the appropriate baseline?" Is it that which actually exists today, or that which should exist today as contemplated by an unenforced Act? The enviros, unsurprisingly, want to use the latter baseline, the Bush admin, the former.
The enviros are on very solid ground here. By allowing the admin to use the former baseline as the basis of discussion, the enviros would be conceding that gross refusal to comply with applicable law, coupled with top-level politicing, is an allowable means for business to establish environmental policy.
I do much more work under the ESA and the Clean Water Act. I'm not aware of any hotly disputed areas of either of those two acts -- be it critical habitat designation, TMDLs or MS4 permits -- where the federal agency has given business such a free ride as in the Clean Air Act toward the big midwest power plants.
Mercury deposition is a serious issue -- as a society we have traded cheap power in the midwest for poisoned fisheries, yet the law was supposed to be the other way! (and due to mercury's weight, it is particularly susceptible to creating hot spots, which makes cap-and-trade programs much more difficult. You end up needing cap-floor-and-trade, which isn't much different than pure command-and-control.)
Besides doing something about emissions from coal-burning plants, the biggest enviro issue which needs a whole new regulatory approach is ocean fisheries. Fishery regulation is, essentially, utterly insane. It's about as bad as the US subsidizing sugar cane growing in Florida, and subsidizing the cleanup of the contamination of, well, most of central Florida. There are way more boats than the fisheries can support, yet there are essentially no barriers to entry. Instead, the fishing regulators limit the season, so as to try to preserve enough of the target population so there'll be another fishing season the next year.
where is the dramatic overhaul of the Magnusson Act, the ESA, NOAA's organic act? [silence.] the CATO papers on creating private markets in fisheries? public debate on ending the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico?
now it's true that many enviro groups are pure nimbys / bananas / nopes (Not In My BackYard / Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anythin / Not On Planet Earth). And many earth firsters are in fact domestic terrorists. but that is not a fair charge to levy against NRDC, The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club (some of the time).
the real point is that the Rs have gotten tremendous mileage out of demonizing the environmental movement, (along with the ACLU, pro-choicers and those activist judges) and the enviros have largely accepted that accusation, preferring to be in the opposition than to start negotiations with the enemy.
yes, there's plenty of blame to go around and both sides are guilty of it (i'm sure that Sebastian, von and CB would ALL disagree with my view that the most recent culture of demonization is traceable largely to Newt Gingrich.) but if the majority actually wants to pass environmental laws, they're going to have to be the first to stop the rhetoric. and i've seen precious little evidence that the Rs have any interest in doing so.
the problem with winning is you have to lead. where are the hard choices? unbalanced tax cuts, twin deficits as far as the eye can see, blistering rhetoric toward the opposition and a culture of corruption that it took decades for the Ds to develop -- congrats. You'll just have to excuse my desire not to work with the D party and enviro community to start drafting up good amendments to the ESA or CAA. I just don't have the stomach for it.
Posted by: Francis | March 22, 2005 at 10:23 PM
I agree with the general thrust of this post. We don't live in a dark and sooty world of clear-cut forests and burning rivers these days - many environmental problems are much more subtle (e.g. acid rain) and distant (e.g. global warming).
It seems to me that in these circumstances advocacy for further protection of the environment needs to adopt a patient approach - not in the sense that the efforts need to be limited, but in the sense that it needs to appeal through sound research, education, and an appeal to reason over the long-haul - "The best models we have right now indicate that the pernicious effects of global warming will be (flooding or so many billions of dollars to protect shorelines, shifting agricultural regions and costs associated with moving farmland, receding boreal forests, diseases reaching populations without historical immunity...).
"They also predict some positive effects (more areable land, less severe winters and associated reduction in costs...).
"We think the costs outweigh the benefits, especially if warming happens quickly, because (lay out the costs and benefits evenhandedly)...
"We can't say exactly what will happen exactly when given no change in our behavior and policies, but the subject merits stepped-up study and immediate, if cautious, action simply because the best guesses current research can give us indicate it is potentially so economically and socially important.
