The Death of Environmentalism - What's Everyone So Worried About?

A quick explanation - got in a bit of a mood over an adbusters.org forum topic, then stumbled across a free blog provider. The rest is html.

Legal activist and former advisor to the government of Bill Clinton, Professor Joseph Sachs identifies one of the key problems in modern environmental law as being the fact that it's still based on longheld notions of property rights. No matter how radical a law may seem, it's still going to be a pillar of gold built on a foundation of faeces (my words not his, and gold is used as an easily recognized metaphor as opposed to the more specific "soft, useless metal extracted from nature through use of violently toxic processes long practiced to destroy ecosystems and indigenous sites of significance", alright?)

Any kind of 'ism' - feminism, environmentalism, activism, etc. - starts out fundamentally radical by challenging generally dominant and established/accepted (though objectionable) ideals (or lack thereof). Then, as we all know, these 'isms' get co-opted by moderates, governments, corporations - often groups whose ideology they're challenging. John Howard's feminism is about paying women pocket change to make babies and stay home with them (woo hoo), corporate anti-racism is all about letting foreign workers do jobs for less pay and under worse conditions than (mostly) white workers. A recent open poll net-survey asked people to identify what they were most concerned to see a corporation supporting, what would make them think highly of it. Some options included education, local community groups, the arts. Guess what came in first? Environment, with just over 20%. Last? Arts - 2%, yes, only 2% of people give a damn about whether Brand X puts money into arts. BUT, over 20% of people want to be associated with the green movement when they proudly wear, eat, drink, drive, or get laid in Brand Y.

So, surely environmentalism isn't dead. The different messages from movements using the media, street level leaflet campaigns, the serious novels, the expert opinions, the outpouring of concern on news channels - these have all elevated environmentalism to the big time status of MARKETING PLOY. Governments have to talk green, products have to sound green, consumers want to look or even act green. O! What a wonderful day, viva la revoletc..

So here I sit wearing Ecologique by Calvin Klein (if only Naomi made fragrances - Exploit by NK), clicking away on my Dell Environ, sipping Gingko Berry Cola. At a gross level, this is what environmentalism has become.

At the Orwellian doublespeak dictatorial rest assured they're destroying it faster than ever while making it sound like they're fixing it level, the facade is a lot more lethal. In Australia, for example, Johnny Howard and the B Grade neocons actually got away with language typical of the new global environmentalism. After being elected again (like Blair, like Bush) they declared an extra 170 thousand hectares of old growth in Tasmania's disappearing wonderland would be protected. Wow! Sounds fantastic doesn't it? Only problem, 140 thousand hectares of it was inaccessible to logging companies (like the super-evil Gunns, who pretty much own the Tasmanian parliament) anyway.

But at least the media gave him a slap on the wrist for not ratifying Kyoto, a slap that went for at least 2 days and used most of that time just to confuse the good/ pigheadedly stupid subservience to private interests and well-financed lobby groups issue.

And in America, the problem is Bush, isn't it? I mean, sure, he lives in a house that uses the most advanced environmentally friendly and sustainable electricity/ water systems available, but he's an oil baron declaring war and killing people to maintain his country's/ accountant's/cronies' dependence on fossil fuel, an a grade idjut who has approved the dumping of hundreds of tonnes of depleted uranium on populated areas of the Middle East which you can just be sure will be monitored by American Military Scientists for decades (if there are decades left) to determine health impacts, and is supporting a bill through congress to approve strategic pre-emptive nuclear strikes (let's hope it does a Miers). Now, Clinton, there was a greenie. It says so in the chapeau of Chapter 11 of NAFTA...the chapter which has been used to heavily punish local governments for trying to eliminate toxic chemicals from ecosystems.

Okay, okay, it's not all bad. Over 3 thousand green NGOs have popped up throughout Brazil, and the fact that there's now a drought in the Amazon (think about it,a-drought-in-the-Amazon, a-drought-in-the-world's-largest-tract-of-rainforest,

a-drought-where-over-one-third-of-the-world's-

fresh-water-is-concentrated) shouldn't be cause for global concern. Transnational logging and agriculture, using the best modern methods, plan to relieve that situation. If they're successful and latest research from South America is right, there'll only be 4.7% of Amazonia left by 2020 at the current rate of decline - that'll fix the problem.

