Here’s a
typical environmental campaign: Step one, get annoyed by a problem
behaviour. Step two, rally other people and groups who are equally
annoyed. Step three, create some posters and stickers and flyers about
it. Step four, put out a press release. Step five, hold a public event
with a dash of fun, a splash of controversy and a pound of
education.
Step six, write a grant proposal to turn the event into an ongoing,
more sophisticated campaign involving research into the societal
dangers of the problem behaviour, strategy on how to influence people
to change it and endless committee meetings. Step seven, start a
listserv and get your subscribers to write their politicians for bans
on the problem behaviour.
Step eight, celebrate media coverage and new legislation with local
organic wine and cheese, and lots of talk that the fight has just
begun.
It’s more complicated than that, with all kinds of exceptions and
possibilities, but most environmental campaigns contain those basic
elements. Breaking it down into that simple formula, it’s amazing the
influence environmental campaigns have had.
They have made global warming household lingo and a favourite topic
of the CBC. They’ve created a new breed of specialized lawyers helping
companies and activists understand the encyclopaedic set of
environmental laws, and a sideline of green-wash spin doctors trying to
trick savvy consumers into believing they can shop their way out of
every crisis.
But despite their influence, the environmentalists are losing. Here
are some reasons why:
First: Like it or not, environmentalists are in a propaganda
war with advertisers, mainstream media and even institutions like our
lauded education system. The message we receive from our first breath
is, “This world is yours; take it.”
And we do, for every short-term gain we can get; every plastic high
and cheap thrill. Most of the time, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen,
environmentalists don’t even know about this war. They are losing and
they don’t even know it because they are so focused on:
Second: “Winnables.” I remember sitting in one strategy
session years ago with several of Toronto’s leading environmental
activists. The topic was winnables: Quick hit campaigns in which the
objectives could be achieved relatively quickly. Think giving out
energy efficient light-bulbs, convincing people to put anti-idling
stickers in the windshields, things like that.
No one asked what the point of these activities was, or what kind of
impact they would have, if any. It was taken as a given that they were
the right thing to do. They were winnable!
One person (not me; I was young and nervous in a new job) had the
courage to say we should think bigger, about things that might actually
make a difference to our great-grandchildren. Someone else suggested we
get Rick Mercer on TV talking about energy efficient air conditioning
and we moved on.
Most often environmentalists are obsessed with legislation—minor
rule changes they call big victories but will rarely be enforced.
Sometimes it’s a new, more efficient consumer technology. Rarely is it
the kind of fundamental change in how we live that might actually save
us.
Third: Be the change. There is nothing inherently wrong with
Gandhi’s advice to be the change we want to see. The problem is when we
stop there. How is it that some people can go to the lengths of
learning how to build a vegetable-powered car but never stop to think
their actions are meaningless if they go it alone? Meanwhile J.D.
Irving Co. clear-cuts the land and sea.
Fourth: I suppose the opposite of being the change would be
attacking the behaviour of everyone else and making few friends and
allies along the way. The truly inspiring success stories—the ones
that leave a large swath of land protected for future generations or
put environment into the curriculum so young people at least get some
counterweight to the mindless consumption message—happen when
environmentalists reach out to their old enemies, sit down with them
and figure out another way, human to human. That’s how HRM’s Blue
Mountain-Birch Cove was turned into a massive protected urban
wilderness, which we hope stays above water.
I write this not to disparage the environmental movement. Many of my
heroes are environmentalists. I write this because I think those of us
who care about the future will do much better when we take an honest
look at our work, and figure out how to really find the world we hope
for.
This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2009.
I agree completely. Nothing bothers me more when people say something is wrong and we need to change. And then do nothing, they make enemies and people get pissed off at them. For me, I see the way of bringing about change is not to go out pointing out all the negative, bad or wrong ways of how corporations or people do things. But to sit down, state your purpose, facts, what have you, and tell that corporation or person that you want to work together to improve the situation. People need to see the benefit for themselves to change their habits, and sometimes that wont even change them.
I wholeheartedly agree with most of your points (especially the point about the obsession over “winnables”), but I don’t fully agree with your last point.
A lot of the environmentalists that I know feel there is a benefit to forging relationships with old enemies… to a point. Most though, feel that there are some people they simply cannot work with (i.e., big-box stores, forestry companies, etc.), because any environmental improvements that they could win would only be used against them down the road as a way to justify and “greenwash” a far more egregious environmental disaster: “You don’t need to worry about us clearcutting this huge swath of land, because remember when we helped those environmentalists save that brook we wanted to destroy?”
But, once again, thank you for this excellent article.