The most important and relevant research for U.S. environmentalists is being conducted by Jon Agnone, a sociologist at the University of Washington. Agnone studies sources of environmentalist power -- the first social scientist to undertake a systematic analysis. His comprehensive findings are summarized in "Amplifying Public Opinion: The Policy Impact of the U.S. Environmental Movement" (PDF), appearing in the June 2007 issue of Social Forces.
Agnone compared the relative impact of public opinion, institutional advocacy, and protest on passage of federal environmental legislation between 1960-1998, using a sophisticated analytical model and data drawn from The New York Times.
Three key findings in this first-ever quantification of environmentalist power upend conventional political wisdom:
- Protest is significantly more important than public opinion or institutional advocacy in influencing federal environmental law. Agnone found that each protest event increases the likelihood of pro-environmental legislation being passed by 1.2 percent, and moderate protest increases the annual rate of adoption by an astonishing 9.5 percent.
- Public opinion on its own influences federal action (though less than protest), but is vastly strengthened by protest, which "amplifies" public support and, in Agnone's words, "raises the salience of public opinion for legislators." Protest and public opinion are synergistic, with a joint impact on federal policy far more dramatic than either factor alone.
- Institutional advocacy has limited impact on federal environmental policy.
Agnone's findings demonstrate that protest is neither a historical phase of the environmental movement nor a peripheral tactic: it is the central basis of environmentalists' power. As Agnone notes, "these results lead to an important conclusion: when both protest and public opinion are at high levels, they jointly influence policy makers in ways that would be impossible if each existed without the other."
When we stopped protesting, in other words, and began to rely on advocacy and mobilizing pubic opinion alone, we threw away our single most important lever of influence. The accompanying chart shows the correspondence between declining trend lines of environmental protest and passage of federal environmental law:
Every environmental lobbyist knows that our influence is greatest when there are people in the streets (or out in the Zodiacs). Agnone's painstaking analysis is solid evidence that playing good cop/bad cop is more than good sense, it is our only effective path.
The implications for climate campaigning are significant. "Step It Up" type events and direct action by Greenpeace, Ruckus-trained activists, RAN, and other protest-oriented groups must be seen as our most important undertaking. Given this, a cost/benefit analysis of our present ratio of investment is sobering.
Applying Agnone's findings, Step It Up -- the work of a handful of Middlebury College students and Bill McKibben, operating with a modest $100,000 budget -- will have single-handedly improved odds of federal action by 1.2 percent to 10 percent (if the effort sparks more protest). The sprawling public communications and advocacy operations of U.S. environmental organizations and foundations, on the other hand, at a cost of more than $150 million/year*, will not measurably influence U.S. policy.
The idea that one round of relatively small-scale rallies and events might exert such outsized influence, and that an enterprise in which we have invested tremendous resources, creative energy, and prestige over two decades is effectively worthless, is not easy to accept. The macropolitical mechanisms by which protest builds our power are intangible, while the day-to-day field work and advocacy which occupy the time and attention of most U.S. environmentalists feels like it is effective.
The quantum difference between wholesale, protest-driven political power and our present retail effort is most apparent to those of us whose experience reaches back to 1981-83. Protest adds unique ingredients to the civic equation. It demonstrates depth of commitment, putting a sharp point on wide but thin public support. Protest disrupts or threatens to disrupt, substantially upping the political ante and commanding attention in ways that polite institutional advocacy cannot approach.
It is a mistake to view advocacy and protest as a dichotomy between rational and emotional communications, as they are often perceived -- and herein lays the key to understanding the power of protest.
For environmentalists and the small but growing percentage of Americans who have come to accept that the world as we know it is crashing down around us and who know that nothing serious is being done about it, the most rational response is to take to the streets. To continue our present strategy of downplaying climate change risk and making joint alliance with the chief architects of the massive ramp-up in global fossil fuel use is irrational.
Failure to protest robs us of our most important source of power and completely undercuts our story. The absence of significant protest against U.S. climate policy and continuing engagement in polite civic discourse tells Americans eloquently and emphatically that we don't really believe what we are saying.
-----
Jon Agnone may be reached at:
University of Washington,
Department of Sociology
202 Savery Hall, Box 353340
Seattle, WA 98195-3340
agnone@u.washington.edu
www.staff.washington.edu/agnone
-----
* 2005 estimate of combined U.S. environmental organization and foundation climate programs from unpublished report of a major U.S. environmental foundation.