"Currently, we should be evaluating (particular alternative sources of energy, carbon sinks, taxation based on conservative estimates of distributed costs, market-based pollution vouchers) as ways to limit any impact of our current behavior and prepare ouselves if it becomes clear that serious action is urgent."
That's the kind of appeal I'd like to see with regard to global warming, and the same applies to other issues that don't hit the average person over the head with their importance.
The obvious question is "what if we don't have time for a patient approach like that?", and my answer is "then we're screwed!", because you won't get people to accept the need for hugely costly reforms if they can't see the damn problem, and you can't get them to see the problem without patience.
Posted by: Morgan | March 23, 2005 at 12:54 AM
As soon as companies start factoring in environmental degradation into their cost/benefit analyses, then we'll be getting somewhere.
Economics is all about the free lunch of not having to be concerned about waste. Out of sight, out of mind.
As posted above, there's a difference between environmentalists and environmental scientists - myself being of latter. However, the current administration has shown zero support for any science that goes against its ideology. I fail to see how this is the problem of scientists and their inability to provide shiny, spun policy that makes everybody feel better.
Fundamentally, to me, there are four major concerns environmentally: global climate change; soil loss; fisheries depletion; and biodiversity & ecosystem destruction.
The problems of environmental degradation are simple: the costs are typically too diffuse to be accurately reflected in most cost/benefit scenarios. Especially when we have a less than accurate understanding of the mechanisms involved.
Blaming environmentalists for their methods of advancing these concerns does not absolve those in positions of power of their responsibility to faithfully address these concerns.
Posted by: ChrisS | March 23, 2005 at 10:02 AM
How about it, C.B., you want to jump in and work for change from the inside?
We all use the tools that we have.
Posted by: Charles Bird | March 23, 2005 at 10:37 AM
We all use the tools that we have.
I have mountaintop clearing deathstars...what you got?
Posted by: Edward | March 23, 2005 at 10:45 AM
You've got a tool right here -- i mean the blog.
Start a running commentary on fisheries degradation and the various means for addressing it. I bet ChrisS, Katherine and I could gin up a dozen or so topics. Here's a few: permit-based entry into the market; enforceable international commitment to a common rule of law; reduction of non-point (e.g., farm) discharges; by-catch regulation; the merits of species-based vs region-based regulation; elimination of duplicative and inconsistent regulatory agencies; mercury contamination.
You said, after all, "we are called by God to be good stewards, and to be wise custodians of the earth and of animal life for example."
If GOD is calling you to be a good steward, don't you think your obligation goes beyond telling the minority what a lousy job it's doing? Don't you have a GOD-GIVEN mandate to start working with the majority to SERVE GOD'S WILL?
or is it ok with you that a cheap food source -- canned tuna fish -- is unavailable to pregnant women?
Posted by: Francis | March 23, 2005 at 11:02 AM
If you're talking about mercury contamination of fish, they're still unclear about exactly where the mercury is coming from.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | March 23, 2005 at 11:29 AM
Economics is all about the free lunch of not having to be concerned about waste. Out of sight, out of mind.
Actually it's not, but it is in the form used by opponents of environmental regulation. One of my pet peeves is the notion that getting the benefits of a market economy means letting business do whatever it wants, regardless of social costs. This is absolutely wrong.
Economics is about the use of resources, among other things, and clean air, clean water, etc. are limited resources. A sensible economic system takes these into account, but it requires government action to accomplish this. The market-worshippers don't understand this, and the corporatist Republicans don't care.
The broader point is that markets do not exist in isolation. They operate in the context of political and legal systems. You cannot have markets without defined and protected property rights. You get anarchy, with the powerful taking what they want. Defining and protecting these rights is the job of government. The problem is that in many respects our government has failed to do this, often at the behest of those who prefer the "take what you want" system.
I can't claim that economic approaches will solve all environmental problems. I'm really not familiar enough with all the various issues to say. But I think it would solve some, and I'm tired of so-called "free-market" advocates claiming that making public resources available for free to businesses somehow reflects sound economic principles.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | March 23, 2005 at 11:32 AM
Free-market advocates often ignore distributed costs as though they didn't exist, and advocates for the environment often spurn market-based approaches as if they were tainted by making reference to the inherently evil concept "market". That situation makes reforms of this type difficult.
