Nic,
Look, I think it's a great thing that the environmental movement is taking a hard look at itself, and I'm as critical of some of its tactics and rhetoric as anybody. But your latest op-ed is a lazy, risible piece of shit.
In the great tradition of progressive pundits establishing their Beltway bona fides by taking swings at their own side, you peer down your nose at the "alarmists" and "extremists" who have taken over the green movement. Enviros, you tsk-tsk, just keep crying wolf about things that don't pan out. As evidence, you cite three examples from the 70s. It's 2005, Nic. Is that the best you can do? I won't repeat your charges here -- they will be familiar to fans of right-wing green-bashing everywhere. For instance, you can hear eerie echoes of them in this Michael Crichton piece, from which they could have been lifted almost without alteration. Indeed, Crichton could have written your whole essay.
Oh, except for the part where you acknowledge that climate change is "the single most important issue to Earth in the long run." You're also worried about species extinction and the loss of wilderness -- you know, the very things environmentalists have been going on and on about. But we greens, we're just so ... unreasonable, right? In fact, you sniff, we've been talking about those problems for so long we've become "just an irritating background noise." It's so hard to enjoy civilized conversation at D.C. coffee klatches with the unwashed rabble raising their voices, isn't it? Why it's downright gauche!
Alarmism and extremism? Nic, the chairman of the House Resources committee says we are "unnecessarily concerned" about mercury pollution. The chairman of the Senate environment committee says global warming is a "hoax." The Vice President says energy conservation is a "personal virtue." The President says nuclear power is a "renewable source of energy." They're trying to get oil and gas drilling into every nook and cranny of the American West, into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and off the U.S. coasts. They're trying to gut the Endangered Species Act, starve Superfund, and abandon the Roadless Rule. I'm not talking about activists out waving placards on the street, Nic. I'm talking about the upper echelons of the U.S. government.
If you are really concerned that "a poll in 2000 found that 41 percent of Americans considered environmental activists to be 'extremists,'" perhaps you shouldn't reinforce the same gross caricatures of environmentalists that the modern right and its industrial backers have spent decades and billions of dollars establishing. You really want to carry water for people whose environmental agenda you yourself say will "disgrace us before our grandchildren"?
There are thousands and thousands of dedicated people out here -- in science labs, in the field, in neighborhood groups, in local government, even in wee small internet magazines -- busting our asses to turn this big ol' ship in the right direction. Instead of using some of the most valuable real estate in the media world to take potshots at us, why don't you give us a hand? You say it's "critical" to have a "highly respected environmental movement"? Start by showing us some damn respect.
If you're really so desperate to be accepted by the kool kids of the Beltway dinner-party circuit as "reasonable" and "sensible" and "nuanced," go back to waxing indignant about Howard Dean. Leave us alone. We've got much bigger fish to fry.
Unreasonably yours,
Dave Roberts
Comments
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MikeCapone Posted 5:32 am
13 Mar 2005
Except for the part about frying fish. Fishes should be left in the water ;P
--
SUVs are squared-out minivans.
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chris@organicmatter Posted 5:50 am
13 Mar 2005
I see a wide gap between what Kristof terms "alarmism" and drawing public attention to important issues. I cringe when I hear a someone talk about global warming as the end of the world just as I do when I hear someone claim that it's all a hoax. In my mind, alarmism sends the fatalistic message that our problems are so big as to be unfixable. It seems far more productive to me to frame an issue like climate change around what can be done to solve the problem, and how we might even be able to reap economic benefits (jobs, sustainable energy) from the solution.
The fact that "41 percent of Americans considered environmental activists to be 'extremists'" in combination with the fact that "Pew Research Center found that more than three-quarters of Americans agree that 'this country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment'" suggests to me that the sort of approach Kristof talks about might just lower the first number and increase the second.
I hope that all of the above doesn't sound overly critical, Dave - you do great work here and this is probably the first piece of yours that I've seriously disagreed with.
Organic Matter: Blogging the environment
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Michael Boydston Posted 7:56 am
13 Mar 2005
And to respond (well, to cite to others' responses) to a couple of the myths Kristof is pushing this time around:
On global cooling, see RealClimate.
