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Hi, Karen, I don’t
think P. Brzezinski is
suggesting that there aren’t real environmental issues or even crises; he
is arguing that the alarmist mode that (too) many environmental advocates adopt
is leading to the undesired result of turning some number of people off, and, I
would add, confusing the scientific data base through exaggeration and a
misfocusing of is issues and priorities. Yes, to a
significant extent, some people are willing to wade through the alarm-created
confusion and adopt an environmental concern as their own. But how do we weigh
this against the number of people who are turned off or decide to ignore the
environmentalists thanks to the alarmism? What I see as
really missing is a whole-systems approach to environment, including the roles
of homo sapiens within it. Without a whole systems science and policy approach,
we will not be able to know 1) what our highest environmental priorities should
be, what the highest leverage points of intervention should be, or 3) where the
immediate do-or-die danger spots are. Environmental
scientists and activists have, I think, a VERY hard time adopting a
whole-systems approach. There are several reasons for this, I think: 1. Thinking
in such big terms IS big – and expensive, and it may be hard to get
funding for this kind of thinking and research; 2. It requires people to get
outside their disciplinary boxes, thus exposing the intrepid to the kind of departmental
undercutting that all multi-disciplinary research seems ultimately to come up
against. 3. The environmental activists get their funding via NGOs who get
their money from scaring people into making donations, and so the activities of
the activists must be high-visibility, dramatic, visual codable, and reducible
to sound-bites, or at least to pithy articles in liberal journals. I’ve
worked with many think tanks (including my own), and I have see only one whole-systems
research project ever funded (based on the now obsolete Leontiev modeling
work), and that was because we found a true-believer in the National Science
Foundation and EPA. He retired, and the project was soon terminated. How can we
re-orient environmentalists and scientists toward a whole-systems approach? Without
this, I think the world of environmental concerns remains vulnerable to P. Brzezinski’s
concern, though, as you so rightly point out, that doesn’t mean all
environmental efforts or concerns are dismissed. Thanks for the
counter-arguments, Karen. Cheers, Lawry From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Karen Watters Cole Thanks for posting this, Lawry. But polls do not
support the statement that Americans dismiss environmental warnings out of
hand. While this quote attacks Doomsday Environmentalism, it ignores the
mainstreaming of ecological awareness. The American public is protective of
more than our beloved national and state parks, increasingly aware of the
linkage between a healthy environment and healthy families, as well as
sustainable commerce. Christina Larsen discusses the evolution of the
environmental movement in a Washington Monthly essay, The Emerging Environmental Majority. She
chronicles the ‘breaking of the fellowship’ between
“enviros” and hunters/sportsmen in the early years of the movement,
but how under Bush 43 policies, hook-and-bullet groups are again joining forces
with ‘greens’, to protect wetlands and public lands from
indiscriminate sell-off to drilling, mining and forest companies.
Environmentalists have learned to play the economics card well. An example of the mainstreaming of environmentalism is
the current issue of ‘high society’ Vanity Fair, The Green Issue,
highlighting groups and individuals. There are thousands of ‘green’
websites and places to shop green/fair trade/organic. Being green is not just
for Kermit and school kids, it resonates with adult consumers, and not just the
aging hippies among us. The public at large is increasingly green, if not for
heavy-duty scientific reasons, because of concern for public health issues. Radicalism, or alarmism in this case, yields in the
natural course of events to assimilation and/or moderation. Look at the early
feminist movement. No one burns bras anymore, indeed Victoria’s Secret
has tapped into the sexual revolution with a zeal that the song “I am
Woman, hear me roar” couldn’t imagine. (You may also recall Jimmy
Buffet had a song about liberating the USSR by air dropping $20 bills and the
VS catalogue.) Now, if the global lingerie empire will print their catalogues
on recycled paper, we would have another ‘green’ success in the spirit
of making progress, not war. But it took ideological war in the beginning to
awaken an ignorant and complacent public to danger. Raising a fist, burning
bras and sounding the alarm is as American as Paul Revere. It is false to portray all environments as if all
Muslims were Wahabists or all Christians End Timers. Precautionary Principles, better safe than sorry, first do no harm, makes common sense and
that’s why environmentalism has succeeded. If we need proof that business
and science have joined forces to protect natural resources look no further
than GE, BP and other global firms that are changing to stabilize their risk
management, prompted by the very practical and conservative insurance
industry. kwc Larsen: Emerging Environmental Majority http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0605.larson.html Or contact me for a reader friendly 5.5 page copy Greetings, everyone, The problem of course is
the greater the legitimate crisis the more those who warn of it will sound
alarmist. This from Peiser’s
list: “Environmentalism is dead. Alarmism - the environmental
movement's basic strategy - has led to this dead end. Not that this history of crying wolf
has chastened contemporary environmentalists. Activists and researchers still
issue dire warnings with mind-numbing regularity. Although such scare mongering
persists, it has reached the point of diminishing returns. Knowing the movement's
track record of false alarms, the American public dismiss dire environmental
warnings out of hand. Thus, on the 37th anniversary of Earth Day, the environmental
movement is looking increasingly long in the tooth. Alarmist environmentalists have
overshadowed moderate, careful researchers, and undermined the credibility of the entire
movement. Until environmentalists cease depending on nightmare scenarios, they
will fail to influence the public at large.” --Piotr C. Brzezinski, The Harvard Crimson, 20
April 2006 |
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