http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/

"Too Many Evenings"
One of the questions that the "Death of Environmentalism" authors don't address at all, but should have, is, the issue of membership in environmental organizations. What makes someone consider themself an "environmentalist" and join, say, the Sierra Club? They portray an environmental movement as if it is made up of the technical experts who work for the mostly non-membership groups like Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense C, etc. But the political power, or lack thereof, of the environmental groups depends more than anything else on its ability to move large numbers of people -- voters -- to act politically on behalf of these issues.

In the environmental world, the big membership bases are the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, the World Wildlife Federation and then the "hook and bullet" groups: Trout Unlimited and Ducks Unlimited. All these groups have a certain amount of the technical expertise that the Reapers deride, but their main activity is managing their members. The League of Conservation Voters -- an incredibly effective organization -- has members of its own and organizes some of the political activities for the other groups.

A good movement has both agile advocacy or idea-generating organizations that don't have to worry about members, and membership organizations, but its dangerous to get too far ahead of where members want to be. In the case of environmental issues, this is easy to see. A lot of the strength in the base has come from the hook and bullet groups, and LCV has helped to encourage those members to vote as environmentalists. But that doesn't mean that those members are ready to consider themselves "progressives" on every issue from health care to labor rights. Indeed, it may be that these members, primarily motivated by their own community concerns with clean water or air, or open space, also hold the movement back in dealing with the more cosmic and long-term issue of global warming.

In any case, membership, and the question of what makes someone decide to join or not join an environmental organization or another is inseperable from the questions raised in "The Death of Environmentalism." To some extent, the essay reads like an assault on identity politics, in which individuals cluster into narrow groups that are too small to have influence and can't act collectively. But "environmentalists" aren't identities like Latinos and gays; they have all chosen to make this their priority; they have often been marketed to by the environmental movement. That the movement has claimed more people in this way than any other grouping is probably its strength and weakness. The weakness comes because the most visionary leaders on the environment just can't get too far out ahead of where the members are.

I've been interested in the question of membership before, and I've suggested that the big phenonenon here is that the basic nature of membership itself has changed, from deep, dues-paying loyalty to a more transactional relationship, such as people have with moveon.org. It's been a long time since an organization like the Sierra Club, Common Cause, or NARAL was launched and built up its main membership base; it's unrealistic to expect that that will happen again or that aging members will become young again.

In the very good new quasi-blog, Personal Democracy Forum, edited by Micah Sifry, former Dean campaign official Zephyr Teachout takes up some of the questions of membership that have interested me. In fact, she uses the same two examples: the Democratic Party and the American Civil Liberties Union. But her argument is almost the polar opposite of mine. I believe that the era of mass membership organizations that Theda Skocpol identifies in Diminished Democracy (a book Teachout draws heavily on) is actually ending and that we have to think what's next. Teachout, on the other hand, thinks that there is a longing for "ritualized, secular societies that meet pretty regularly, weekly and monthly." She proposes that organizations using the web be much more aggressive in calling attention to local activities, and in effect, encourage something like Dean's "meet-ups."

My own view is that membership in the modern world is defined by giving people things to do. One of those things might be going to local meetings, but while that worked for the young and single people who populated the Dean campaign, it's not as likely to work for those of us who have a little more going on in our lives. I shouldn't use myself as an example, because I get more than enough political stimulation during the work day, but it would take a lot of loyalty for me to join anything that meets "weekly and monthly." That's not something my cohort, made up of very likely voters, is going to jump into. Teachout refers to both Robert Putnam's and Theda Skocpol's analyses of the changes in participation; I have always thought that the key variable that explains the decline of face-to-face, local organizations like the Elks, which Putnam identified, is workforce participation. Dad doesn't go to the Elks' meeting (or whatever) because Mom's working late, or vice versa.

I think Teachout's effort to use the internet to restore a sense of the local to both national organizations such as the ACLU and to the Democratic party is admirable. But I don't accept, or see any evidence for, the proposition that people are just dying to join some organization such as the ACLU if only they could attend a lot of meetings. I think that the ACLU should instead dramatically lower the bar to someone considering themselves a "member," and encourage much more micro-transactions (signing a petition, seeking out information on an issue, looking up candidate endorsements) that will slowly draw individuals into the organization.

In short, I've always tried to remember Oscar Wildes' comment that "the trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings." But read Teachout's very well-informed analysis. Maybe she's right.

Posted by Mark Schmitt on February 11, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (3)

The Death of ____ism
I've begun to doubt my own comments on Peter Beinart a couple days ago, when I said that I thought subtle distinctions on policy questions, or efforts to redefine debates, whether on Iraq, Social Security, or taxes, were irrelevant in the current political context. Am I really that nihilistic? And my thoughts were further fueled by reading the "Leninist Strategy" on Social Security from 1983, referred to in my last post, which advocated giving up on the "nuances of policy" to pursue a long term "political strategy" to phase out Social Security.

Now I want to turn to a more recent essay that has not received much attention outside of the circle it was originally directed to, although it's caused huge turmoil within it: "The Death of Environmentalism." Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus (now known as "The Reapers") presented this at the Environmental Grantmakers Association, commissioned by my friend Peter Teague of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. The essay, lengthy responses, an interview with the authors, and other background is available at www.grist.org, the online environmental magazine.

There's a lot in this essay, and in the responses, some of it right on, some of it a bit crazy, some of it vacuous and new-agey (particularly the epigraphs about death opening each section, and of course that insufferable management-consultant aphorism that the Chinese ideogram for "crisis" is a combination of danger and opportunity), some of it beyond my capacity to evaluate, but all very much worth reading. (If you don't have time to read the 27-page essay, the interview with the Reapers is a start.) It's written to provoke, and provoke it did.

(All the more so because it was presented at a conference of foundation program officers and donors. One of the rules of the non-profit world, one that I am painfully aware of from the other side, is Thou Shalt Not Air a Movement's Dirty Laundry In Front of the Funders. Never mind that funders already know the dirty laundry, and probably are responsible for two-thirds of it, and that it's in no one's interest to keep them ignorant, it Just Isn't Done. Carl Pope of the Sierra Club quite pointedly started his fierce reply to The Reapers, "Dear Environmental Grantmaker," and charged that "the not so hidden agenda is 'fund us instead.'")

Those of us who aren't environmentalists by profession or priority might be able to read the essay with some perspective and get more out of it, because we're not the targets of its venom. Yet as Nordhaus says in the interview, "A critique similar to the one we've made on environmentalism could be made of many other movements -- women's rights, abortion rights, anti-war, criminal justice, labor, and so on. Each of those so-called movements has turned itself into a special interest in defining the problem narrowly and offering technical policy solutions instead of an inspiring vision."