On DDT, see this letter from Dr. Alan Lymbery, and for good measure read The DDT Ban Myth on Jim Norton's invaluable anti-environmental myths site.
And I'm not going to get into the numbers on the population/hunger argument, but is Kristof seriously contending that huge numbers of people aren't starving to death every year?
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jdhlax Posted 8:11 am
13 Mar 2005
I just read your column entitled "I Have a Nightmare" and Dave Roberts's (Grist online magazine) reply. I agree with Mr. Roberts and would like to add comments that more specifically address my disagreements with your point of view.
First, you state that " Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus [] are right" about the death of environmentalism. Your basic premise is incorrect. As a longtime biocentric deep ecologist (i.e., I care just as much about the land, air, water, plants, and other animals as I do about humans, and I care about them for their own sake, not for what benefits they can or do provide for us), it seems clear to me that the authors of this paper were attempting to get environmentalists to forgo keeping environmental concerns at the forefront and to become just another group of leftists. Paul Watson (Greenpeace co-founder, founder and head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society) thinks that Shellenberger and Nordhaus were just trying to get us to adopt the platform of the Democratic Party. However you slice it, they are quite wrong. I am not a mainstream green and am not associated with any mainstream environmental groups. I can assure you that smaller, grassroots groups are having successes and are far from being dead.
Second, you state that " environmental groups are too often alarmists" and that "[t]hey have an awful track record." I have always opposed using predictions and agree that we should use them sparingly, if at all, because there are far too many variables in life and predictions are merely educated guesses at best, not to mention that the science used to make the predictions is not very certain.
However what is an "alarmist"? Someone who calls attention to the fact that human behavior is causing things like: 1) a great extinction -- which only happens every 65 million years or so -- 2) 90-95% of native forests, grasslands, and other ecosystems to be lost, 3) all the land, air and water on Earth to be polluted with unnatural human chemicals, and 4) virtually the entire planet covered with humans and the results of their actions due to extreme overpopulation?
Using overpopulation as an example, Mr. Ehrilch's mistake was to predict human starvation due to overpopulation. If he would have stuck to pointing out that humans are crowding all other life off the planet due to sheer numbers and that this problem continues to worsen, he would have been correct. Mr. Ehrlich's mistake was not that he was being alarmist, but that he was alarmed about the wrong result of overpopulation.
The same goes for human-caused global warming, which is just a symptom of air pollution. Let's concentrate on convincing people that polluting the air, water, or land is immoral, regardless of what selfish, shortsighted economic benefits doing so bring or appears to bring. We don't need to make any predictions to show that unnatural human air pollution covers the entire planet.
Finally, you say that the environmental movement suffers from lack of nuance. As an example, you strongly imply support for the use of chemical poisons such as DDT, because some members of an overpopulated species (humans) might benefit from their use. Just as I would unequivocally advocate that a nuclear weapon should NEVER be used, neither should pesticides. Even though some humans might benefit from spraying DDT, the rest of the planet suffers from doing so, and there's no reason to equivocate about it! Being nuanced about such issues is actually compromising about them, as opposed to giving due consideration to all sides of the issue. (Some points of view are not deserving of much consideration, so that little or no consideration is all that they are due.) As we used to say in Earth First!, No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth! We should work to get everyone to adopt this ideology, not call those of us who espouse it extremists or other names.
I realize that we biocentric deep ecologists are a small minority within the environmental movement, so that my views might not represent the movement as a whole. However, your attacks on us as being alarmist or extreme are invalid. Instead, it is the human race that is extreme in its destruction of all other life on Earth, and there is nothing alarmist about saying so!
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Captain Salty Posted 10:26 am
13 Mar 2005
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monsterzero Posted 5:14 am
14 Mar 2005
Well said, Dave - I couldn't agree more.
I would urge Mr. Kristof to use his power more wisely and responsibly - his alarmism about the so-called 'alarmism' in the environmental movement is not helpful at all, and doesn't add anything productive to the public discussion about the environment. His patronizing and disrespectful comments (i.e. his assertion that "environmental alarms have been screeching for so long that, like car alarms, they are now just an irritating background noise") made me furious.