But I agree, correctly apportioning distributed costs (and distributed benefits, if any) would result in more efficient markets and better standards of living for everyone - even if GDP dropped as a result.
There may also be distributed benefits of certain behaviors, and these should also be reflected.
ChrisS pointed out the inherent difficulty in measuring and reflecting these costs. Can anyone suggest a way to do so?
Posted by: Morgan | March 23, 2005 at 11:58 AM
Morgan--ChrisS pointed out the inherent difficulty in measuring and reflecting these costs. Can anyone suggest a way to do so?
No, but a good start might be to make the BLM start charging something like market value for grazing and mineral rights on public land. There is a term for their current practice. It's called "redistribution of wealth," which, last I checked, was officially A Bad Thing (tm) amongst conservatives whenever it applies to their wealth.
One big problem for all this Free Market rhetoric: we don't have one.
Posted by: nous_athanatos | March 23, 2005 at 12:34 PM
The problem with the free market rhetoric is that people rarely want to apply it consistantly or to themselves. I really don't mind the subsidized use of public resources. My objection is to the subsidized use by special interest groups who accept the subsidy while refusing to accept public interst regulations on their activites.
One of the worst things about the Bush admin. is the effort to install judges who will declare the profits made by special interest groups from the use of public resources to be Constitutionally protected property and rule regulations such as those arising from the Endangered Species Act as unconstitutional.
Posted by: lily | March 23, 2005 at 01:01 PM
Slarti:
in Florida, the big problem is nutrient runoff from the cane fields.
Posted by: Francis | March 23, 2005 at 01:16 PM
I don't really see how the group that is trying to call attention to the problem is the problem. Some of us believe that whoever sees the problem has a moral obligation to address it. Others would rather deny that the problem exists.
We don't live in a dark and sooty world of clear-cut forests and burning rivers these days
When you say we, then, you do not include South East Asia or Africa, do you?
Posted by: votermom | March 23, 2005 at 02:00 PM
nothing would please me more than to see an environmental movement that is strong on science, big on bipartisanship...
How about an Administration that's strong on science?
This one isn't
And while we're at it, how about an Administration that's big on bipartisanship?
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | March 23, 2005 at 02:00 PM
When you say we, then, you do not include South East Asia or Africa, do you?
You know you're in trouble when (last I heard) Thailand is going to have to go out of the logging business because they don't have enough timber left to sustain the industry.
[Disclaimer: no cite for this, just overheard in Burma as the reason why Thai companies are descending like locusts on the forests there.]
Posted by: Anarch | March 23, 2005 at 02:36 PM
Those typically don't back up into the Central Florida lakes, which is where one of the big mercury mysteries is.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | March 23, 2005 at 02:50 PM
There's got to be a decent Burma Shave sequence in there. I'm just far too lazy to make one up.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | March 23, 2005 at 02:55 PM
There's got to be a decent Burma Shave sequence in there.
Good idea, slarti
Thai forests
Have been logged away
That's why
Timber cutters say
Burma-Shave
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | March 23, 2005 at 03:00 PM
The Clean Air Act and all of the federal statues have some flaws that could be fixed to the benefit of the environment and the economy alike. But I do not think it wise to amend these statutes when the majority of the House and Senate has shown such as an utter contempt for science as they did over the weekend, and I do not think it wise to amend these statutes when Tom DeLay, a man who has compared the EPA to "the Gestapo", controls the conference committees and forces votes on legislation before it can be read.
And, you don't know much about the NRDC. I worked there last summer.