The Reapers' basic argument is this: "The environmental community's narrow definition of its self-interest leads to a kind of policy literalism that undermines its power... Environmentalists closely scrutinize the policies without giving much thought to the politics that made the policies possible." They argue that the movement as it exists, filled with technical experts, must "die in order to be reborn."

In the interview, Nordaus says, "The very DNA of these institutions was constructed around a particular idea and model of doing politics, largely based on successes that the environmental movement had in the early '70s. They were developed to use scientific and legal expertise to identify a problem, craft a very specific technical policy solution to address that problem, and then go hire communications specialists and lobbyists and organizers to go sell that technical policy solution."

That approach no longer works, they argue, because the current problems, especially global warming, are bigger and more complicated than the classic Clean Air/Clean Water/Endangered Species problems that were addressed by technical policy solutions and legislation in the 1970s. And it also no longer works because the underlying political climate is massively unfriendly, and the system of policymaking in which the environmental movement leaders worked -- litigation under the Clean Air/Water and Endangered Species Acts, or lobbying in Congress for incremental improvements -- is gone. Both these points are surely true, and correspond to what environmentalists I know have been saying for years.

The alternatives The Reapers propose are basically three:

1. To confront the politics more directly. They suggest that instead of defining the problem of global warming as "too much carbon in the atmosphere," we identify it as, "The radical right's control of all three branches of the U.S. government...overpopulation...The influence of money in politics...poverty." They ask author Ross Gelbspan about what it would take to enact his sweeping plan to reduce worldwide carbon emissions by 70%: "I don't see any answer short of real campaign finance reform...the alternative is massive climate change."

Well that's interesting. Having spent a lot of time working on campaign finance reform, I appreciate the plug, but it's a pretty big promise, and I've always been very doubtful of statements that promise that after campaign finance reform, we find ourselves in a liberal paradise. And you can be sure that everything the Reapers say about environmentalists as pursuing small-bore technical fixes, letting themselves be defined as special interests, etc. is equally true of 95% of the campaign finance reform movement. This is exciting, but it also feels a little bit like redefining the problem into someone else's box. The day you can enact "real campaign finance reform" might just be the day when you can also enact the Kyoto Agreement -- a lot would have to change for either one to happen.

2. To define bigger, more visionary solutions. Here they contrast the small-bore, technical legislative approach to global warming -- the McCain/Lieberman bill -- with the Apollo Alliance, a major plan for job creation in new technology to reduce dependence on imported energy, with a labor/enviro partnership.

I like the Apollo project, which I've mentioned before, and Pope actually co-chairs it, so the generational distinction the Reapers implicitly draw is a little awkward. More importantly, it's a stretch to portray Apollo as if it is an example of a success and McCain-Lieberman or other incremental approaches as failures. Apollo is not well known outside of DC progressive circles, and it has nothing to show for itself yet. It may turn out to be a great success, and I'd put money on it, but the Reapers claim too much for it.

3. To form more productive alliances with labor and other constituencies. This is hardly an original thought. Yesterday I was meeting with a veteran, very respected leader in progressive circles, who mentioned that earlier in her career she had organized "community/labor energy coalitions," a dated phrase but a staple of progressive politics in the Northeast and Midwest in the late 1970s. Many of the responses to the Reapers point out that the enviros have been "meeting with" labor leaders for years, that the old tensions over Clean Air legislation have eased, and that the major efforts in the election year -- Americans Coming Together, America's Families United, National Voice, and other collaborations both partisan and nonpartisan -- were basically labor-environmentalist partnerships with other constituency groups supporting them.

But the Reapers are not looking for meetings or traditional coalitions around particular shared interests. They want something bigger. In the course of a recondite discussion of the politics of CAFE standards for automobile mileage, they suggest that instead of thinking of it as purely an environmental issue, with the auto industry and its unions as targets, one should think more broadly about the health of the auto industry. "The high cost of health care [and pensions] for its retired employees is a big part of what hurts the competitiveness of American companies...Because Japan has national health care, its auto companies aren't stuck with the bill...And yet if you were to propose that environmental groups have a a strategy for lowering the costs of health care for the auto industry, perhaps in exchange for higher mileage standards, you'd likely be laughed out of the room...because 'Health care is not an environmental issue.'"

That gets to the outlines of the Grand Bargain that I've always been interested in. The problem is, who is in the position to cut such a deal? The auto companies aren't going to make a deal with environmental groups, or a minority of Senators, about health care that the enviros can't deliver on anyway. And why should an environmental group, whose members joined for a reason, suddenly devote a lot of energy and resources to health care?

That's where I find the best argument for blowing up the whole "movement," along with the others. We can't possibly find ways to move society forward as long as everything is put neatly into boxes labeled "environment," "health care," "campaign finance reform," "low-income programs," "pro-choice," etc., and the coalitions that exist are made up of representatives from those movements. Trying to force environmentalists to think about health care doesn't solve the problem either. We need a whole new structure, built around a convincing narrative about society and the economy, and a new way to fit these pieces together.

We'll come back to that, often, but this is long enough as it is. What's true in "The Death of Environmentalism" is true for all of progressive politics, and I mainly wanted to make sure that the essay was better known outside of the limited circle it was addressed to since that's the whole point of it.


Posted by Mark Schmitt on February 10, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)

The Days of Wine and Reagan

Shellenberger: Our argument is that you could win all your little lawsuits, we could pass all the legislation we have on the table locally and nationally, but we would be no closer to achieving our larger objectives. Think about how devastating of a critique that is: If we got everything we wanted right now, we would still be hurtling toward global-warming crisis. We would still be destroying the Amazon, the lungs of the planet. Environmentalists offer no inspiring vision for the world or for the country that speaks in any way to the magnitude of the crisis or to the potential of the American people to really make this transformation
Shellenberger: I consider myself a progressive, not an environmentalist. I'm done with "ists" and "isms" generally. I thought the most bizarre part of Carl's response to our paper was the accusation of patricide. Both of our parents have been involved in environmental policy. Ted's dad wrote significant sections of the Clean Air Act and CAFE. We love our parents and we love what they've done. In order to honor their legacy, we have to update it. Environmentalism is outmoded. Death is a part of the process of life.

Q: So I take it you didn't find Pope's response to your paper convincing?
Shellenberger: We were baffled by it. Of all environmental leaders, we thought Carl would embrace this. He's the guy that reaches out the most to labor unions, he's the guy that fights anti-immigrant forces. He gave us the most extraordinary interview [when we were conducting research for the paper]. He, more than any other environmental leader, inspired the thesis of this paper.
We emailed all these guys after the article came out and asked if they'd be willing to have a dialogue and the silence has been deafening.
Yeah, it's like, God, please disagree with us. We would be honored.

