The Environmental Movement is Dead

Salon today publishes, Dead Movement Walking, (subscription or annoying advertisement required) coverage of some recent goings on in the environmental movement in which notable movers and shakers are saying the movement has failed utterly to move the ball in any significant way and that the public has monumentally ingored environmental concerns.

Former Sierra Club President, Adam Werback is quoted,

With self-mythologizing flair, he declared, "I will not longer call myself an environmentalist," in working to build a broader progressive movement. "Environmentalism is dead in no small part because it could never match the right's power to narrate a compelling vision of America's future," he eulogized.

That and the fact that the momentum of carbon build up and the economic industrial status quo pretty much guarantee that massive climate shifts are a sure thing. Environmentalists need to focus on saving mankind, not the environment.

Fortunately, it seems that those who have come to bury Environmentalism are beginning to twig to the facts on the ground.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus don't believe that activists have to give up on government. But they do believe that the approach has to change. Instead of telling Americans why they should be concerned about, say, global warming, Shellenberger and Nordhaus believe that activists could best further their anti-climate-change agenda by taking on the issues that voters -- and thus politicians -- already care about, while fixing the environment at the same time. Like the economy and jobs.

For instance, instead of presenting the nightmare future that will result if America doesn't take action on global warming -- soon! now! yesterday! -- environmentalists need to change the conversation: "We don't have to talk about global warming," Shellenberger says. "What we need to talk about is what we want America to look like: what a sustainable, economically prosperous America looks like in the 21st century, and what we need to do to get there. And we need to articulate that in the context of a vision that does something about global warming, but also, more importantly to the average American, offers something more than that to them, offers them hope for their own future, for the kind of life they want to live.

BINGO! Someone e-mail Shellenberger and Nordhaus the URL for WorldChanging.org.