Adam Werbach’s Posts

• Is Environmentalism Dead?

  Where the environmental movement can and should go from here 0

  Posted 4 years, 10 months ago

  Adam Werbach presented this speech at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on Dec. 8, 2004. Further discussion of the issues he raises can be found on 3Nov.com. And read more on the debate over environmentalism's prospects here.

  

  Adam Werbach.

  I am here to perform an autopsy.

  Autopsies begin with these words.

  Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae

  Translated from Latin, this means: "This is the place where death rejoices to teach those who live."

  I tremble at them, because this is not an easy speech for… Read More

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Adam Werbach’s Recent Comments

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  Some comments

  
  I thank those of you who are responding to the ideas in the piece.

  There seem to be a lot of questions about my motivations for writing this.  It's not very complicated.  I will continue to do what I can to increase our effectiveness -- because the sad fact is that we're not moving far enough, fast enough. We still need societal action, but we also need to find a way to get the people who don't read blogs like this engaged.  

  I believe we need to engage companies like Wal-Mart, especially if they are saying they want to take their responsibilities seriously.  Not everyone needs to do that -- you're free to try to remove their charter if that's what you think is needed.  But if 89% of Americans shop there at least once a year, don't you think we should also have a strategy to reach them?  That's what I've tried to lay out in the speech. On Adam Werbach calls for a new movement of a billion consumers posted 1 year, 7 months ago 73 Responses

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  the shopper identity

  Thanks for the this thoughtful comment.  

  "Shopper" is a temporary identity for most people -- they just assume it when they walk in the store and start searching for the things they need.  Adding a number of new criteria to the search (Price, Purpose and Process as described in the speech) will, in my experience, help them become much more conscious about what they consume and change their patterns.

  There is also a group of folks who actually maintain that "shopping" personality 24/7 -- this second group is going to be very hard to reach, but my experience is that talking about shopping is a good way to engage them.  Have you ever seen Lucky magazine?  It's a magazine for shopping -- I find it rediculous -- but if people are looking to improve their "craft" then we have a chance to get into that dialogue.

  As for the question of peak oil and Wal-Mart -- my experience is that they are extremely focused on fuel costs and the risk of rising gas prices, for the practical reason that are strangling the income of their customers and raising the cost of their transportation. On Adam Werbach calls for a new movement of a billion consumers posted 1 year, 7 months ago 73 Responses

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  Read the Speech, Take a Breath

  I posted notes on the speech to Grist because I've been impressed in the past at seriousness and the the depth of thinking that readers bring. Flames and personal attacks might make you feel good, but they don't really move our work forward.  A healthy movement actually has rigorous internal debate about tactics and strategies.  

  The full text of the speech is posted, and I encourage you to give it a read before you reject the ideas outright.  

  Let me make three points.

  1. WE NEED TO EXPAND OUR TACTICS BECAUSE WHAT WE'RE DOING ISN'T WORKING.  I believe we're not making enough progress fast enough to combat global warming.  If you think that our current tactics are enough, and that we'll get to a reduction of our CO2 emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 by continuing what we're doing now, then we'll have to respectfully disagree.  

  2. WE NEED POLITICS, INVESTMENT AND A PERSONAL SUSTAINABILITY MOVEMENT:  US federal legislation for a carbon cap is necessary.  We also need massive new public and private investments in clean energy (starting with the Apollo Project I discussed in 2004's speech and going much further.)  In addition,  we need to catalyze a new mass movement that goes far beyond green to serve the most pressing personal needs of the global public.  

  3. WE SHOULD SPEND MORE TIME SHARING SUSTAINABILITY THAN DEFENDING IT: Ecological thinking, translated into an actionable framework like personal sustainability practices (PSPs) can solve a slew of common challenges facing a large portion of the people on the planet.  Yet today the people who know about these practices demand purity, "indie-cred", and perfect compliance rather than welcoming people to a broader movement.

  Here are two excerpts from the speech that speak to some points raised:

  "I've come to believe that changing the way people look at the world is more important in the long run than focusing only on the marginal ecological impact of the individual actions they take.

  Eating organic food should be only one small articulation of the way you take care of yourself, your community and the planet.  

  You can eat local, co-op grown, organic heirloom tomatoes and still be a bad person.  

  Green is good, but it frequently breaks down as a strategy when it hits the marketplace.  The common green definition of sustainability or "environmental sustainability" is mainly concerned with the fate of the planet and how that affects our lives.  For me, sustainability has four integrated streams - social, cultural, economic and environmental.  All exist in balance.

  That's why tonight I'm speaking about the birth of a new mass movement to compliment and expand our existing political efforts - not for professionals or experts or people who can explain photosynthesis and lifecycle analysis.   A movement we can call BLUE.  

  This movement will have many faces, but at its heart it's a lifestyle movement, a way to live a successful life.  Many of us already have a regular practice that can reinforce our values.  While political activism is at best a bi-annual pursuit, shopping is a regular activity for most people on the planet, and if trends continue, for virtually everyone.  We can either cede this field to the profit-driven marketeers, or we can share the field."

  "In developing the thinking behind BLUE there has been nothing more controversial than the idea of a consumer led movement. But I think that our understanding of the power of consumerism can change.  Recall that a hundred years ago the word consumption was a way of describing tuberculosis. We are no longer an agrarian society, and it's time that our cultural understanding of shopping -- gathering the things we need to live and thrive - matures.

  I recently shared the vision for a billion-person consumer movement with the head of one of the largest environmental organizations and he scowled, "a billion person consumer movement?  I want a billion person anti-consumer movement."   It's a nice line, and a wonderful sentiment, and I hope he goes out a builds that movement, but what I'm proposing is that we meet most people where they're at today, as busy, complex humans looking to do the best thing for their family and themselves.

  In fact consumer movements throughout history have been central to revolutions.   The French Revolution was a call for bread, which Marie Antoinette famously and fatefully responded to by saying, "Let them eat cake."  In 1960, four African American students sat at a segregated lunch counter at a North Carolina Woolworth's store at the seats reserved for white customers. And Gandhi rallied a nation against imperial British rule with the simple and radical call for a march to the sea to make salt.

  Today our response to shoppers as a social movement is much like our response to corporations who wish to be leaders.   Which is, I'd rather you just didn't consume, or in the case of corporations, I'd rather you didn't exist.   We don't have time for this preciousness.  Corporations and consumerism can be vehicles for change.  The question is what type of change that will be."On Adam Werbach follows up 'Death of Environmentalism' with 'Birth of Blue' posted 1 year, 7 months ago 46 Responses