...is the title of a long essay by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus. It describes how the environmental movement in the US has lost ground over the past 30 years. Discussing climate change, the authors say that '[t]he problem is that once you identify something as the root cause, you have little reason to look for even deeper causes or connections with other root causes.'
My take: the article outlines what happens when social and environmental issues become detached from the concerns of natural persons, then politicised and 'owned' by corporate bodies that have only institutional goals - the prime one being self-perpetuation. Social Policy Bonds would correct this by subordinating all policy to explicit outcomes that are meaningful to real people.
2 comments:
The Death of Environmentalism” (DOE) should be called “The Death of Elite, White, American Environmentalism.” A critique of the environmental movement that draws on neither the perspectives nor achievement of the environmental justice (EJ) movement is, at very best, incomplete. That the DOE interviews and recommendations only focused on white, American male-led environmentalism meant that the fatal flaws of that part of the environmental movement infected the critique itself. These omissions inspire me to paraphrase Sojourner Truth, and ask “Ain’t I an environmentalist?”
I was struck by how the piece echoed the National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summits of 1991 and 2003, both of which I attended. A review of the attendees list indicates that neither Shellenberger nor Nordhaus were present at either Summit. Their critiques also repeated analyses from letters EJ leaders sent to leaders of white environmental groups since 1990. It’s unfortunate that the authors have begun to attack the EJ movement, calling it fetishized NIMBY-ism, while making the contradictory claim that environmental health issues aren’t real concerns in communities of color (February 23rd UC Berkeley campus newspaper The Berkeleyan; tape of the panel).
for more go here: http://www.ludovicspeaks.com/2005/05/aint_i_an_envir.ht
Thanks for your interesting comment. I don't know much about the respective merits of the EJ movement and the mainstream environmental groups. But I'd like to see a focus on environmental outcomes. You mention the 'achievement' of the EJ movement. What is this? This is a genuine question. How does it differ from that of the 'white...male-led' groups?
Actually, to me what is more important than ascribing merit or blame to the different factions, is to get some agreement on minimum environmental outcomes - bottom-line achievements - and then push for these.
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