So - NGOs with limited resources are able to locate or develop alarming scientifically based conclusions about where current practices are heading, corporations with massive finances, data collection and research and development facilities want to look as green as consumers want to seem while only being as green as governments can make them, governments can only make international trade (and everything else) as green as the WTO agreements (which they signed in the first place) will let them. And as for climate change - it's not a scary phrase is it? Not very loaded, almost neutral - I mean, change is good and there's climate all over, right? I haven't checked on this because the source it came from makes me squeamish, but apparently the term 'climate change' which we're all using because we're so up on the latest came from the same guy who coined 'death tax' for Bush, so that he could get everyone who thought they might die some time to vote for a reprieve on a tax that only impacts the richest 2% of Americans.

Oh yeah, let's not forget those new anti-terror laws which all the right-leaning Western governments seem to keep bringing in, which seem kind of identical in purpose and potential for abuse. Or that some Western Governments use terms like 'environmental terrorism' when referring to people who break machines, chain themselves to bulldozers, or flip over logging trucks, as opposed to people who have the money to enable alternative energy research that might make a breakthrough but choose to spend it on bombs and tax cuts for anyone who buys an SUV.

Okay, so environmentalism IS misrepresented, sedated, diffused, tangled up in doublespeak, badly practiced by the (professed-to-be) well-intentioned, but is it dead? It's definitely injured. Some countries in Europe have ecological tax reform - great, George Bush has plans to build an air-cleaning machine with all the money he makes destroying the air and the water - uh oh, this year there's been unprecedented environmental disturbance (tidal waves, earthquakes, mudslides, hurricanes) killing hundreds of thousands of people and affecting tens of millions of lives in what may be the clearest sign yet from the planet that we need to stop debating whether the planet is being affected by our activity and unite to make real, drastic change in values an immediate priority - great (kinda), most of these disasters didn't really harm or impact on the people or governments who've profitted most from the processes which may have produced them and very little has been suggested by mainstream media that there may be a pattern forming - goddamit.

Alright already, it's marginalised, under-prioritised, poorly considered as crucial to survival let alone quality of life, but is environmentalism dead? (most Western) Media will still go with a boob-shot, an alarmist story about Muslims, great profits for big companies or losses by the public sector over the fact that not stopping right now and completely changing what is going on around us equals an extinction-level event in the next 30 years.

No major media ran with the climate simulator story - recently a group of scientists, climate experts and computer geeks developed a basic but effectively accurate climate simulator. Running with the accepted theory that when the ocean currents stop or reverse, we go into a planetary climate meltdown/apocalypse type zone, they determined that once this happens the majority of life on this planet will be dead within 50 years, and that there's currently a 20 per cent chance this could happen. This 'chance', not surprisingly, is increasing every day/month/year. And governments are still voted in because of their mortgage and interest rate policies, allowed to stay in despite total disrespect for international law, corporations own more of everything, and America is still 5 per cent of the world's population using about 30% of the world's resources and producing about 40 per cent of its waste.

Is Marxism dead if people in berets meet to discuss it in the library next to the nearest of 7 Starbucks every weekend? No, it's just not realistic or adapted to modern conditions. Is Christianity dead when the world's most well-equipped war machine is under the control of an ultra-conservative right wing that holds prayer meetings and is against women's right to choose because it's pro-life but at the same time is in favour of greater application of the death penalty (judicially or otherwise)? No, it's just stuffed in an ornate closet too scared to do anything serious. Is environmentalism dead when there's a greater level of public concern about environmental issues than at any time in post-First Nations' history than ever recorded before but no mass society is really doing anything to reverse the accelerating destruction?

Why don't we chat about it together while sipping fair trade coffee which the producer still only received 8 per cent of what you paid for it at the shop, and chowing down on genetically modified soy burgers while marvelling at your hybrid car which runs mostly on electricity that still comes from burning trees. I don't think environmentalism is dead, I think that real environmentalism is on the point of really beginning...but that's only going to happen when a truly critical mass stops taking the date rape drugs given out by profit mongers and corporate (media) dictators and the governments who serve them - part of the wake up realisation for many will hopefully be that the problem is not who is running the system but the system itself and the accepted doctrine which permits its current existence.

Oh yeah, opinionism's alive and well.