Posted by: Katherine | March 23, 2005 at 03:15 PM
This says it all, IMO (from The Onion):
Posted by: Edward | March 23, 2005 at 05:09 PM
Bernard, I agree with every sentence you wrote. Like I wrote in the post, I'm not absolving the Bush administration for its shortcomings. The omission of the Harvard study sounds pretty sleazy, and they should have incorporated the study. However, in the bigger picture, while mercury reductions in the U.S. will be welcome, the real issue is mercury pollution by other nations, especially China. Easterbrook has a fair perspective on the matter. We release about 48 tons a year, while Asia belches out over 2,500 tons a year. Most mercury in the U.S. comes from elsewhere: "Mercury from China and elsewhere drifts on the winds to the United States in larger amounts than the mercury emitted here; increasingly, research shows that smog, acid rain, dust pollution, and toxic air pollution are global, often transiting the oceans." If there is mercury in the tuna, it's not coming from us, since only about 1% of the mercury in the oceans comes from the U.S.
Posted by: Bird Dog | March 23, 2005 at 09:00 PM
BD, glad you're a Burma Shave lyric fan. Good thread btw.
ObBash - I wouldn't trust Easterbrook farther than I could teleport him.
Posted by: rilkefan | March 23, 2005 at 09:07 PM
Good thread btw.
Let me second that.
As for mercury, I think Easterbrook is wrong as mercury is too heavy to travel as far as he suggests, but I need I'd welcome some more informed posters on this. Mercury is particularly nasty, and there's a particular interest for me, in that I live rather close to Minamata.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | March 23, 2005 at 09:27 PM
One of my pet peeves is the notion that getting the benefits of a market economy means letting business do whatever it wants, regardless of social costs.
Absolute agreement. There's work to be done on that. Howard Odom was a pioneer in weaving together ecosystems, economics, and energy... there's still a lot to be learned from him that has yet to make it into mainstream thinking. But people would rather protest movies about volcanoes with references to evolution, let alone try discussing the possible negatives of filling in a swamp for a strip mall.
in Florida, the big problem is nutrient runoff from the cane fields.
Which is being funneled directly into the ocean via manmade channels that bypass the mangroves.
We release about 48 tons a year, while Asia belches out over 2,500 tons a year
I think Easterbrook is wrong as mercury is too heavy to travel as far as he suggests
But it's about right, even though it is coming from Easterbrook. Most of the emissions (and I'm just regurgitating really, this isn't my neck of the woods) are from steel production and coal burning(1). The Hg emissions are not typically in liquid phase, thankfully (imagine a mercury rainstorm!), but are in gaseous form allowing for airborne dispersal. China has very limited oil resources, but sizable coal seams, and they are industrializing rapidly, to the delight of the west. Thus the increasing mercury emissions.
If there is mercury in the tuna, it's not coming from us, since only about 1% of the mercury in the oceans comes from the U.S.
Cite?
And, BD, people have been lobbying for free trade with environmental and labor reforms included and they get slammed as crazies that want to wreck the economy. So, if we can't reduce China's emissions through economic policies what are you suggesting? Military intervention? A mushy treaty that countries will ignore?
Overall, BD has a fatally naive view of the conservative establishment with regards to the environment. I'd be happy to jump on board and help out the conservative environmental movement... but... there isn't one, and the stock and trade of conservative ideologists has been to demonize science to push their agenda. No thank you.
There's a lot of glossing over the facts and mythmaking in your original post, as well, some quibbles before bed:
If there is ever a country that would benefit from global warming, it is our neighbor to the north.
If the earth wasn't spinning and didn't undergo differential heating, well yeah, the frostbacks in St. Johns or Goose Bay might not have to ride their snowmachines as often. However, a rise in global mean temperature doesn't mean the effect is uniform. There's even some research that suggest warm periods in the past tended to "bunch up" thermal bands closer to the equator.
Most of the environmentalist culture would collectively spit out its organically brewed coffee upon hearing that 49 percent approve of Bush's environmental efforts.
It's not organically brewed, no such thing, there's shade grown/fair-trade coffee that 's grown without pesticides using the natural ecosystem. Sure, it costs another 20 cents a cup, but it beats losing the tremendously thin soils in Costa Rica.
"I try to point out the costs and benefits of our different policy choices, and yes, I point out that for the benefit of Kyoto will be to postpone global warming in 2100 by six years, whereas the cost of Kyoto each year will be as great as the one-off cost of giving clean drinking water and sanitation to every single human being, forever." - Lomborg
False dichotomy. There's no decision to be made because no one has actually proposed giving clean drinking water to every person on earth. Lomborg is mess because his book is chock full of errors.