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Comments
View as Flat
JMG Posted 3:15 am
19 Jun 2007
What I will be looking for especially is the methodology about what counts as an "environmental law," and whether all such laws are treated the same for the purposes of the study. I'm not sure that the number of laws is a very sensible measure of anything; consider the biofuels subsidy debate, for example.
One law (carbon taxation) could wipe out dozens of laws (various attempts to subsidize various strategies for addressing global heating/ peak oil). If I understand the study design used here, the one effective law would be seen as less progress than passing many ineffective ones.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 4:03 am
19 Jun 2007
The theory sounds like it might make sense, but looking at the graphic, the second-highest peak year in protest seems to have occurred AFTER the peak in environmental laws passed, and following the highest peak year of protest, the number of new laws seems to have continued on its declining path.
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caniscandida Posted 4:47 am
19 Jun 2007
No doubt the professional sociologist and student of American social history Jon Agnone knows very well that there have been all kinds of protests, on behalf of all kinds of causes, and they have had all kinds of results. Plainly, there are just too many variables, to say simply that a protest movement will deliver such-and-such a result.
And the graph shows that, as Ron points out. From the late 60s to the early 80s, there was elevated protesting. Let us say that produced the spike in pro-environmental legislation in 1979-80, at the end of a Democratic administration. But the level of protesting went even higher right afterwards, even as legislative success was declining rapidly during the Reagan administration. And the very high level of protesting during George H.W. Bush's administration seems to have had no very impressive results at all.
Presumably the numbers on the vertical axis somehow refer to the numbers of laws? Federal only, or federal plus state plus local? And, how is "level of environmental protest" being measured?
Sorry, this approach does not come across as very persuasive.
Nevertheless, it is true that protest, which can take many forms, is good and necessary. But we have to understand that its value does not depend on the kind of power and the kind of results as this study seems to be trying to measure.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Erik Hoffner Posted 7:48 am
19 Jun 2007
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1000+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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JohnCaley Posted 10:21 am
19 Jun 2007
Protest now, protest for there will be no tomorrow.
omegafour.com
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Delay And Deny Posted 10:32 am
19 Jun 2007
This study really appeals to me, because I'm always fascinated by polls saying Bush is the "most unpopular President" and yet there is little or no public protest. The few national protests that were organized produced a paltry few hundred and mostly in Lib Cities like Seattle.
The corollary to all this is that a physical protest means to politicians that Americans, for whom moving out from in front of the television requires the equivalent of an A-bomb exploding in their front yard, if they go out to protest, must be really riled.
And again...they aren't protesting Bush.
So they must be happy about him.
John Bailo
You Read It Here First
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Ken Ward Posted 9:47 pm
19 Jun 2007
I had some trepidation posting the chart for that very reason - to the naked eye, the correspondence between protest and federal legislation looks general, but erratic. I decided to post the chart, in part, because it shows very clearly the decline in protest over time.
It is important to note that Agnone's statistical correletion between rates is significant no matter what the eye tells you. The same problem crops up in the Antarctica ice core data, which show a significant correlection between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global temperature, but with significant - to the eye - lag time.
Ken Ward
ken[at]brightlines.org
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caniscandida Posted 11:21 pm
19 Jun 2007
(for very advanced ESL students only!)
"Protest" is a noun that can mean all sorts of things. Presumably Jon Agnone means by it something rather specific and technical, along these lines: mostly adult human beings (it is inhumane to drag along children and pets, as I observed at the big Sunday march during the Republican National Convention here in NYC in late August, 2004), walking or sitting or standing or kneeling in a public space, including even such gestures as pouring blood (I have not poured my blood myself, but have witnessed others doing so, at a research installation for nuclear weapons), to or near or in front of a building or other structure with some symbolic significance, making clear their opposition to what is symbolized by that building or structure by means of shouted slogans and speeches, written signs borne on high, and images.
Fine. Lovely. And I think that is necessary, and good, as I wrote before.
