Roger Pielke Jr. cites some interesting polling data purporting to show the percentage of Americans considering themselves to be "environmentalists" has declined dramatically over the past 20 years. Today just over 40 percent of respondents answer "yes" to the question “Do you consider yourself an environmentalist or not?”
Does this mean that Americans are less supportive of environmental protection than in the past? I doubt it. One possibility is that an increasing percentage of Americans reject the idea that the environmentalist movement has a monopoly on what it means to be "pro-environment." Americans who support environmental protection may feel uncomfortable with either the tactics or policy prescriptions embraced by establishment environmental groups. If so, it should not be much of a surprise.
A decade or so ago --back in my own activist/think tank days -- I commissioned polling work on what Americans believed it meant to be "pro-environment," finding that many Americans saw "conservative" approaches to environmental protection -- e.g. decentralization, protection of property rights, non-regulatory measures, etc. -- as "pro-environment." (See summaries here and here.)
I believed then -- and believe now -- that this and other polling data suggest that establishment environmentalist groups lack an enforceable monopoly on what it means to be "pro-environment." Insofar as conventional "greens" dominate the field, it is by default. Conservative and libertarian types generally -- and conservative politicians in particular -- have largely ceded the field. They either endorse conventional policies on the cheap, or oppose establishment environmentalist proposals outright without proposing a positive alternative. My own somewhat-academic effort to outline such an agenda can be seen here, but I've hardly answered every problem (or even come close). If only John McCain or some other market-oriented politician would take seriously the need to develop a pro-environment alternative, they might even have a ready-made constituency waiting in the wings.
Over-reaching and the takeover by fund-raisers are related. The usual pattern of the latter is that they perpetuate their power and income by inventing new dragons to slay, with the slaying needing money. This phenomenon is not confined to environmental groups, or even to political spectrum.
As an example, the "cop-killer" bullet fuss within the National Rifle Association about ten years ago was really a factional dispute over control of its lucrative fund-raising apparatus.
This phenomenon has also resulted in the "Crisis Crisis" with ever more extravagant claims about multiple imminent calamities impending us as more and more non-governmental organizations engage in hyperbolyptic fund-raising campaigns among the gullible on their mailing lists concerning whatever is going on at the moment, or is not going on at the moment, or should be going on at the moment, or would be going on were it not for the earnest efforts of worthy recipients of contributions from faithful contributors.
America is one of the very cleanest countries on Earth today -- yet listening to the watermelon lobby, you'd think we're all China-type uber-polluters [I remember Pittsburgh in the '50's, when you couldn't see across the river because of all the industrial pollution. Now, 99.999% of that pollution is gone, and the entire country has been similarly cleaned up].
One of the central problems caused by the 'mentalist movement is that they and their Congressional string puppets have learned to game the system, by gerrymandering the voting process.
Now, politicians select their voters, rather than allowing the voters to select their representatives. Whoever wins their party primary in a Democrat district will be in Congress; and whoever wins the Republican primary in a Republican district will do a cake walk into that Congressional district seat. What the citizens want doesn't matter.
Gerrymandering makes democracy DINO -- democracy in name only. It makes it easy for special interest groups like the enviro lobby to get control of individual members of Congress, who then dance to their green tune. We see it every day, like when Nancy Pelosi even refused to allow a vote to drill for oil -- something that the American people overwhelmingly support. And who can blame the citizens? America is a very clean country, and its citizens are being crushed by high gas prices. Inexpensive gasoline and a clean environment are not mutually exclusive, no matter what the anti-democracy watermelons may claim.
If voters were allowed to select their representatives, rather than vice-versa, the U.S. would have plentiful energy -- and gasoline would cost a lot less. As it is, the desires of American citizens are deliberately ignored by those who presume that they know what's best. Only their enviro puppetmasters matter to Congress, because the system has been gamed by gerrymandering.
Until voting citizens reclaim the right to select their own representatives, the situation will only get worse.
Chalk me up as the one that opposes establishment environmentalist proposals outright without proposing a positive alternative.
I don't recycle on principle. It's a complete waste.
