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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Why you're losing the war to Bush and Cheney.
Sep 5, 2002 | "I feel deep shame when I look into the eyes of my grandchildren and think how much damage has been done to Planet Earth since I was their age." -- Jane Goodall, "People Power," Time, Aug. 18, 2002
"Standing in front of a blown-up photo of a tiny, purple, one-seat European car, Senator Trent Lott, the Republican leader, asserted, 'I don't want Americans to have to drive this car.'" -- "Senate Rejects Plan to Stiffen Auto Mileage Standards," New York Times, March 13, 2002
"President Bush distanced himself today from a report by his administration concluding that humans were to blame for far-reaching effects of global warming on the environment. 'I read the report put out by the bureaucracy,' he said." -- "President Distances Himself From Global Warming Report," New York Times, June 4, 2002
The failure of the Johannesburg Conference to produce a plan that will actually save the biosphere symbolizes the state of the environmental movement today. We are winning battles, like holding a major conference attended by more than 100 heads of state. But we are badly losing the war.
The hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the environmental movement, and its countless studies, books, articles and hours of activism, are failing to halt the rapid deterioration of the biosphere. Most of our victories have been local -- preserving wilderness, cleaning up rivers and toxic dumps: important victories, but ones with little impact on biospheric threats like global warming.
Our work on global warming has done an impressive job in educating the public about the existence of the problem, but it has not succeeded in mobilizing real action to solve it. At Johannesburg, attendees were unable to commit even to supplying 15 percent of the world's energy from renewable sources by 2010 -- a small part of the effort needed to avert global warming and other biospheric threats. And while our promotion of renewable energy has made great strides since the 1970s, renewables -- not including hydroelectric power -- still comprise only 1 percent of world energy production.
Our strategy did not succeed even under a sympathetic president like Bill Clinton. Greenhouse gas emissions increased 12 percent between 1990 and 2000, despite Mr. Clinton's 1993 pledge to reduce them to 1990 levels by the turn of the century. Al Gore, who called for making the environment the "organizing principle of civilization," did not even organize his campaign around it. And under George W. Bush we are today merely fighting to prevent further losses.
The bottom line is that our movement has not mobilized a constituency in the developed world large and powerful enough to force corporations and politicians to make the long-term investments necessary to save the biosphere. It is clearly time for a rethinking that can produce a "human" environmental movement adequate to the new challenges we face. The key is the United States, which not only produces 23 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions despite having only 4 percent of its population, but also blocked renewable-energy targets at Johannesburg. The fundamental question is this: What can so move Americans emotionally that they will be willing to make the massive investments necessary to save the biosphere at the cost of short-term consumption?
Until now, economics has usually trumped the environment. Auto companies succeeded in blocking higher fuel-efficiency standards recently by cynically playing on people's fears of job losses. Only if we can develop a case that touches feelings deeper than economic fears can we prevail. But how to do so?
The most powerful emotion we can tap in to is the universal human concern for one's children and grandchildren -- people's desire to transcend death by leaving their descendants a world worth living in. The fact is that people care far more about their children and grandchildren than for pandas, parks or windmills. And the desire to live on through our descendants is a far stronger drive than is commonly realized. We can build a new environmental movement that can save the biosphere around the theme of "investing in our grandchildren and future generations."
Much of our civilization is driven by our desire to find "immortality projects" that can give our lives a meaning that will transcend death. This is one reason parents have children, politicians seek to "make history," and people identify with nations and religions. The threat to the biosphere thus creates an opportunity to create constituencies in the developed world that never existed before, and that are necessary for the biosphere to be saved. Precisely because we are the first generation in history whose technological reach extends indefinitely, we are the first who can lead lives that will have real, tangible meaning for all humanity for the rest of time. The message we need to repeatedly bring into every household in America is this: "In the 21st century, our love and our expenditures to feed, house and educate our kids and grandkids needs to be extended to cleaning up the biosphere on which their lives will depend. If we fail to do so they will curse us, no matter what else we have done for them. If we succeed, we will know that our lives will have real meaning for them and all who follow them."
Only this kind of message has the potential to mobilize the vast new constituencies needed to force corporations and politicians to make the investments needed to save the biosphere.
The focus at Johannesburg on the threat posed to the Third World was welcome and long past due. But history has shown that Americans cannot be mobilized for environmental action based on the Third World. They will act only when they can understand the threat in more immediate terms. Jane Goodall's chimps need to be saved. But this will probably only occur if enough Americans can come to feel the shame she does about what we are doing to all those who follow us.