But so far as effectiveness goes:
1. It matters, counter to the object of the protesters, if the decision-makers feel that the protest itself has elicited a counter-protest opposition. That nearly happened here at Columbia University, in the Spring of 1984, during the ill-advised sit-in, in opposition to the University's investment in companies that do business in then-apartheid-governed South Africa, in front of one of our most frequently used academic halls, in which the deans' offices are located. I had to move my class elsewhere, amidst some confusion; I was yelled at by the registrar, who called me a "squatter," for locating my class in a classroom that happened to be vacant in another building. Also, the chants of the sit-in crowd, who were not far away at all from the principal reading room of Columbia's library, were very distracting. Most of us were strongly supportive of those students' cause, but equally strongly disliked the method by which they were protesting it.
In another context, outside a sympathetic liberal university community, I cannot imagine such a protest finding many friends.
In fact, I do not know if Columbia University's board of directors eventually chose to "divest" from South Africa -- probably they did, but then again, who knows if it came as a result of the protest. And who knows if that led to the fall of the apartheid government, and also to much hardship on the part of the poor people of South Africa, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu warned.
(From back in the glory-days of 1968, amidst a couple of very different causes, civil rights and Vietnam, when the same building at Columbia had actually been occupied by protesters, there was inspired a rather savage cartoon, in which a large, powerful black protester is shown having a white, frail Columbia dean on his back on his desk, with their pants pulled down, and is about to butt-fuck him; and the dean says, "Well, of course, I indeed see the merits of that position ... ")
So the moral of point 1. is, to be effective, a protest must do as little as possible to antagonize anyone but the people to whom they want to deliver the message. Disrupting the lives of other people is always risky, and all too often unhelpful.
2. In the end, the actual results do not matter. Of course, the protesters must need always to hope that their efforts will achieve those actual results. But really, Stoically, they must understand that the actual results, right now, do not matter.
What matters is the virtue of their intention, and the strength and courage of their effort, and the hope that a more just conclusion will be accomplished in time, thanks to their effort today.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Ron Steenblik Posted 11:29 pm
19 Jun 2007
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randino Posted 12:11 am
20 Jun 2007
I think the greatest problem for a lot of groups is how the fear of upsetting funders, causes a lot of self-censorship in the choice of tactics.
I see a lot of timidity in the non-profit sector. I am finishing a book on community organizing in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1970s and 80s. It was of the old fashioned kick ass Alinsky style. Led to a shit storm of reaction on the part of the great and the good in the local power structure, and as a result the non-profits and advocacy organizations currently active in Cleveland are some of the most well behaved and polite ones you will find anywhere. Totally cowed and afraid of their shadows.
During the recent Step It Up events I suggested that we "hit" the offices of a senator who has always been in the pocket of the carbon crowd. I instantly became known as the resident wild eyed lunatic. But my lunacy worked well enough that we had a very respectable rally, so ye gods stand up for lunacy.
I think the real question is not protest. It is the politics of the non-profit sector. That is the issue.
Randy Cunningham
Randy Cunningham
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caniscandida Posted 12:52 am
20 Jun 2007
"Getting hauled away in a paddy wagon is often needed" is something I can accept, but we need to be more specific about the "often."
I have already written on another thread, not too long ago, about how valuable, perhaps essential, is the actual physical -- and well-reported -- suffering of the protesters. That has a powerful influence on formerly middle-of-the-road observers, both citizen-spectators and politicians.
On another note entirely, from a totally different angle on stirring up the populace: Of all people, a Quebecoise Catholic, who latterly seems to have become something of an endentured servant in Las Vegas, seems to have come up with Hillary's campaign song:
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/song/?splash=1
Is America great, or what?
Hopefully, somebody has figured out how to offset all that flying ...
Actually, Celine is rather a bad omen, associated as she is with that nautical disaster back in 1912.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Arjuna Posted 4:58 am
20 Jun 2007
Everything else has fundamentally changed such that the basic methods of the 60s don't translate to the current conditions. We do not have charismatic leaders (Gore is most prominent but not charismatic, McKibben is not at that scale). It's debatable whether we "should" but that's not under our control so let's put that aside. Churches that are natural allies are aging and shrinking. The media landscape is fragmented and much of it delegitimized - mass demonstrations, ending up on the front page of the NY Times, or CBS News, etc. simply do not have the impact they once had.
In a fragmented media landscape, having a lot of people in one place is less effective than having people everywhere - ie: mobilization like StepItUp.