Q: Why, then, did you address your complaints directly to funders rather than to the leaders themselves? That seems inherently provocative.
Shellenberger: There is no place for public debate in the environmental movement. Even librarians have much fiercer public debates and dialogues than the environmental community

http://grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/werbach-reprint/
Adam Werbach :

"FrameWorks concluded that the nightmarish scenarios environmentalists were telling about global warming -- such as the one I laid out above -- so terrifies and repels ordinary Americans that they retreat from engagement. She found that the more you scared people about global warming, the more they want to buy SUVs to protect themselves. Miniature Arcs.

FrameWorks also concluded that the public was confused about what global warming was. To help them understand it better, FrameWorks recommended the use of metaphor. Call it a "heat-trapping blanket," they suggested.
No wonder the public doesn't want to hear the truth about global warming: nobody's offering them a vision for the future that matches the magnitude of the problem

‘Mr. Nordhaus, who works at Evans/McDonough, an opinion research company, told the student-dominated conference at Middlebury College that environmentalists "have spent the last 25 or 30 years telling people what they cannot aspire to." Given the can-do spirit of the country, "that isn't going to get you very far," he said.” -- http://www.3nov.com/

Guevara response: So they want us to play happy and can-do – the only thing the US can do is extort the global financial system (with threats of war or financial instability) to pay for all of the things that we cannot produce.


http://grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/little-responses/

Phil Clapp, president of National Environmental Trust [ Here is the most extreme case of denial we found yet - No clap for Clapp!]
“…my biggest concern about the paper is the assertion that global-warming efforts have been a total failure. The Kyoto Protocol will come into force on Feb. 16, and the U.S. played a leading role in designing that agreement despite the current administration's position on it
… The big change going forward isn't to reinvent the movement ideologically but geographically…”


Frances Beinecke, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Shortly after the election we sent out an email to nearly half a million people saying a second term for the Bush administration presents an enormous threat to the environment. We received an overwhelming response from thousands of people who wanted to take action. That doesn't reflect a dead movement.
Guevara: Here is the award for just not getting the question – The question is what should replace environmentalism - not whether there are still a bunch of stupid people still thinking they could accomplish something – besides the main reason people give to groups is – guilt – they know they should do more – but instead they just send money.

Dan Carol, board member of the Apollo Alliance

"The notion that the existing membership of established environmental groups -- collectively over 10 million members strong -- is moot, or that the ongoing policy work of these groups is a waste of time, is preposterous, and distracting from the real work ahead…. What the paper fails to recognize is the progress that's going on in terms of winning state, local, regional, and binational campaigns, and other emerging strategies beyond Washington. When you focus on national environmental legislation, you could argue we've hit a wall, given the Republican-dominated Beltway, but that's no reason to believe we don't have a solid foundation to build on."
He really does not say anything. Victories in the states??? Which ones ( or which one!) To bring up the local is to show how little he paid attention to the Nordhaus paper - little victories can/have achieved nothing...

Carl Pope _ 6772 – pope artocle Dear Environmental Grant-Maker:
... I share the thesis that some fundamental changes are needed in the way environmentalists approach the challenge of global warming. But I believe that their paper, because it is unfair, unclear and divisive, has actually muddied the water and made the task of figuring out a comprehensive and effective set of strategies more difficult.
POINTS OF AGREEMENT
a) We are making inadequate progress on global warming.
b) We have inadequately mobilized public concerns and values to create political pressure. As a result decision makers have not been forced to confront the need for fundamental changes in the way our society uses carbon (and other greenhouse gasses).
c) This inadequacy is related to a common set of failings and weaknesses which afflict progressive social movements in general, by contrast with the reinvigorated and more strategically integrated efforts of the hard right.
I agree with these three points; indeed, it is hard to find anyone who doesn't agree with them. These concerns are widely and broadly shared among both environmental advocates and funders. The results of the election undoubtedly reinforced this consensus. There is nothing particularly new or striking, or controversial, about these points. (( EXCEPT YOU DO NOT TELL PEOPLE BOUT THESE WORRIES - is there a disclaimer in your funding appeals – saying – May be a waste of money -- !! )

But Shellenberger and Nordhaus frame these points within a troublesome and divisive set of conclusions about the broader environmental movement. These conclusions do not flow from their interviews. They are not documented or justified in their paper.

My fear is that these conclusions are so fundamentally flawed that they may distract us from the real work at hand -- to craft a set of understandings and approaches that will move us forward towards global warming solutions.

Environmentalism is a broad, diverse and robust (more like rotund and roosting) movement. It has provided some of the deepest and most questioning analysis of our ethical relationship to other species (but nothing on the relationships to ourselves and each other) of our era. It deploys a wide variety of advocacy paradigms -- policy based interest group analysis is one, but there are also placed-based, values-driven and rights-rooted traditions and models to draw upon.

( and these all have failed utterly and again! because they are all chopped up and separated and not part of any kind of ( or hint of) a program that makes sense...))

Environmentalists have found it difficult to mobilize public support around global warming issues - even in times and places when public outrage over issues like mercury poisoning or clear-cutting has been boiling over. There is something different about global warming. ( YEAH THE PEOPLE KNOW THAT IT WILLHURT THEM to change anything important !! )

Environmentalism is part of a broader progressive movement, -- (POPE JUST DOES NOT GET IT _ all of progressivism is single or narrow issue based – and there is no vision to tie them together – and no way to get to even a mysterious or not vague vision – global change !!! )) which the right has invested enormously in undercutting for the past 30 years.

THEIR ARGUMENT
Their overall thrust, unfortunately, is summarized by the title of their paper, "The Death of Environmentalism." The arguments are internally contradictory, but the logic runs something like this:

i) The leadership of the environmental movement, overall, are a bunch of narrowly focused and politically blinded policy wonks -- individually smart but collectively stupid.

ii) This blindness is the result of the very definition of environmentalism. "The environmental community's belief that their power derives from defining themselves as defenders of "the environment" has prevented us from winning major legislation on global warming at the national level."

iii) The environmental movement is in denial about the challenges it is facing. "In the face of perhaps the greatest calamity in modern history, environmental leaders are sanguine that selling technical solutions like florescent light bulbs, more efficient appliances, and hybrid cars will be sufficient to muster the necessary political strength to overcome the alliance of neoconservative ideologues and industry interests in Washington, D.C."

iv) The history of both Kyoto and CAFE standards reveals a consistent failure on the part of the environmental movement to comprehend that effective strategies to decarbonize the economy must take into account the priorities and needs of other players -- the American auto industry, auto workers, labor in general, and the broader progressive community.

v) The environmental movement is incapable of responding to the challenge because its leaders are mired in the successes of the 1970's.(ACTUALLY WE ARE MUCH MORE CYNICAL – YOU STAY QUIET FOR YOUR JOBS AND THE FEAR OF DOING REAL EDUCTION--! ) "It was then, at the height of the movement's success, that the seeds of failure were planted. The environmental community's success created a strong confidence - and in some cases bald arrogance - that the environmental protection frame was enough to succeed at a policy level."

vi) As a result, we must consider junking the institutional framework of the environmental movement. "We need to take a hard look at the institutions the movement has built over the last 30 years. Are existing environmental institutions up to the task of imagining the post-global warming world? Or do we now need a set of new institutions founded around a more expansive vision and set of values?" (FUNNY HERE IF TRUE THE AUTHORS LOOK DUMBBBB TOOOO ! )

vii) The existing leadership is bankrupt and incapable of responding to the challenges of the twenty-first century. They should step aside to allow a new generation of leaders to take over.