He does mention the disturbing stats, which I have seen in many places, that while more than 75% of the country agree that we should do "whatever it takes to protect the environment", 41% of Americans considered environmental activists to be "extremists". This is a genuine area of concern for all of us, and it is positive and healthy that we are all taking a good look at what environmentalism means, what it stands for, and where it's at. Of course there is room for improvement (there always is), but that doesn't meann that comparing environmentalism to a screeching car alarm isn't absurd and way out of line.
As a friend of mine says (please excuse the science geekiness) "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate". Mr. Kristof, your essay is part of the participate - a slimy mass that sits at the bottom of a test tube, kind of gross, often stinky, and certainly not anything I ever want to see again. I would urge you to be more respectful and more responsible in the future - and we're sorry if our "screeching" bothers you, but one has to speak awfully loudly sometimes to be heard over all the bullshit, especially the bullshit that makes the New York Times.
"The stone age did not end because we ran out of stones."
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birdboy Posted 12:07 pm
14 Mar 2005
When the difference between the way we live now and the way we ought to live in order to stay in harmony with the earth is so drastic, and the path from here to there is so uncertain, shouldn't someone be setting off the alarm?
But the alarms are ignored and the extreemists are pushed far away. If the alarms get softer and the extreems come toward center, will the path become clearer, and harmony reached sooner?
a liberal in redsville
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jdeely Posted 4:27 pm
14 Mar 2005
I agree that this was lazy writing. I mean why take only three examples of environmental sensationalism from the 70s when there are 100's of examples from the 80s, 90s, 00s.
I am finally beginning to see some environmentalists acknowledge when improvements are made, but they are few are far between. Most enviromentalists still fit the "doom and gloom" mode that Kristof describes. Its as if they think that problems won't get solved unless they portray them as an emminent disaster.
The comments above show that your readership believes most of the crap that the environmental movement has published in the past and worse yet I think a large proportion of the American public believes it too.
Ask the general public the following questions and see what answers you get:
Is the population growth of the world speeding up or slowing down?
Is air pollution better or worse now in California than it was in 1980? how much?
Is access to safe drinking water around the world getting better or worse?
Does the US use more or less fresh water than it did in 1980? how much more or less?
How many million people die from malnutrition each year around the world? - see Michael above
Do we have less or more food per person now versus thirty years ago?
Percentage wise, how much dirtier or cleaner are todays cars versus cars from 1970?
The replacement fertility is 2.1 - where does Brazil stand in regards to this rate?
Is there more or less poverty in the world today versus 1970? how much more or less?
Percentage wise, how much smaller have US forests become since 1990?
Sulfur dioxide is one of the main pollutants from power plants, how much less or more of this pollutant do we have today versus thirty years ago.
Is the death rate from cancer getting higher or lower?
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jdhlax Posted 7:35 am
15 Mar 2005
The "question" re air pollution cannot be answered as it is stated. (These are not really questions, they are false implications.) First, there are many different human-made air pollutants, so on which should a responder focus in answering? Second, areas that had clear skies a short while ago, such as National Parks, are now experiencing smog, so pollution is clearly worse there, regardless of the false implication of jdeely. The same is true for the "question" about forests. The fact is that 95% of the native forests have been destroyed by logging, and what jdeely is referring to as forests are merely tree farms.
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thalweg Posted 10:54 am
15 Mar 2005
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thalweg Posted 11:05 am
15 Mar 2005
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Michael Boydston Posted 12:27 pm
15 Mar 2005
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David Roberts Posted 12:35 pm
15 Mar 2005
This is not to say that greens shouldn't care about starvation -- human beings should. And anyway, greens should be shooting for a minimum level of (sustainable) development for all poor peoples, because otherwise they chew through resources and land and go to war over same.
www.grist.org
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toddgitlin Posted 11:45 pm
15 Mar 2005
To the Editor:
Nicholas Kristof devotes most of his column to trashing environmentalists on the ground that some environmentalists issued some extravagant warnings 30 years ago and more. Then he proceeds to warn against "irreversible changes" that would be caused by "the Bush administration's plans to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge, to allow roads in virgin wilderness and to do essentially nothing on global warming." This is like haranguing the abolitionists for over-the-top rhetoric and then adding, Oh, by the way, slavery is dead wrong.