Gotta problem with that?
One is the shallow sense that certain "environmental" ideas are trendy or popular. See, for instance, the popularity of organic foods among people who cannot really explain what they are or what their purported importance is.
The deeper sense, however, is that the mainstream has absorbed the notion that the living environment needs to be accounted for in decision-making: not merely as an aesthetic preference or a faddish trend, but because there are human consequences of environmental damage and wasteful use of resources.
Successful corporations have built green buildings, for instance, not to be trendy but because they make economic sense. Sooty smokestacks are regarded as undesirable and primitive, not as signs of progress. New technology is expected and planned to use resources more efficiently, not to dominate and consume more of them.
These are results, of course, of "environmentalism" in the sense of a scientifically- and economically-based understanding of the environment and our actual dependence upon it -- not "environmentalism" in the sense of a hokey spiritualized worship of all things green.
In my arrogance, I view the human race as the pinnacle of life on Earth. Everything we do here on this planet should be to advance ourselves. We must bend the environment to our will, and throw off the bonds of the lecturing environmentalists who merely want to tell us how we must live.
Pfft. I'm smart enough to figure that out on my own. The Earth is our oyster. It exists to serve us.
Bask in my hubris. :-)
Any breeder's carbon footprint greatly exceeds that of the childfree person who trades his bicycle in for a Humvee, for example.
othermarket-oriented politician would take seriously the need to develop a pro-environment alternative, they might even have a ready-made constituency waiting in the wings."Fixed it for you...
Remember that Karl Rove made his name in Direct Mail. Nasty business.
The fund-raising spiels of environmentalist organizations remind me very much of fund-raising spiels by the radio preachers my grand-aunt had on all the time when we visited while I was growing up.
Many environmentalists believe that we should stop adding new road capacity with the express aim of increasing traffic congestion to force people out of their cars. They oppose most if not all power plants, and they champion things like bio-diesel which just tinker around the margins without having the capacity or the economics to improve the environment or help the economy. The massive subsidies that the green lobby and their corporate co-opters advocate are mostly pork, and merely bog down the economy.
"Are you willing to support taxing plastic bags, refusing to solve today's problems because of random fears about tomorrow, and put the welfare of microbes and tree frogs over that of, e.g., human children?"
So of course I say no. The question no longer addresses keeping toxic chemicals out of lakes, tolerating insanely dirty cities that make you sick just walking outside, or even just common-sense stuff that my penny-pinching parents taught me as a small child, like turning off a light when leaving a room you're not going to be in for a while. Heck, the latest "environmentalist" hobby horse is forcing me to buy lights that are better left turned on (if you want to save money) and that give me migraines.
To put it another way, "environmentalism" has jumped the shark -- just as feminism, which now produces reactions in the form of books entitled Save the Males (with a subtitle of "Why Men Matter") -- did, ten to twenty years ago.
If we all stop breeding, then what is the point of saving the environment? Also, do we really assert that a carbon footprint is a critical measure of any person's impact on the environment?
As a life member, I could comment on how superficial that analysis is, but I don't want to hijack the thread.
Yes, in the developed nations the environmental movement triumphed, and movements never go away when they triumph, because they're run by people who make a living running them. We were all environmentalists when it was all about clean air and water, the label has become a bit less popular now that it's been captured by people who'd view a massive dieoff of the human race as a good thing, and will tell you so to your face.
I'm cheap, and many of the things I do out of cheapness correspond to things the enviros want us to do out of greenness.
Let's start a movement.
Environmentalism having gone the way (connotation-wise, at least) of feminism is an excellent comparison. Both were begun by proud people and picked up as a rallying cry by masses, and both were hijacked by radicals to the point where the masses now disdain them.
The whole global warming scare is merely the product of a crowd who has run out of dragons to slay. The environmentalists have won all their battles and defeated all their foes, and thus found their influence waning. They couldn't handle their lack of power, so, like that God-awful movie Dragonheart, they have to put on a complete charade to convince us that there's yet one more dragon to slay.
That's largely because the "establishment environmentalist proposals" are designed at fighting problems that don't exist, and thus, don't actually require "positive alternatives".