"Most of the movement's leading thinkers, funders and advocates do not question their most basic assumptions about who we are, what we stand for, and what it is that we should be doing."

viii) Indeed, the environmental movement itself should pass from the scene. It's time has come and gone.

"We have become convinced that modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live."

DO SHELLENBERGER AND NORDHAUS MAKE THEIR CASE?
... unchallenged, [Nordhaus and Shellenberger] may distract us from a set of very real challenges which require extending and rethinking our approach to global warming advocacy..."
WHO ARE ENVIRONMENTALISTS?
S&N assert, "the environment is a category that reinforces the notions that a) the environment is a separate "thing" and b) human beings are separate from and superior to the "natural world". The two major ethical streams in modern environmentalism are deep ecology and environmental justice. Neither accepts either of these notions. Who were they thinking of when they made these statements? They offer not a single quote to suggest that anyone they interviewed believes that human beings are "separate from and superior to the natural world." Not one.
It would be hard to think of a social movement struggling harder to free itself from these two "notions" than environmentalism. But it is environmentalism whose death they advocate.

In other places, S&N appear to define the environmental movement as the 25 people they interviewed. When they urge that "environmentalists need to tap into the creative worlds of myth-making, even religion, not to better sell narrow and technical policy proposals but rather to figure out who we are and who we need to be," they utterly ignore such leaders as Wendell Berry, Paul Shepherd, Thomas Barry, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barry Leopold. They interviewed 25 policy people, and then complain that they got only policy expertise from their interviews. Environmentalism has both poets and wonks; you don't go to your legislative counsel for a sonnet, nor to your troubadour for a reply brief.

IS THE DEFINITION THE PROBLEM?
S&N complain that "Most environmentalists don't think of 'the environment' as a mental category at all - they think of it as a real "thing" to be protected and defended. They think of themselves, literally, as representatives and defenders of this thing." So?
Without being too precious, the environment is a real thing. There is a global carbon cycle, human interventions are a small if meaningful part of the evolutionary process, homo sapiens depend upon a complex web of both geochemical and biological processes. Natural processes -- eutrophication, competition, speciation, nutrient cycling, sequestration -- continue around us according to their own dynamics. We influence, but do not control, the climate. Of course our understanding of these phenomena proceeds through mental constructs which are not the phenomena themselves -- we've known that since Kant.

But I don't think that the definition of what constitutes an environmental problem is the arbitrary and troublesome source of weakness that S&N suggest. They have erected, and then blown aside, a straw man. For example, they assert that "the environmental movement's failure to craft inspiring and powerful proposals to deal with global warming is directly related to the movement's reductive logic about the supposedly root causes (e.g., "too much carbon in the atmosphere") of any given environmental problem."

This charge does not explain why this same inadequate definition of what constitutes environmentalism has proven potent when applied to wilderness preservation, mercury in our waterways, or sewage in our basements. Environmentalism has failed with regard to global warming precisely in contrast to its success in mobilizing public passions on these other problems. This strongly suggests that we need to look not at what these problems have in common -- the movement's definitions of the environment -- but what is unique or different about global warming.

ARE ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERS CLUELESS AND NAIVE?
S&N argue that environmentalists are living in lotus land about how they are faring. In addition to the claim that our movement believes that better light bulbs will solve the global warming problem, they maintain that "environmentalists are particularly upbeat about the direction of public opinion thanks in large part to the polling they conduct that shows wide support for their proposals. Yet America is a vastly more right-wing country than it was three decades ago. The domination of American politics by the far-right is a central obstacle to achieving action on global warming. Yet almost none of the environmentalists we interviewed thought to mention it."

I spend a great deal of my time with environmental leaders. I know of none that I would describe as "sanguine" that technical solutions will solve the problem of global warming. I have participated in dozens of debates about the meaning of public opinion polls, none of which were particularly "upbeat." I can testify that environmental leaders like those S&N interviewed think about the power and success of the right almost obsessively. I seriously doubt that S&N asked any one of their interviewees if they thought this was a problem and got the answer, "No, nothing to worry about."

A FLAWED ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY
S&N then make an argument from history, saying that there have been no epoch making big wins in recent decades like those of the late 60's and early 70's. They specifically criticize environmentalists for a series of strategic and movement building failures, narrating the history of global warming advocacy since the 1980's. But again they fail to show why if the problem is environmentalism, labor and social justice movements have also done very poorly since 1980.

On the specifics of global warming, their historical narrative is sadly incomplete and riddled with inaccuracies and internal inconsistencies. I and the Sierra Club have been part of the CAFE battle longer than any of the sources S&N cite in their history. But in our interview they never asked me any questions about the history of the environmental movement's engagement with either the auto companies or the UAW on fuel efficiency. As a result, they got the story almost entirely wrong.

For example, the Sierra Club has consistently understood CAFE as a program which needed to be used to preserve and enhance the US auto industry, the very point they attack environmentalists for ignoring. As early as the Carter Administration the Sierra Club sought an alliance with the UAW on domestic content legislation to free the union up to become again an advocate for change among the domestic manufacturers. Environmentalists have also continuously and intensely explored ways to make the program work for both the unions and the domestic manufacturers by offering tax credits or other mechanisms to finance the necessary catch-up by Detroit.
The authors claim that in the 1990's, "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 their support for the Bryan bill."

This is rubbish. This statement appears to be based on a quote in Keith Bradsher's book drawn in turn from an earlier work by Jack Doyle. The reality is that Senator Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, to get an omnibus energy bill which included drilling the Arctic beyond a Senate filibuster and into conference with the House, included a 37 mpg CAFÉ standard as part of that bill. Auto companies opposed the bill, making it clear that the CAFÉ proposal would not survive conference with the House. Environmental groups opposed it because it was clear that drilling the Arctic would survive such a conference and would end up on the President's desk to be signed. Senator Bryan, far from being abandoned by environmentalists, was one of the first Senators to sign up for the filibuster against the Johnston-Wallop bill.
Johnston offered repeated carrots in exchange for drilling the Arctic; there was never any evidence that he had the capacity or intention to deliver on any of them; environmentalists, wisely in my view, rejected them all.