I've got to go to bed... there needs to be smaller posts with more specific topics for decent commentary.
(1)E. G. Pacyna, J. M. Pacyna, Global Emission of Mercury from Anthropogenic Sources in 1995, Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, Volume 137, Issue 1 - 4, Jun 2002, Pages 149 - 165
Posted by: ChrisS | March 23, 2005 at 11:35 PM
Cheers program - anyone know if this is a crock?
Posted by: rilkefan | March 24, 2005 at 01:00 AM
Btw the above link is a little contentious/partisan/godwined.
Posted by: rilkefan | March 24, 2005 at 01:06 AM
If I understand the EPA CHEERS page correctly, no one is being paid to expose their kids to chemicals in this study, rather they are paying the famiy for the right to examine their kids and monitor the existing level of chemical exposure in the home and surroundings over a two year period. It's not as if the EPA is exposing the kids to additional levels of harmful chemicals.
There may be an ethical problem if the study allows harmful exposure to continue after it is discovered, but that doesn't seem to support the level of rhetoric that KOS is aiming at it, IMO.
Posted by: nous_athanatos | March 24, 2005 at 01:26 AM
Just a note (because this always seems to come up) I think that the link that rilkefan gave was to a Kos diary, so it wasn't by kos himself and it didn't appear on the front page (I think) I"m sure nous_athanatos is aware of that, but it's always good to state it so that we don't have some pile on.
I have to admit, the incentives to participate make it seem less like a government study and more like something Ed McMahon might be doing
* You will receive both monetary and non-monetary compensation
* A Study t-shirt
* An official, framed Certificate of Appreciation
* A Study bib for your baby
* A calendar
* A Study Newsletter
* A video camcorder, if you complete all of the study activities over the two-year study period
Call now, you may already be a winner!
Posted by: liberal japonicus | March 24, 2005 at 01:45 AM
Thanks for the disclaimer, LJ. No personal snark at KOS intended or implied.
And, yes, the EPA could sweeten the deal with a year's supply of Rice A Roni.
Posted by: nous_athanatos | March 24, 2005 at 01:55 AM
Except that I now have to take into account that Easterbrook could stumble on being right, a big thanks to ChrisS for the reference. I can't find the full paper online (here is the abstract), but the word 'anthropogenic' opened the google doors.
In studying mercury poisoning in Minamata, I was under the mistaken impression that mercury was a problem for the locality only because of the nature of mercury pollution in this case (dumped into Minamata Bay and worked its way into the food chain). Sadly mistaken, as mercury looks to be a lot nastier than that. First of all, because it is an element, it isn't subject to breaking down. Because of this, mercury can be 're-emitted'. This article points out how the best laid plans may be going a-glay.
Asia apparently accounts for 50% of mercury emissions, and China is responsible for the bulk of anthropogenic mercury currently being released because coal burning power plants are a major culprit. However, a number of reports, including this one, note that mercury can be reduced quite substantially if some steps to deal with exhaust gases from such plants are taken. This is why I don't see the logical foundation of saying that China is pumping so much into the air that any steps we take are really meaningless. In fact, this story has researchers suggesting a link between mercury and autism. (note: I can't get into the New Republic site to read exactly what Easterbrook says)
This link gives some more information on Slart's point about freshwater sources in Florida having problems with mercury and this pdf. Depressing stuff.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | March 24, 2005 at 04:46 AM
However, a rise in global mean temperature doesn't mean the effect is uniform. There's even some research that suggest warm periods in the past tended to "bunch up" thermal bands closer to the equator.
If memory serves, the ill-fated IPCC report from a few years back said that, in fact, the country with the most to gain from global warming was the US, being ideally situated to ride the warmer, temperate thermal bands. It'd be unstable, of course -- we'd last maybe 20-30 years longer than the rest of the world before succumbing to catastrophic weather shifts -- but this might explain some of the discrepancies between the international assessments and the localized American ones.
Posted by: Anarch | March 24, 2005 at 05:02 AM