"[Academics in the Northwest] must begin engaging with all people, not
only the ones that live in cities or work in white-collar jobs."
Now, with the cliche name calling and reducing a serious issue to tired
stereotypes taken care of, perhaps you might think about publishing
something in the The Hill that presents a critical analysis of the
alignment of coal country's laboring class with the Coal Bosses that
serve as the villain in quite a bit of bluegrass music.
The social/environmental consciousness in bluegrass music that
provides/reflects a working class identity and latent environmental
values would reveal some interesting/troubling questions that do not
place the blame at the feet of environmental advocates, such as myself,
who have deep working class connections. Just off a weekend of
bluegrass, so an easy suggestion. http://www.durangomeltdown.com/
If not willing to engage directly with bluegrass during research, the
accepted convention in bluegrass is to blame the banjo player.
Travis Stills,
Durango, Colorado
On 4/25/2018 2:59 PM, Stacy VanDeveer wrote:
Aseem,
While I agree that the things like embedded environmentalism are good ideas and indeed
that environmental advocates need to do a much better job at connecting climate actions
(mitigation and adaptation) to the things many citizens care about, the rather uncritical
treatment of "blue collar" workers in these debates (and in The Hill piece) has
me pretty concerned. In point of fact, US working class people continue to mostly vote
for the candidates with stronger enviro positions. The white ones do so in lower
proportions than the non-white ones, I'll grant. But this may be more than in incidental
detail...
Is it up to environmentalists alone to change the discourses in places like
West Virginia, when nearly every candidate in both political parties is mostly
lying outright to the voters about climate, energy and other such concerns?
Where major employers and most of the business community does that same? Help
me understand how environmentalists ideas about dying coal communities change
that narrative.
And do we have any expectations at all of public servants and elected officials, in this
regard? This piece is published in The Hill. It pretty clearly suggests to its
DC/Capitol Hill readers that the failure of environmentalism/ists is responsible for the
current state of climate and energy politics in the US. Really? This, it seems to me, is
the most worrying (and likely empirically incorrect) argument to make to "the
hill" -- where a lot of naked corruption is, in my view, quite a bit more
responsible for the state of US climate politics than is environmentalists failure to
somehow solve the problem of coal communities' decline.
In my view, "The Hill" and how it works and whose interests are well represented are the
locus of responsibility for the state of US climate and energy politics. I doubt TheHill wants to
publish that argument, but I don't see how a bunch of environmentalists responding to your call for
ideas about how to connect to blue collar workers changes anything on "the Hill." How
represented and supported do these blue collar workers feel, when they look at The Hill now? I do
fear that this sort of piece suggests that the policy makers who read the hill should blame
environmentalists for their own failures.
--SV
On 4/25/18, 3:44 PM, "[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]"
<[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]> wrote:
Colleagues:
We published this today in response to Michael Bloomberg's $4.5 million
donation to the UN Climate Change Secretariat.
"Environmentalists need to reconnect with blue-collar America"
http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/384856-environmentalists-need-to-reconnect-with-blue-collar-america
Aseem Prakash
********************************************************************
Aseem Prakash
Professor, Department of Political Science
Walker Family Professor for the College of Arts and Sciences
Founding Director, UW Center for Environmental Politics
39 Gowen Hall, Box 353530
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3530
http://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/
http://depts.washington.edu/envirpol/
--
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Travis E. Stills
Energy & Conservation Law
1911 Main Avenue, Suite 238
Durango, Colorado 81301
[email protected]
phone:(970)375-9231
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