Why did leaders of America's environmental movement keep a brewing catastrophe secret?

Last night, the U.S. Senate passed a bill mandating the construction of a 700 mile long double-walled concrete barrier along America's border with Mexico. The House of Representatives has already passed the bill, and President Bush has promised to sign it.  This wall will be one of the greatest environmental crimes in the history of the United States, and yet the American environmental movement has been silent.

The wall is slated to run through wildlife refuges and national monuments and will cut off jaguars, desert bighorn sheep, and staghorn antelope from their breeding grounds - threatening to wipe out many populations of these already vulnerable treasures of the American West. It will scar the landscape. It suspends environmental laws along its entire length. 700 miles is a long way to go, even for a jaguar.* For Easterners reading this, it would be the equivalent building a wall between Washington, DC and Jacksonville, Florida. It is the transcontinental railroad of our generation, which divided and destroyed the great buffalo herd of the Great Plains. Not just future generations, but anyone who ever visits the Southwest, will ask how could Americans let this happen.  

In the face of this catastrophe, the American environmental movement has been almost completely quiet, inactive, and even secretive. Almost none of the great environmental groups even went to the trouble of alerting its members to the looming calamity. This movement, born of the need to stop repeats of disasters like the extermination of the bison, or the wholesale destruction of America's cathedral forests - has said and done next to nothing to stop this modern wildlife holocaust, paralyzed by fear of stepping into the national debate on immigration.

One day, our leaders will echo longtime Sierra Club chief David Brower's lament for failing to do anything to stop the construction of the Glen Canyon dam, which inundated an area at least as marvelous as the Grand Canyon, but whose environmental impact will be markedly less than the wall (affecting just 186 miles of the Southwest, rather than the 700 miles of the wall): "It was my greatest failure, my greatest sin," Brower said about Glen Canyon and spent the rest of his life warning environmentalists not to compromise sacred wildernesses away - what would he say to environmental leaders now as they remained quiet and didn't even let their members know about this disaster in the making, and even now remain silent about the defeat?

Of course, the Washington, DC environmental leaders alone are not responsible for this catastrophe. Many share responsibility: George W. Bush, who this summer said he opposes border fences but is now throwing a sop to the right wing, who he apparently believes are so stupid that they can be convinced that the wall will keep out immigrants (indeed, the advent of smaller walls on the border hasn't prevented immigration from ballooning from 260,000 a year when the Border Patrol first started building walls to 485,000 a year now); the Republican Congress that engineered the construction of the fence in an attempt to distract attention from their myriad failures; the majority of Democrats (including Presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama) who decided to support the fence, fearful of tangling with Republicans over immigration policy, or really any other policy.

But given their past records of cravenness, it would be unrealistic to expect any of these groups to act any differently without any pressure from outside. That should be the role of the environmental movement. But few environmental groups have done anything, and those that have have done little. Ask yourself: How many emails have I received on this issue of truly continental import? How many stories in the newspaper have I read about the environmental consequences of the wall? How many rallies have environmental groups organized against this modern depravity? How many speeches, how many letters to the editor have I been asked to write, how many doors have I been asked to knock on? The answer is likely zero - and the answer is likely that before you received this email, no one from the environmental movement had ever even raised the issue.

I include myself in this criticism. I've been writing a book (called, topically, "Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party (and the Global Progressive Movement")) and allowed myself to focus exclusively on it rather than saving some time  to organize the environmental movement to stop perhaps the greatest single environmental assault of the last fifty years.

But the failure of the leadership of the environmental movement is even bigger. It's so big, that I'm afraid I must demand that heads roll. What leaders allowed this to pass without even trying to stop it? What leaders of refused to even mention its possibility to their membership over the last 12 months? Why did much of the environmental movement keep the wall a secret from its membership?  There must be accountability, some people should be fired, so that this never happens again. There must also be mechanisms established to make sure that environmental leaders don't keep developing environmental catastrophes secret again.

There were some exceptions, but they were tiny. The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, a small but effective endangered species conservation group, did place some op-eds opposing the wall. Defenders of Wildlife sent out an email criticizing the proposal earlier this year, and wrote an excellent report about the threat, but quickly retreated out of fear of antagonizing anti-immigration members, switching its energies towards trying to make the double concrete wall as environmentally sensitive as possible, a project equivalent to demanding that the wall be made of recycled concrete. The Wilderness Society and NRDC assigned DC lobbyists to the issue.  

