I thought they were saying the message needed re-working, not that environmentalism itself needed reworking. Nor did I think they were attacking the community.

Just the message and the thinking that the perfect policy solution was the answer.

Human nature such as it is, some get upset and lose the message and think something else is going on.

The other day I helped stage & plant the new park going in my city. My T-shirt in the front had a druid wrapped around a tree and the back said ‘why stop at hugging?’, in case anyone thinks I want to spread envirohate.

I just tuned out the fuzzy-bunny environmental catastrophe messages years ago, like millions of others.

Best,

D

The problem with S&N’s message is threefold:

First, it ignores the availability of a wealth of existing technologies which have the potential to mitigate global warming at a savings, and the even larger backlog of technologies that could cut carbon at a very low cost.

Second, they fail to differentiate between intelligently structured and market friendly regulaltions and policies and the old “command and control” paradigm, and therefore perpetuate and arguement against an approach no one is advocating — costly regs that limit options. No one is talking about freezing in the dark or living in deprivation. One of the best examples of regulatons that have worked are appliance standards — consumers have saved money, society cut emissions, and no one lost any services or made any sacrifices. More importantly, there’s no reason to believe we would have more than quadrupled the efficiency of refrigerators without such standards. Doubt that? Just look at appliances that haven’t had standards — they typically stay about as efficient as they started out, even when better technological performance is possible and cost effective.

Third, S&N reinforce a narrative pushed by denyers and special interests that says “don’t worry, be happy” technology will save you. Now, I do think the government has a roll (and a successful track record) in break through R&D.

But a lot of what governments come up with (microturbines, CFLs, regenerative brakes, etc. etc.) simply sits on a shelf until proactive regulations and policies passed by government gets them into the market place. And these kind of policies also stimulate private investment in technologies and practices that favor clean energy. At the end of the day, that’s what it will take to meet a challenge like avoiding the worst effects of global warming.

When S&N say otherwise, they stand in the way of the only solutions that will give us even a prayer of avoiding global catastrophe — and that’s not hyperbole, it’s just where we are right now. In part, because messages like S&N are sending made us think it would be ok if we just tried a little harder to have really neat techno-gadgets life would be happy and things wuld be great. Sort of a techno-tinkerbell. We all just close out eyes and …

As for the fuzzy bunny stuff? It’s real — most biologists and ecologists are predicting massive die-offs and extinctions. Maybe you don’t care if you spend your old age in a Philip K. Dick novel, or if you consign the next several hundred generations to doing so, but I do. Besides, I’m not sure we have the right to make that kind of call for future generations.

But it doesn’t matter — that ship has left the dock. Even if you’re OK with androids and electric sheep, there’s still enough at stake to understand that S&N are playing right into the Buhsite’s hands, and if their message is not confronted, then serious, irreversible consequences will occurr — to humans as well as fuzzy bunnies.

Doesn’t matter what their motives are — pure or not, it’s a very destructive message that gets in the way of progress.

That’s the problem.

Maybe you don’t care if you spend your old age in a Philip K. Dick novel, or if you consign the next several hundred generations to doing so, but I do.

Even though I’ve worked on anti-GMO campaigns, am trained in ecology, state here that I=PAT, my grad concentration is in environmental planning, speaking soon about provisioning more green infrastructure, and unabashedly call myself a treehugger, because I think the enviro message no longer works its OK to say I don’t care that I live in a PK Dick novel.

All is clear on this end.

Best,

D

S&N and Lomborg aren’t talking about new tools that communicate better, or new ideas that solve the problem — they’re talking about throwing out the only solutions that have worked. Read S&N — there’s nothing about solutions in their writing — only gratuitous sniping. Lomborg Too. The last thing we need is gratuitous sniping without constructive alternatives. And when you defend them, you give them bona fides they don’t deserve. In fact, the more IPAT friendly & green you are, the more your defense hurts the cause because you’ve got cred. So, you become a part of the problem. And that’s the problem with your position, not your contention that the “enviro message doesn’t work.”

If you’d like to work together to figure out how to better communicate the message people need to hear, and forge creative solutions to very real problems, I’m right with you. But if you’re signing onto S&N and Lomborg’s rot, and you don’t even realize you’re hurting your own cause, I’m going to keep pointing it out to you in the hopes that you do eventually “get it.”

Best to you,

john

I just heard these guys speak in Boston at a benefit for Clean Power Now that’s promoting the Cape Wind project. Disagreeing with their argument is one thing but questioning their intent is simply shameful. These guys both have extensive histories working for and with well known environmental organizations. While it might be tough love,it’s clearly a place of really caring about the movement reaching big aims that their coming from and the “Death Of” hook was just that, deliberately provocative hook that allowed them to cut through the noise and get their message out. It’s clear that the “Death of” purpose was to be like a Phoenix rising the ashes and come with even more effective praxis. To imply that you know where they’re coming from is shameful.

You also seem bent on implying that these guys are waiting for “magic bullet” break through technologies that don’t exist yet when virtually all their attention in the book is to what it would take to get present technologies–wind & solar– to cheap enough scale to be viable and competitive.

Later you write that “S &N.. never met any of the environmentalists I talk to every day.” This is a point worth addressing for two reasons:

What seems to rankle people about their argument is that they take it personally. It feels like an attack on their identity and motives as environmentalists. While I think the purpose of their approach is to be jarring so that people question assumptions that are usually left unexamined, in many people it creates plain ol’ defensiveness, as seems to be the case here.

2. It’s problematic to treat “the movement” like it’s one thing. These guys are themselves environmentalists and their in obvious dialogue with all sorts of other enviros (Adam Werbach former head of Sierra Club nationally is the first who comes to mind). So, don’t fall into the trap of acting like those who you rub elbows with (who are likely to reaffirm your biases_ have superior claim on what the movement means, or who environmentalists are.