Not only is this rubbish, it is dangerous rubbish. Because already, two weeks after the 2004 election, there are discussions that once again environmentalists should abandon their battle to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in exchange for some forward progress on reducing carbon emissions.
What none of these discussions acknowledge is this: It is the carbon lobby that wants to drill the refuge. It is the carbon lobby that does not want to reduce carbon emissions. If the oil industry, the Bush Administration and the state of Alaska have the votes to drill the Arctic, they will do so - they have no reason to give environmentalists something in exchange.

If environmentalists had the votes to do something to reduce carbon emissions, they should do so. They wouldn't need to trade the Arctic, and they shouldn't. This is not a market where one party owns the Arctic and can sell it in exchange for more fuel efficient trucks. The policy logic of drilling the Arctic and the policy logic of reducing carbon emissions are diametrically opposed. So this is not a rational public policy debate about how to craft a better energy policy by combining different priorities. This is a power struggle about which way to go - more carbon or less.

ARE WE MIRED IN THE PAST?
The authors assert repeatedly, but never document, that the environmental movement is still approaching things as it learned to do in the early 1970's. All that the authors offer to buttress this crucial claim is the following:
"By failing to question their most basic assumptions about the problem and the solution, environmental leaders are like generals fighting the last war - in particular the war they fought and won for basic environmental protections more than 30 years ago. It was then that the community's political strategy became defined around using science to define the problem as "environmental" and crafting technical policy proposals as solutions.
"The greatest achievements to reduce global warming are today happening in Europe.....

"Environmentalists are learning all the wrong lessons from Europe. We closely scrutinize the policies without giving much thought to the politics that made the policies possible."
We do need to examine the European experience. But when we do, we find the same definition of global warming as an environmental problem, and the same technical policy solutions. What is different is the politics of carbon. European nations have been carbon importers for much longer than the U.S., and most have nationalized those industries so that they are no longer independent political actors.

(( Ah, ha – so how can we do this – oh, we can't do this. ah.. so what can we do? oh... ah... nothing except pretend to change. – the greens stole our anger – dam it!!! ))

SHOULD WE JUNK OUR INSTITUTIONS?
Here's where shoddy research is so damaging. S&N assert there is a void needing to be filled. "If, for example, environmentalists don't consider the high cost of health care, R&D tax credits, and the overall competitiveness of the American auto industry to be "environmental issues," then who will think creatively about a proposal that works for industry, workers, communities and the environment? If framing proposals around narrow technical solutions is an ingrained habit of the environmental movement, then who will craft proposals framed around vision and values?"

Good questions -- IF. But the full record, as I mention above, shows that environmental groups have incorporated competitiveness into their thinking for 26 years. They continue to do so. In the summer of 2002 the Sierra Club joined the Steelworkers in calling for federal action to relieve steel companies of their legacy pension and health costs. This action, which the authors call unthinkable, was fairly routine for us. Contrary to the author's stated assumption, no one in the environmental movement was critical of the Club for taking this stance. In fact, we got a lot of praise.

The perception that the movement is overly obsessed with technical solutions appears to be an artifact of S&N having focused their interviews on the movement's technicians. Again, to make such a claim about leaders like Randy Hayes or Dave Foreman is absurd -- but neither of them was interviewed. The author's entire edifice thus rests on sand. The tide is still coming in and out, and the environmental movement, leaders and institutions both, are still growing and changing like the ecosystem they are.

IS THE PROBLEM GENERATIONAL?
The authors start out with an almost ritualized obeisance to earlier generations of environmentalists:

"Those of us who are children of the environmental movement must never forget that we are standing on the shoulders of all those who came before us. The clean water we drink, the clean air we breathe, and the protected wilderness we treasure are all, in no small part, thanks to them. The two of us have worked for most of the country's leading environmental organizations as staff or consultants. We hold a sincere and abiding respect for our parents and elders in the environmental community. They have worked hard and accomplished a great deal. For that we are deeply grateful."

They then move on to an almost equally ritualized sacrifice.

"Most of the movement's leading thinkers, funders and advocates do not question their most basic assumptions about who we are, what we stand for, and what it is that we should be doing."

An anthropologist would be thrilled to find patricide still servings its ritual purpose.

Having framed the basic issues as generational, they spend the rest of the paper savaging their "parents and elders." (It's not clear who delegated the two of them to speak for the children in this generationally divided family they have hypothesized.)

Yet there's simply no evidence in the paper that there are any consistent differences on the crucial issues between different generations within the environmental movement. I freely grant that there are, and should be, different generational leadership styles, different understandings of how to advance environmental change, different political strategies. But there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever in the S&N paper that on the key issues they raise the differences are generational. Do younger environmental ethicists see issues differently than their predecessors? Is there less interest in the technical issues of carbon trading among younger economists within the environmental movement? Do older environmental justice advocates fail to see the need to be more inclusive? S&N have taken the normal, important, and inevitable segmentation within the environmental movement, and pretended that it can be explained as a matter of generational succession -- without an iota of evidence.

THE END OF ENVIRONMENTALISM?
Perhaps the most self-serving and damaging paragraph in the paper is the following:
"At the same time, we believe that the best way to honor their achievements is to acknowledge that modern environmentalism is no longer capable of dealing with the world's most serious ecological crisis."

I say self serving because, given that the chosen audience of the paper was the funders, it will be hard for many readers to avoid the suspicion that the not so hidden message was "fund us instead."

And I say damaging because by mingling the issue of the need for deeper and more effective global warming strategies with an ill-thought out assault on environmentalism, Shellenberger and Nordhaus are likely to create defensiveness, not receptivity; resistance, not movement; back-lash, not progress.

DO THEY OFFER A BETTER WAY?
If the paper offered a clear and constructive path forward, the internal contradictions of the analysis would matter less. They would be offering a better reasoned "what" instead of merely suggesting themselves as "who." Instead, they have offered a hodge podge. They are clear, as others have been, that focusing just on tactics is not enough, that we need to engage people as moral beings and tap into their deepest values. They join the chorus which has pointed out that alliances need to be based on true mutuality, and that environmentalists and progressives need to follow the example of the hard right in doing long range thinking and work. These are all very useful, if not strikingly new concepts. But in their zeal to deconstruct the concept of modern environmentalism, and to proclaim their readiness to offer a better way forward, Shellenberger and Nordhaus failed to provide their own answers to some very basic and troublesome questions.