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that this fight was so winnable, though it may be initially hard to see that given the 80-19 votes for the bill by the Senate and the 283-138 vote in the House. One would think that Americans were clamoring for the construction of this wall. In fact, opponents of the wall had Americans firmly behind them until recently. As recently as February, 69 percent of Americans told the Zogby polling group that they opposed a wall being built along the border; a March poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed that only nine percent of Americans favored an approach based primarily on the construction of walls. Unfortunately, the debate has been one sided since then - with ultranationalist Republicans calling for the wall as a way to appeal to what they see as their anti-immigrant base and Democrats and environmentalists keeping quiet out of fear of opposing the right wing, even with a majority of the American people on their side against the wall.  Polls have shifted as a result; I suspect many environmentalists, if asked, would say they supported the wall, because no one has told them about the environmental consequences of it.

Well, they will soon see the consequences: the Sonoran pronghorn, which has suffered from hunting, global warming, the destruction of its habitat and the diversion of its water has already seen its U.S. population dip as low as 21; what will it be now that it won't be able to find mates across the border? The return of the jaguar to the border area was once heralded by Arizonans and New Mexicans and prompted thousands of schoolchildren to visit the border area on wildlife trips; what will happen now that it will have to travel hundreds of miles to find food and scarce water? Who will want to visit the wildlife refuges of the Southwest when all the cool wildlife is gone? What will happen to the region's 250 species of butterflies, the ocelots, the jaguarundis?

The border of the United States and Mexico is a political boundary, not a natural one. The ranges of species like the jaguar, Sonoran pronghorn antelope, ocelot, and ferruginous pygmy owl range all over the Sonoran and Sky Island ecosystems that span the border (most poignantly, the Sky Islands, a network of mountainous preserves primarily in Arizona and northern Mexico created to protect  wildlife migration paths, will be sundered).  Writer Charles Borden described the Southern border as "a great biological unity, with a meat cleaver of laws shredding it and cutting it in half." That meat cleaver is no longer imaginary - it will be made of two long pieces of 10 foot tall concrete. What will happen to the border's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and Mexico's El Pinacate Biosphere now that America is building a Berlin Wall of the South?

Perhaps the only good news about this is that we still have some time to stop, or at least reduce, the effects of the wall. Congress has only appropriated enough money for half the fence. There are a lot of technical challenges to building the wall - like building over steep crevasses - that may slow things down, giving environmentalists the opportunity to organize against Bush's Wall. And the Tohono O'odham of the Tohono O'odham Indian territory, which runs along about 75 miles of the border, are working to stop the fence on their lands. A friendlier Congress might consider ways to make well-policed holes in the wall that might allow wildlife through, but stop illegal immigrants. Even if none of these things happen, it's important to make a stink - or you can be sure Republicans will come back demanding that the United States fence the other 1300 miles of the border. I can just see it now - they'll be saying, "Those Mexicans are just going around the fence - we need to cut them off now!"

It's up to us to make sure America's environmental leaders are ready to take them on.

 You can start by signing a letter to America's environmental leaders, that will be delivered to the heads of the top American organizations: http://www.ipetitions.com/...

Glenn Hurowitz is the president of Democratic Courage and is writing a book about courage in politics called Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party (and the Global Progressive Movement).

   This so-called fence is immoral in my mind.

   Is there really an American environmental movement?

   Or just a collection of folks protecting their local parks.

   Sheesh.  

   Shame, ladies and gentlemen, shame.

patrick

People pay thousands of dollars to get into creative writing programs, and learn how to write with such affectedly horrible, horribly endearing, punctuation.

Or lack thereof.  To say nothing of spelling.

Cf. Alex Scudder's letters, in E. M. Forster's "Maurice."

Before I do a Google image search for Limocowboy, let me pause to point out that his (?) spelling is very good, not what would be consistent with such reckless, careless punctuation.

God help us: is the function of Spellcheck to render us writers so boring and bland?

Actually, after careful consideration, I think Limocowboy is in fact an English major, recently graduated from either Princeton or Yale, who is trying to get a book of short stories published, all of which take place on the Gulf coast of Texas.  And, actually, between Princeton and Yale, I would put money on Yale.


Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Cowboy,

Clinton was a great president. Like Lincoln, he rose up from poverty. It is a terrible shame that he let his alpha male drive get the better of him. Bush is unlikely to be so tempted, he has his bible to hug.

That act of weakness was probably the straw that let the rich frat boy reach out from the AA wagon he was riding on and take the reigns of power, allowing 9/11 to happen, which in turn handed the sniveling, inarticulate shit another term, and look at where we are today. Oh, and Bush's pandering to the Hispanic vote helped get him elected. Wisdom and common sense can only come from the crucible of experience and hardship, which explains the likes of Bush and his silver spoon peers.