The "credible, nuanced, highly respected environmental movement" he wants is blocked chiefly by an oil-hungry industry and its political allies in Washington--nothing credible or nuanced about them. The problem is not alarmism as such; the problem is that the alarm is going unheeded because powerful interests benefit from the conflagration that is sounding the alarm.
Todd Gitlin
(Member, Greenpeace USA Board of Directors)
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Parke Posted 2:56 am
16 Mar 2005
Nicholas Kristof has his cake and eats it too. It all happens in this immortal sentence: "The loss of credibility is tragic because reasonable environmentalists - without alarmism or exaggerations - are urgently needed."
How, after all, does one establish that environmentalism is "urgently needed" without raising the alarm? Why does Kristof think it's so urgent, anyway? What's he worried about; how did he get worried?
If there is no cause for alarm, why should there be cause for urgency?
Personally, I place myself squarely in the "sky-is-falling" camp--I believe that unless radical change occurs things will become very, very ugly (read: even uglier than they already are). I haven't seen a shred of evidence to disprove this view, though--like everyone else--I could turn out to be wrong in the end.
But the problems of climate change, ecological degradation and, for that matter, nuclear or biological war, are secondary. The primary problem, as I think Jared Diamond would agree, is the human capacity for denial: to not see what we don't want to see. And we surely don't want to see that the sky is falling. It just scares us too much. So we dig in. We distract ourselves (perhaps in a wild frenzy of consumerism). And, so, the sky falls (eventually). Diamond argues that it needn't fall, we only need to be rational in the face of the evidence. We need to see that the sky could fall. This has been the rhetorical objective of the alarmists.
Kristof is right of course that willful exaggeration, dishonesty and shrillness of tone have gotten environmentalists nowhere with most of the public. But note how successfully these very tactics have proven in promoting mainstream objectives. Just turn on your evening network news to sample a wealth of exaggeration, dishonesty and shrillness of tone. It's magnificent!
So why is alarmism so ineffectual when used in the service of environmental issues?
Actually alarmism works the same way in all cases. It shuts us down and numbs us out. This reaction frustrates the ambitions of environmentalists, who wish to energize the best instincts of the public, but works nicely for marketers aiming only to inspire fear, apathy and their inevitable consequence, consumerism.
So what are environmentalists to do? How can we solve truly scary problems that really do bear down on us urgently?
I have some bad news. We have to begin by addressing the root cause of denial, which is fear. As long as my mind and yours are ruled by fear, we will certainly destroy ourselves (given enough time). And the only way to address the root fear that lies at the base of all our political madness is some kind of contemplative practice, a slow "therapy" that gradually dissolves our fear. This has to occur one-by-one. You start. Then maybe your neighbor will come in behind you.
This is not very politically satisfying. Seems too slow, too arduous, too unlikely.
Well, there you have it.
The world we see around us is but a reflection of that which dwells within us.
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jdeely Posted 7:05 am
16 Mar 2005
"And I'm not going to get into the numbers on the population/hunger argument, but is Kristof seriously contending that huge numbers of people aren't starving to death every year?"
Hunger is a very tricky and emotional subject and we should all work towards the day when no human being suffers from lack of food. But the world currently has plenty of food and people are not "starving" as you imply, because of overpopulation.
Over the past thirty years many environmentalists including the Ehrlichs and Lester Brown at Worldwatch have kept warning about the impending wave of starvation that will soon hit the world because we wouldn't be able to grow enough food to feed everyone. This wave hasn't come and its not going to come.
Hunger is a political and governance problem and part of the problem as Dave suggested is distribution. There is more than enough food now and there will be even more in the future.
In fact, between 1990 and 2000 according to the FAO - see http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/docrep/006/y5143e/y5143e0a.htm
the world population has grown by an average of 1.5% per year and world food production has grown by 2.1% per year. Between 2000 and 2010 population growth will slow to 1.2 % and food production growth will average 1.6 %.
A few other comments in regards to food supplies... India now exports wheat and it also has the largest amount of acreage in the world devoted to cotton.
Many third world countries are now devoting land to growing biofuels. - a quote from PlanetArk at - http://www.planetark.com/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=29737
" Faced with too many crops and not enough oil, Asian governments are promoting biofuels as a way to cut costly fuel imports." Brazil has huge amounts of land devoted to growing crops for ethanol. Other countries are doing the same.