They do not seem to have sorted out whether they think we should abandon or embrace the "tell the world how many of its problems are due to global warming frame" or what role technological optimism should play in our efforts and communications strategies. They do not touch the thorny question of how they stand on the long dialogue among social change theorists about whether incremental behavioral change leads to newer and eventually larger changes in thinking, which then enables new behavioral change or whether it is essential to first create new mental maps which enable behavioral change.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus defend their failure to come up with a new vision by saying it would be premature and presumptuous:

"We resisted the exhortations from early reviewers of this report to say more about what we think must now be done because we believe that the most important next steps will emerge from teams, not individuals. Over the coming months we will be meeting with existing and emerging teams of practitioners and funders to develop a common vision and strategy for moving forward."

Unfortunately, by failing to offer their own ideas for scrutiny they rendered their report nihilistic -- able to destroy but not create.


AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
Shellenberger and Nordhaus do make one extremely compelling point:
"Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the 1990s is that, in the end, the environmental community had still not come up with an inspiring vision, much less a legislative proposal, that a majority of Americans could get excited about."

And buried in their paper's misguided deconstruction of environmentalism are some extremely useful clues they picked up from their interviews about where we might go:

1) Environmental advocacy has been dramatically less effective dealing with global warming than with clean air, clean water, wilderness or wildlife. That suggests that part of the problem is not a generic feature of environmentalism, but some specific differences between global warming and these other problems. Such differences are not difficult to identify. The environmental challenges which gave rise to the reforms of the early 1970's, on which the progress of the next 30 years rests, had tangible, local, and immediate consequences for the public. Lake Erie was dying under the boats of fishermen, the Cuyahoga River could be seen to burn by Clevelanders, New Yorkers had to change their shirt in the middle of the day, and children in Los Angeles could not go out and play hundreds of days a year.

The problems that environmentalism has failed to get a grasp on, or develop a deep public commitment and attention to, by contrast, are intangible, global and future oriented. Global warming, habitat fragmentation, and the loading of global ecosystems with persistent but toxic and disruptive industrial chemicals are simply harder for an opportunistic, reactive primate species to understand as threats.

2) Environmental advocacy has been less potent in the 1990's than in previous decades. So has advocacy for the broader progressive community agenda - for justice. We have made some progress on the individualistic side of the progressive ledger - public tolerance for racial diversity has increased, the gay and lesbian community has made dramatic strides.

But on questions of justice progressives have been losing. The labor movement, advocates for health care reform, tax justice advocates have all fared as badly as or worse than environmentalists. So whatever ails environmentalism ails these other movements as well.
(So? – or of course – or the thesis of S and N is that the eco movement is holding the bigger movement back - !! thanks for proving yourself wrong and helping those you are trying to disprove...

The landscape on which politics has played out has changed radically. Faced with what one commentator called America's first "anti-enlightenment President" sound science alone will not carry the day. We ARE in a culture war, and rational collective self interest IS an inadequate approach.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus are thus, it seems to me, correct when they say that environmentalism is falling short because it shares with the rest of the progressive movement a set of increasingly outmoded organizing, advocacy and political approaches. It is strategically disadvantaged when confronted with value based, longer range, and more carefully framed hard-right advocacy. But this is a case for modernizing the left, not for killing environmentalism.

3) One element of the left's weakness is its emphasis on technical policy analysis, not values. This weakness goes right back to the technocratic emphasis of the Progressive Movement, and of early conservationists. This approach - interest group politics -- was codified in the 1920's by Walter Lippman and refined after World War II by writers like John Kenneth Galbraith.
– what is he talking abou the 1920s for – a history re-history lesson ???

Interest group politics assumed that American political parties were loose coalitions, and that the congressional and presidential branches of each party were competing for power. Interest groups could thus recruit support from individual policy makers regardless of their ostensible partisan ties. As American politics, if not the American constitution, has been moved by the right in an ever more parliamentary, party-driven direction, interest group policy advocacy becomes increasingly impotent.

SOME SOLUTIONS -- But working backward from this last weakness, it is important to remember, as Shellenberger and Nordhaus do not, that policy-based interest group advocacy is only ONE of the major organizing frameworks the modern environmental movement has employed.

Much of environmental advocacy has been place based, not policy driven, and involved creating a community vision of the desired state of a landscape, and then creating institutions charged with achieving that set of goals. (The National Park System and the Wilderness Act on the one hand, and such institutions as the California Coastal Commission on the other are prototypes.)

What is he trying to alk about her e ?? --

Other environmental advocacy has been values driven, with certain "wrong" industrial practices or technologies banned or eliminated. (Most of the current work around genetic engineering is a good example of this, as was the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980's.) And some of the most successful environmental work has aimed to create new forms of rights, so that citizens could assume more control over a wide range of decisions impacting them. (The National Environmental Policy Act, citizens suits provisions, the right-to-know movement, California's Prop 65)
These other forms of environmental advocacy are full of promise for global warming.
A striking example of one strategy to transform the global warming debate using a different, but entirely familiar form of environmental advocacy, would be to apply the well established values frame of the "polluter pays" principle.

From this perspective, at its heart, the global warming debate is not complicated. It is simply very difficult because it is about who is going to pay.

Kyoto is an attempt to start down the road that everyone knows will have a very large bill, without ever deciding who will pay for the bill. Which is why, in my view, Kyoto has gone nowhere in the U.S. Confronted with a potential liability, as long as I think I won¹t have to pay the bill, I'll hire my lawyer. That's what the US carbon lobby has done. They know carbon is a liability. They don't want to pay the bill.

This understanding that global warming is mainly a problem about who is going to pay -- which in turn depends on who we assume owned the sky to begin with -- has been articulated on the left by Peter Barnes and on the right by Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago School of Law -- normally one of environmentalism's major opponents.

But if we frame global warming as pollution, and assert that the polluter should pay, then suddenly this otherwise completely abstruse, overly technical problem becomes much easier for the public to understand.

We can then get people to recognize that you shouldn¹t be electrifying villages in India by hanging copper wires between them. You should be electrifying them with methane generators and windmills -- and the polluters, the emitters of carbon, ought to be paying for them.

We know that if we lay this necessity on the table, the other side will respond with their own values frame -- one focused on accommodation, not prevention. Here S&N seem to miss the point completely. They again fall back on their lament that the problem is the definition of the environment:

"What do we worry about when we worry about global warming? Is it the refugee crisis that will be caused when Caribbean nations are flooded? If so, shouldn't our focus be on building bigger sea walls and disaster preparedness? Is it the food shortages that will result from reduced agricultural production? If so, shouldn't our focus be on increasing food production? Is it the potential collapse of the Gulf Stream, which could freeze upper North America and northern Europe and trigger, as a recent Pentagon scenario suggests, world war?