But then I voted for David Cobb.
McKinney won't get my vote.
As opposed to some folks that want to dismantle the entire regulatory apparatus and punt it back to the states. I consider myself an environmentalist in the sense that, in my analysis, the majority of environmental regulation has a favorable cost/benefit ratio.
As far as liberalizing off-shore drilling in the US right this second, it won't do a lick of good because of the oil rig shortage. Oil-field surveying and construction companies are booked past 2010 and somehow, I don't think they will be chomping at the bit to drop their current plans and drill here.
Except for TPL et al (charity which simply and appropriately buys things) there simply is no effective conservative approach. Anyone who is familiar with my book 'City Comforts' and my eponymous blog will know my skepticism of liberal dogma and such things as tax increment financing and eminent domain -- but I can't stand to hear the BS from self-proclaimed conservatives about how "free market" approaches will work. As I say -- though I know it will fall on deaf ears -- it's all bunk.
Most people don't like abortion, but they like to pro-life movement even less.
The wisdom of implementing new environmental protections is independent of the retrospective analysis of past protections, right?
So yeah, there's a sizable amount of people are generally satisfied with the amount of environmental regulation that's happening now... and there's a sizable proportion that views some of the current regulation level as excessive.
So its no mystery why less people consider themselves environmentalists... as our standards got higher, the definition of what an environmentalist is gets smaller and smaller until only the nutjobs are left in the cage, swinging from the trees and flinging feces at the majority peering into the enclosure in morbid fascination.
For example, the biggest environmental problem facing California today is the likely collapse of the Bay Delta ecosystem. Real professionals, like the GM of MWD, do not doubt the existence of global warming and the synergistic problems it creates, including rising ocean levels, collapse of levies, salinity intrusion, warming rivers (bad for fish) and changes in time of peak flows in the San Joaquin and Feather rivers.
Is Jeff Kightlinger (or Lester Snow, or any of the serious water buffaloes) an environmentalist? I haven't asked him recently; he's too busy to answer that kind of question. He is, however, a realist. And since MWD's job is to bring a lot of water to Southern California every year, the reason he's busy is he's trying to build the coalitions needed to make major changes in the way water moves through California before global warming kills the Delta and the California economy.
Responding to global warming and fisheries collapse (see Kevin Drum's blog) is no longer the province of environmental extremists; it's now a mainstream position. So people who don't call themselves environmentalists, because they don't want to be tarred by association with the loony fringe, nevertheless have incorporated what used to be extremist thinking into their daily lives.
People who disagree with me are super annoying. I hate those people. Paradoxically however, I like to run me belief system based on annoying people. Everything they say I believe the opposite!
Anyhow, we beat the environment like 10 years ago! It was the final boss after racism and sexism!
Nor did the British military professionals (Kitchener, Haig, Fisher, Hamilton, et. al.) entrusted almost exclusively with the conduct of WWI before the arrival of the Americans (to the exclusion of the elected civilian authorities, not to mention those outside the government like Churchill who could argue circles around them - with reason and fact to back him up).
The result: millions of causalities to no end whatsoever (the Somme, Passchendaele, et. al.) and the British on the edge of defeat.
Professionals don't get to where they are by doubt.
Appeals to authority are for medieval theologians, not American citizens.
I would like to see conservative actually mean that the world would still be a good place to live in a thousand years. If you really are conservative, that is not such a long time.
A minor question about off shore drilling: How much money would we get per barrel for the oil extracted? Mineral rights holders frequently get very little if they don't bargain well.
The market IS the pro-environment alternative. It never was anti-environment -- just anti-environmentalist (what is called "environmentalism" is just another Leftist anti-capitalist political movement, and that's likely to be the realization dawning upon the general public).
After all, how exactly are we supposed to live in accordance with the rest of nature while we abandon the only social system that is suited to *human* nature -- capitalism?
Well then for 40 years you either haven't been paying attention or you are just can't understand that the environment is a luxury good. So the only way to get to a clean environment is conservative economic policies that increase prosperity. Increased prosperity has two very important side effects which have fueled all of the environmental progress we have seen the postwar:
We aren't even close.