But self-organizing groups does not translate to longitudinal effectiveness with out a strategy and that requires an enduring organization. The weakness of StepItUp is that there is no ongoing organization. In contrast MoveOn (for example) has an ongoing organization, but the degree of centralization lends itself mostly to a focus on federal legislation and inhibits local organizing and locally adapted strategies.
We need both.
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Arjuna Posted 5:00 am
20 Jun 2007
Thank you for continuing the conversation with your very important and thought provoking columns.
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lfrankli Posted 1:53 pm
20 Jun 2007
How, then, do we protest in a way that both feeds on and builds public opinion, and in turn influences national leaders? We finally seem to have a public that is ready to take to the streets and call for action, and find ourselves at a point where national action is desperately needed. Yet, as we saw with StepitUp, localized protests become an empowering mechanism to foster local change and inspire people to act locally.
"We thus need to protest in a way that inspires people on a local level, yet ignites large-scale, national action. StepitUp, of course, achieved this balance beautifully by connecting people electronically. Yet, to counter Arjuna a bit, I think there is still value in a mass gathering of people, provided it is done in a positive and strategic manner that both inspires local people and holds national weight.
Enter climate summer. The March to ReEnergize New Hampshire and the March to ReEnergize Iowa will certainly call national attention with a demand for a national clean energy economy that cuts carbon 80% by 2050. On the other hand, I have faith that those of us spending this summer in New Hampshire building local coalitions and knocking on doors (as are our fellow organizers in Iowa) ensure that it will also be a venue for New Hampshire people to think about a clean energy future in New Hampshire, and in turn empower and ignite local action.
To get this "protest" right and build the movement, we need both national and local action, so come join us!
-Lindsey
http://www.climatesummer.org
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Colin Wright Posted 4:24 pm
20 Jun 2007
The work that you are doing is inspiring and what I think we need a lot more of. Wouldn't it be great to see these marches and door belling in every state this summer? (I wonder if Grist could incorporate a link to ongoing protests and events?)
Visibility, I think, is the key to get more people involved and break through the apathy. Movements build slowly and organically and depend on a great many factors. There has to be thinkers and poets and pranksters. But I think there is a critical mass of participants that must be reached before movements are "self-sustaining". Until that point, progress is dependent on those with enough vision and perserverence and courage to follow new paths and break new ground.
And history tell us movements can grow suddenly, with little warning. Look at the WTO protests in Seattle as an example.(They can also contract rapidly, as happened after 911.) Protest is surely key, as Ken aptly points out, and it provides a focal point (like the WTO meeting was pivotal). But protests and the sentiment behind them take time to ferment. People have to become fed up with the status quo, disenchanted with the exhausted channels before them (letter-writing, politicians, the Democratic Party, etc.). I don't think we're at that point yet. But I think that is what we are building to.
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SustainableGreen Posted 1:43 am
26 Jun 2007
Thanks, Ken, for the messages. Protest has been historically shown to have great value. I can't think of a single major change in deeply entrenched governmental or social policy that didn't involve major protest.
Other research, such as the Dueling Loops and Analytical Activism from Thwink.org have shown interesting possibilities. WiserEarth has 100,000+ organizations worldwide registered on their site. Avaaz.org is another important organizing group. There are probably many 1000s of blogs and other websites, each with a separate focus. I am sure there are many I should know about but don't.
What I find very frustrating is that in spite of all this fine progress in research and organization, we have not made much real progress on meaningful environmental issues. Owning the finest Stradivarius violin in the world is meaningless if no one has the talent or character to bring out the music.
What is needed is a central, worldwide, acknowledged organization to provide one voice for the protest. The mechanism could be simple: the leadership of as many organizations as possible should set up an umbrella name under which all would operate.
Someone here said mentioned that actions are countered by those in opposition. The Corporate Oligarchy doesn't have to counter us if we are so disorganized.
I have emailed several people whom I consider to be among the leadership in the movement as it stands. Any and all ideas for improvement are welcome, and any names of individuals or organizations would be very helpful.
Protest by itself has little impact, organization likewise little impact, but a dedicated, organized protest movement diligently pursued by millions has been shown to be highly effective. Where Will The Movement Come From?
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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green8659 Posted 3:08 am
27 Aug 2008
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