Here in the US we are also growing crops for biofuels and we even pay our farmers money to NOT grow any food on some of their land. In short, there is enough food now and there will be enough in the future. The biggest problem the world faces today and in the future in regards to food is obesity not starvation.
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mtneuman Posted 7:41 am
16 Mar 2005
Kristof is being flat out dishonest in suggesting the paper "The Death of Environmentalism" accuses environmental organizations of alarmism and exaggerating environmental problems. The paper does no such thing! In fact, the paper criticizes the environmental movement for not acting more fervently against the Bush administration's propaganda war to downplay the global warming threat.
The "alarmism and exaggeration" accusation that is being waged against environmentalists today is a ploy by professional lobbists for the fossil fuel industry who are dishonestly twisting the truth for their own personal gain. It needs to be met head on whereever it sticks up its ugly head.
Nicholas Kristof clearly had a preconceived notion of what he wanted his review to say beforehand [that all environmentalists are alarmists]; so he jumps in on the feeding frenzy over the paper "The Death of Environmentalism" to state his case; then he dishonestly attempts to buttress his own standing by saying Shellenberger and Nordhaus were 100% right in coming to the same conclusion he reaches - despite the fact that S&N made no such conclusion [regarding environmentalism being too alarmist].
NGOs working to save the environment today could improve their effectiveness if they became less turf-minded and more collaborative with each other and organizations that have broader socio-economic agendas. The global warming problem and other broad environmental type problems of today require a much more comprehensive and radical set of solutions than traditional geographically-specific challenges. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus are right in saying an Apollo-scale effort is needed if we are to have any hope of achieving sustainability this century, and that effort must begin with massive energy conservation measures now along with improvements in technology.
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Michael Boydston Posted 1:36 pm
16 Mar 2005
And from what I can tell, hunger and starvation are still going on. From the UN World Food Programme: "Today, one in eight people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life hunger, making hunger and malnutrition the number one risk to health worldwide -- greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined." http://www.wfp.org/aboutwfp/introduction/hunger_what.asp?section=1&sub_section=1
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:26 pm
08 Apr 2005
I spent the last few years writing a book. I intended to explore the relationship between human nature and our natural environment. I had all the usual environmentalist preconceptions going into this project, having read all of the old standbys many years ago, including the Population Bomb and the Population Explosion.
In preparation for my book, I began reading dozens of books on the subjects of human nature, overpopulation, and extinction. I was surprised to learn that much of what we were taught in the 70's has not withstood the test of time, although there are always the holdouts. Some shrinks still use Freudian psychoanalysis, some feminists still think they can make their little boys more docile by giving them dolls, and some still think that food production is lagging population growth. I have since read One with Nineveh, No Turning Back, and Collapse since finishing my book. They were a lot tamer than their predecessors.
As a result of all I have learned, I have concluded that humanity just might manage to stay housed and fed for many generations to come simply by accelerating existing trends, increased urbanization, further poverty reduction, technology growth, and fertility declines. Humanity will probably take care of itself, especially if we find a source of energy to replace fossil fuels. If we don't, well, that is another story that has little to do with environmentalism.
Our biodiversity is what is at risk. I would be more confident that we could spare most of our remaining biodiversity if our population was already at its peak, but knowing we are still heading for nine billion, I would not bet my right arm on it. If I'm wrong, and our population crashes, all of our arguments will be moot. Whether I am right or wrong about humanity's immediate future doesn't matter as far as our biodiversity is concerned. We need to get busy protecting what is left regardless. I am abandoning the old argument that we must protect our biodiversity so that we can save ourselves. I want to save it regardless. Knowing what I do about human nature, the idea that we will save it by convincing nine billion people to voluntarily live like Ghandi is a ridiculous strategy. Sorting my garbage and eating organic veggies is not going to save jack (if I may borrow your term, Dave) shit.
Both, the population activists and the environmentalists have already changed the course of human history. They just don't seem to realize it. My air and water is clean. Fertility rates are falling all over the planet. It is a fantasy to think the struggle will someday end (the gag rule was just overturned but the NAWR is no longer inviolate). People have evolved to fight and argue. That is not going to change.
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