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August 17, 2005
 In these times of conservative moral values, free markets and high technology the environmental movement is increasingly on the defensive and has a tendency to speak in simple slogans.
In Australia the farmers, in the form of the Nationals, have gained control of environmental reform, the old ways of doing things are defended in terms of Australian identity, little progress is being made of restoring water to our rivers, and biodiversity is seen in terms of candyfloss.
So we do we environmentalists stand today? What do we need to do?
A tough quote from 'Environmentalism is dead. What next?' by Adam Werbach posted in In These Times:
"The loss of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is yet one more piece of evidence that environmentalism, as a political movement, is exhausted. The signs of environmentalism's death are all around us. Environmentalists speak in terms of technical policies, not vision and values. Environmentalists propose 20th century solutions to 21st century problems. Environmentalists are failing to attract young people, the physical embodiment of the future, to our cause. Environmentalists are failing to attract the disenfranchised, the disempowered, the dispossessed and the disengaged. Environmentalists treat our rigid mental categories of what is "environmental" and what is not as things rather than as social and political tools to organize the public. Most of all, environmentalism is no longer capable of generating the power it needs to deal with the world's most serious ecological problem---namely, global warming."
Werbach says that it is time to go back to the drawing board.By this he means that to step outside the limits of an artificially narrow discourse to articulate a more expansive, more inclusive and more compelling vision for the future. This means that we will cease to be environmentalists and start to become [American] progressives.
I guess it all depends on what we mean by enviomnmentalism. Werbach understands it to mean what Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus described the process of environmental policy-making in the October 2004 paper, 'The Death of Environmentalism':
The three-part strategic framework for environmental policy-making hasn't changed in 40 years: first, define a problem (e.g. global warming) as "environmental." Second, craft a technical remedy (e.g., cap-and-trade). Third, sell the technical proposal to legislators through a variety of tactics, such as lobbying, third-party allies, research reports, advertising and public relations.
Werbach adds that by the American bicentennial, this kind of environmentalism had triumphed. Sweeping protections had been put in place, and the focus was now as much on implementation through the courts as it was on new legislation in Congress. Similarly in Australia. Presumably this environmentalism speak in terms of technical policies, not vision and values.
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