"Most environmental leaders would scoff at such framings of the problem and retort, 'Disaster preparedness is not an environmental problem.'"

In fact, in refusing to accept accommodation as a proper response, environmentalists have been doing exactly what S&N advocate -- organizing around values. In rejecting accommodation, environmentalists are choosing prevention over compensation, prudence over risk. Environmentalists have repeatedly pointed out that the right's choice of "accommodation" instead of "prevention" as a response to atmospheric greenhouse gas overload is futile - not because it is not environmental, but because it won't work. We simply won't build a sea wall around Florida, much less around the Gangetic Delta in Bangla Desh - and a sea wall won't stop a hurricane, or save coral reefs.

There is a deep values conflict between the modern hard right on the one hand, and traditional conservatives and environmentalism on the other. It has to do with the conflict between prudence/prevention vs. risk/retaliation. Environmentalists have been pretty consistent in taking the side of traditionalism -- prudence, the precautionary principle, prevention -- against the hard libertarian right. We need to do this more explicitly around global warming.

But again, environmental discourse gives us tools we can use effectively to move the public conversation on global warming -- even though they are not the tools of interest-group lobbying.

Following this one line of possible alternative reasoning, how do we frame global warming as pollution? More particularly, how do we frame burning fossil fuel as pollution, because that is how the ordinary person will encounter this issue? Here's where it's not enough to think of global warming as a policy, or even a political problem. It's a conceptual problem. And it's a conceptual problem that environmentalism dealt with before, when it encountered the early view that "the smell of pollution is the smell of money."

As long as we view developing oil, coal and gas as development, as a form of economic advancement, it will be very hard, simultaneously, to say that we should charge people lots of money for doing so -- it feels like a punishment for success.

That's yet another reason why conventional interest group advocacy won't work on this issue -- it's more than the new power of the right. Neither moderate Republicans nor Democrats have been able to shake themselves loose of the regional power of the carbon lobby. No one, environmentalists or some broader group that S&N might imagine, will be able to solve the problem of global warming by persuading members of the House and Senate that there are good alternatives, and that if we do the right things we can get rid of oil and coal and still have a good economy with lots and lots of stuff to consume. That case has been made aptly and effectively, in DC (and elsewhere).

What the environmental community must grapple with is, "How do you deal with the reality that not everyone in Washington thinks a world without oil and coal is a good thing?" America's leaders think that, overall, producing fossil fuels is a form of progress. And they have ample incentives to keep on thinking that way. That's why, in my view there is no elite solution. You can't bring the world's leaders together to solve this problem. The world's leaders are the problem.
We need to start talking about our current pattern of consuming ever more carbon as a public health problem not an economic solution. A hundred years ago open sewers were common. Today, if we were to see an overflowing open sewer, and someone said make it twice as wide to handle all the new sewage, we would not think that was a good thing (and a mayor who proposed that would be in trouble).

We won't make progress as long as we conceptualize fossil fuel consumption as a good thing (along the recent lines laid out by the World Bank) instead of presenting fossil fuel consumption as our century's open sewer. But once we start thinking about fossil fuel consumption in this way, we need to recognize that the political problem gets bigger before it get smaller. We have to deal with the reality that there are win-win solutions for the economy as a whole, but not for Exxon -- (or the Saudis.) We should acknowledge that it's not a win-win for Exxon. (There can be win-wins for General Motors.) The conversation we are having should be about an entirely different energy future, one which will mean a dramatic reconfiguration of the world's wealth. Now how will we get that done?

Fully exploiting the potential of the pollution frame is, again, only one potential course for reframing the issue of global warming.

Another is to take advantage of place-based environmentalism. One of the major global warming issues is that there are a huge number of coal fired power plants being proposed in the US -- about 112 gigawatts. If approved and built, these will have operating lifetimes in excess of 60 years. Their carbon dioxide emissions alone will drastically impair the US's ability to cut its emissions. They will also preempt the market for wind and solar. So if they are built, we are cooked.

But they must be built somewhere. Wherever they are built there are place based advocacy tools to resist, which have been used quite successfully, say, in Colorado, as part of an integrated campaign to encourage wind and solar. So here is another example of reshaping an existing advocacy approach from the traditions of the environmental movement to make effective forward progress on global warming.

Again, I would say we did something much like that in the late 60's or 70's with pollution, in the 80's with nuclear power, and have been having surprising success doing it in the last decade with genetically modified foods.

Key LIES ABOVE AND BELOW _ 80s – Nukes ?? 2 or 3 – interest rates to blame – mostly – and now they are back – fools - ! GLobal warmoing more ABSTRACT __ !! A New Economic Order - !! come on poe tell us all about it... or haven't you been studying ???

Global warming is a more abstract, distant problem; the economic transformation required is bigger; it needs deeper, more robust, more sustained collaborations; it needs to be harnessed to a broader vision of a new economic order. There is more than enough hard work to go around. We ought not to get distracted by conversations about "the death of environmentalism"; we should avoid allowing ourselves to be divided by glib generalizations about generational divides; we should above all be creative, not destructive.

CONFUSION WITH THE APOLLO ALLIANCE
Because I am one of the co-chairs of the Apollo Alliance, and because S&N referred so heavily to the Alliance, I went to the trouble of checking with the other leaders of Apollo to see what their involvement in this piece had been. Their response makes it very clear that Shellenberger and Nordhaus were speaking only for themselves, and that the Apollo Alliance as a whole had not even seen this document before it was distributed:

Another unfortunate aspect of the paper was that it left the impression that the Apollo Alliance sanctioned the substance, criticism or tone of the analysis. In fact, Alliance partners such as my fellow Alliance co-chair Leo Gerard (Steelworkers), as well as key partners Robert Borosage (Institute of America's Future), Dan Carol (CTSG), Joel Rogers (Center on Wisconsin Strategy), as well as Alliance Executive Director Bracken Hendricks did not see a copy of the paper until it was released for EGA, nor were they aware of its existence before its release.