And how much $$$$$$$$$$$$ are taxpayers expected to pony up to prevent this mythical "collapse'?
Numbers, please.
The San Francisco Bay Delta ecosystem will collapse from salt water intrusion when the Delta island levees collapse from an earthquake. A scenario for that can be found in Marc Riesner's A Dangerous Place.
It could happen tomorrow. It might not happen for fifty years. But it's gonna happen, and probably sooner rather than later. A Richter 7+ earthquake on the Hayward Fault is guaranteed.
While people may not call themselves environmentalists, Adler is correct about one thing -- people are more concious than ever about environmental concerns, sustainable food choices, and global warming. People get that there's more than one way to be green and increasingly they're applying that to their own lives. What they shouldn't buy is Adler's notion that all the environmental issues in the world will simply go away if we let "the market" do its thing without any government regulation.
The problem with the term “environmentalist” is that beginning with the rise of the far-right media (Fox News and right-wing radio) in the 1990s, this rise was accompanied by smearing environmentalists by taking the most extreme elements (who have very little to do with environmentalism, and are much closer to just general anarchist ideology) and portraying them as some sort of spokesmen for environmentalism. Those crazy people burning SUVs and whatnot have nothing to do with conservation and environmentalism, but if you flip on the TV you’d think the opposite. They do not define environmentalism any more so than the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas (whose anti-gay members protest by cheering at the funerals of iraq war soldier victims) define christianity.
Those idiots who climb into, then pout in, trees to prevent logging have no power in this country except that they are nominated by partisan media to represent the environmentalist movement.
Just look at the graph on this blog - it is the early 1990s when people start reacting badly to the environmentalist label. That is the same time when partisan media began gradually gaining influence. Consider Rush Limbaugh and the like shrieking about some idiots burning down homes under construction, etc.
These days, “environmentalist” means different things to different people, which makes this graph uninformative, since it is just varied, subjective labeling. To some, the label means anyone who likes the environment, and to another it means hairy Berkeley students with anarchist tendencies. The only thing this graph demonstrates is that beginning in the the early 1990s, people started to less highly of environmentalists. In that sense, it demonstrates the power and success of partisan media, and the reason it has grown into a position of considerable power in this country.
[crossposted on the Prometheus blog.]
You said Not correct.
If areas with greater potential are open it is a trivial matter for the companies that have the rigs under contract to shift them to more high value drilling.
For example rigs drilling small fields off Texas and Louisiana could be towed to larger fields off of California and Florida in a matter of weeks.
In that case there would not even be much exploration risk because the companies already know where the petroleum is located in those areas.
You said, Be careful.
There is clear evidence that things like the endangered species act provide strong disincentives for maintaining habitat that would support endangered species.
Another example of bad environmental regulation is the clean air acts oxygenate requirements which mandated the use of compounds like MTBE and Ethanol.
This regulation has caused and continues to cause vast amount of environmental degradation and habitat destruction.
It’s pretty clear that environmentalism is not at all dead. Rather, it was very successful in cleaning up the environment in the 70s and 80s, and the environment has continued to improve - so in part, their own success at home has made environmentalism seem less relevant to voters - even as problems outside the US and globally have worsened.
Further, my own view is that we have too much environmental regulation, with the result that environmental protection is much more costly than it need be. Even though this is not a situation created by the enviros - legislators and industry are much more responsible - the right has successfully blamed enviros while ignoring how industry has protected itself with the aid of law makers. So the enviros have been getting more blame than they deserve.
However, enviros have failed to respond to some attacks, which do have a fair point - that government command and control is often an overly expensive and fractious way to protect the environment, and that many environmentalists fail to understand basic principles - which is that environmental problems arise when resources (streams, lakes, the air, wildlife) have no clear owners (who can’t invest in or defend the resources), and that socialized ownership and regulation may often make environmental problems more difficult to solve, by shifting them from private fora to zero-sum conflicts before politicians and bureaucrats.
FWIW, I remain a misanthropic enviro-Nazi.