Of particular concern to Alliance partners is the suggestion in the paper, real or implied, that the Apollo Alliance's model green jobs investment plan released last year, was, in any way, a complete "solution" to the climate change challenge we face. The Apollo vision is animated by the strength of environmental values and the vitality of a popular movement that is one of the great hopes for re-tooling the nation's policies to create clean energy jobs, a sustainable economy, and a safer world.
Most disturbingly, to me and the Apollo team, was that the paper was not in the spirit of our project, which has been seeking for the last two years to evangelize and create innovative new alliances and partnerships for tomorrow - not practice the "push-off" politics of the past.
These at-times painstaking efforts have sought to balance the passions of many, many stakeholders; and so it was disappointing to me and the Apollo team to see the passions of a few, however well meant, to raise their voices over others. It is not how we operate, and it's surely not how we will succeed together. Sincerely,Carl Pope, Executive DirectorSierra Club


In the United States today, there are more private vehicles on the road than people licensed to drive them, the Worldwatch report points out. The average size of refrigerators in US households increased by 10 per cent between 1972 and 2001, and the number per home rose as well. New houses in the US were 38 per cent bigger in 2000 than in 1975, despite having fewer people in each household on average. As a result of these consumption patterns, the United States, with just 4.5 per cent of the world's population, releases 25 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Yet increased consumption has not brought Americans happiness. About a third of Americans report being "very happy," the same share as in 1957, when Americans were only half as wealthy. Americans are also some of the most overworked people in the industrial world, putting in the equivalent of nine more weeks on the job each year than the average European.
Environmental pressures -- This rising consumption in the US, other rich nations, and many developing ones is more than the planet can bear, reports State of the World 2004. Forests, wetlands, and other natural places are shrinking to make way for people and their homes, farms, malls, and factories. Despite the existence of alternative sources, more than 90 per cent of paper still comes from trees—eating up about one fifth of the total wood harvest worldwide. An estimated 75 per cent of global fish stocks are now fished at or beyond their sustainable limit. And even though technology allows for greater fuel efficiency than ever before, cars and other forms of transportation account for nearly 30 per cent of world energy use and 95 per cent of global oil consumption.
Around 1.7 billion people worldwide—more than a quarter of humanity—have entered the "consumer class," adopting the diets, transportation systems, and lifestyles that were limited to the rich nations of Europe, North America, and Japan during most of the last century. In China alone, 240 million people have joined the ranks of consumers—a number that will soon surpass that in the United States. "Rising consumption has helped meet basic needs and create jobs," says Worldwatch Institute President Christopher Flavin. "But as we enter a new century, this unprecedented consumer appetite is undermining the natural systems we all depend on, and making it even harder for the world's poor to meet their basic needs."
Poor lifestyles -- Private consumption expenditures—the amount spent on goods and services at the household level—have increased fourfold since 1960, topping more than $20 trillion in 2000, reports State of the World 2004. The 12 per cent of the world's people living in North America and Western Europe account for 60 per cent of this consumption, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa account for only 3.2 per cent.
Consumption among the world's wealthy elites, and increasingly among the middle class, has in recent decades gone beyond satiating needs or fulfilling dreams to become an end in its own right, note State of the World 2004 project directors Lisa Mastny and Brian Halweil. At the same time, consumption is rising rapidly in the developing world, as globalization has introduced millions of people to consumer goods, while providing the technology and capital to produce and disseminate them.
"Nearly half of all global consumers now live in the developing world," says Mastny. "While the average Chinese or Indian consumes much less than the average North American or European, China and India alone now boast a combined consumer class larger than that in all of Western Europe."
Demand in China -- Consumption is not in itself a bad thing, adds Halweil. "The almost three billion people worldwide who barely survive on less than $2 per day will need to ramp up their consumption in order to satisfy basic needs for food, clean water, and sanitation. And in China, the rush to meet surging consumer demand is stimulating the economy, creating jobs, and attracting foreign investment." There is little evidence that the consumption locomotive is braking—particularly in the United States, where most people are amply supplied with the goods and services needed to lead a good life.
This rising consumption in the US, other rich nations, and many developing ones is more than the planet can bear, reports State of the World 2004. Forests, wetlands, and other natural places are shrinking to make way for people and their homes, farms, malls, and factories. Despite the existence of alternative sources, more than 90 per cent of paper still comes from trees—eating up about one fifth of the total wood harvest worldwide. An estimated 75 per cent of global fish stocks are now fished at or beyond their sustainable limit. And even though technology allows for greater fuel efficiency than ever before, cars and other forms of transportation account for nearly 30 per cent of world energy use and 95 per cent of global oil consumption.
At the same time, however, growing dissatisfaction with current consumption trends has led consumer advocates, economists, policymakers, and environmentalists to develop creative options for meeting people's needs while dampening the environmental and social costs of mass consumption. State of the World 2004 points to a range of opportunities that are already available to governments, businesses, and consumers to curb and redirect consumption:
Ecological tax reform. By shifting taxes so that manufacturers have to pay for the harm they do to the environment.Take-back laws. Now being adopted by a growing number of governments around the world, these laws require companies to "take back" products at the end of their useful lives, and typically ban the landfilling and incineration of products.
Durability. Industries can take shared responsibility for their ecological impacts by finding ways to reduce the amount of raw material needed to create products and by making goods more durable and easy to repair and upgrade.
Personal responsibility. Changes in consumption practices will also require millions of individual decisions that start at the grassroots—about everything from our use of energy and water to our consumption of food.
NOTES ( FIn)
1.)) Note 1-Part 1 of series – link -

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Ward continues: Even if Homo sapiens survives several million more years, it is unlikely that any of our species will see biodiversity recover from today's extinctions.?


GROWING DISPARITIES: LUXURY -- In 2002, 1.12 billion households—about three quarters of the world's people—owned at least one television set.
Some 41 million passenger vehicles rolled of the world's assembly lines in 2002, five times as many as in 1950. The global passenger car fleet now exceeds 531 million, growing by about 11 million vehicles annually.
Consumers across the globe now spend an estimated $35 billion a year on bottled water.
NECESSITY - In 1999, some 2.8 billion people—two in every five humans on the planet—lived on less than $2 a day.
In 2000, one in five people in the developing world—1.1 billion total—did not have “reasonable access“ to safe drinking water.
2.4 billion people worldwide—two out of every five—live without basic sanitation.
Providing adequate food, clean water, and basic education for the world's poorest could all be achieved for less than people spend annually on makeup, ice cream, and pet food.

Table 1-6: Annual Expenditure On Luxury Items Compared With Funding Needed To Meet Selected Basic Needs

Product Annual Expenditure Social or Economic Goal
Additional Annual Investment Needed to Achieve Goal

Makeup $18 billion
Reproductive health care for all women $12 billion
Pet food in Europe and United States $17 billion
Elimination of hunger and malnutrition $19 billion
Perfumes $15 billion
Universal literacy $5 billion
Ocean cruises $14 billion
Clean drinking water for all $10 billion
Ice cream in Europe $11 billion
Immunizing every child $1.3 billion

Worldwide, people use about a third of all energy in buildings—for heating, cooling, cooking, lighting, and running appliances. Building-related energy demand is rising rapidly, particularly within our homes. But there are large differences in household energy use from one country to the next: for example, people in the United States and Canada consume 2.4 times as much energy at home as those in Western Europe.
http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/2004/07/07/