Canis,

Let's not feed the cowboy's ego here with whimsical crushes.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

That's intense. What of someone called for putting an electric fence between you and your livelihood? If it were virtual and electric and made in China, would that make it cool?

My mock agreement with our conservative visitor was in jest. I think you may have missed that. Also, what I actually said was "virtual electronic" fence. That would be one that uses sensors to detect movement, allowing wildlife to pass, but restricting the flow of illegal crossings. An "electric" fence just shocks cows that try to walk through it. Engineers don't use the term electric and electronic interchangeably. They have different meanings. One generally refers to low voltage solid state circuitry, the other to higher power and transmission.

Here is a piece I have been working on for editors of NPR's This I Believe series. I include it in its entirety only to put the last two paragraphs into perspective:

My mother, third oldest of nine children, experienced the great depression through the eyes of a child. Her family lived in a small house on the south end of Indianapolis just a few dozen feet from a railroad track. For obvious reasons, property beside railroad tracks is, and always has been the most affordable. She remembers watching her father steal. He would go out to collect coal that had fallen off the stopped train cars, reaching up when no one was looking to knock a little extra onto the ground. She watched her father lie. He would, on occasion, fabricate excuses not to sit down for dinner until everyone had eaten their fill. She had other stories to tell. He signed the papers for his oldest son to join the Navy although he was not yet eighteen, only to receive a Purple Heart in the mail a year later, his son having died in the belly of a destroyer during the battle of Leyte Gulf

My grandpa drank too much after that and died young. I knew him only through my mother's stories. But sometimes, I wonder if it was my grandpa who imparted to me, either through my mother's stories, or his genes, my "principles." My mother has told me countless times how much I am like my grandpa. If I were ever to find myself in his position, would I steal coal to keep my family warm? Would I go to bed hungry so that my children would not? Would the loss of a child crush my spirit?

Although some people boast of having a set of principles that they live by, or think their sense of morality derives from a given religious dogma, my readings of Wilson, Dawkins, and Pinker have convinced me that most of us would be just as moral, or immoral, without those trappings. Generosity and empathy are personality traits and we come by them via a mixture of nature and nurture.

I am not much of a rule follower and neither was my grandpa. Imagine that it's 1942, you are in Amsterdam and you are privy to the whereabouts of a little girl by the name of Anne Frank. A Nazi soldier just asked if you know of a girl by that same name. Would you have followed the rules, or would you have lied? The vast majority of us would, of course, answer that question in the most self-aggrandizing fashion. But, consider this; if you consistently follow rules today, you probably would have followed the rules then. My grandpa would have lied.

Times have changed. Freedom fighters are no longer hunted down, imprisoned without hope, and brutally interrogated, "terrorists" are. Jews aren't ferreted out of hiding and exported, illegal aliens are. Will I one day have the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is when asked if I am privy to the whereabouts of an illegal alien by the name of Rocio?

Rocio is a real person. She cleans our house. We pay her $25 dollars an hour for two hours a week to take the edge off our house cleaning. She comes and goes in our home as she pleases. She has been with us for ten years now and has become a valued member of our family. She watched and cried as my youngest survived a life threatening (and ongoing) illness as a toddler. She also cried as our oldest headed off to college. Both of my children are fluent in Spanish, in part thanks to Rocio's influence. She has shared with us her own family's trials and tribulations. She also shares my opinion (as do many other immigrants) that there needs to be better control of our border. I have no idea if she is illegal or not. It isn't my place to ask, and I do not want to be put in the position of outing her to jack-booted and side-armed enforcement officers if she is. Making a border less permeable is a hell of a lot more preferable to ripping people away from lives they have established.

You use migrant workers to maximize the profit on your farm. Share with us what you pay them an hour, how you verify the authenticity of their paperwork, and the method you use to single out those without that documentation.

The housing boom in America would not have happened without the cheap labor of poor immigrants, which is a double-edged sword. The boom would have plowed through a lot fewer forests and created a lot less urban sprawl had it been less affordable to build due to fewer illegal immigrants. Most of these new homes are being purchased by immigrants. The largest population increase in US history was found with the 2000 census. 32 million people were added. The US is the third most populous country on the planet and has the fastest growing population of any industrialized nation. Almost all of it a combination of legal and illegal immigration. The next census is going to be real interesting.

There is no more efficient way to reduce world poverty than to let immigrants participate in a healthy economy and begin their climb up the economic ladder. Immigration is a good thing. But, it has to be properly regulated or you get a free for all, with desperate people appearing in shipping containers and rafts. If I were on the other side of that border, I would be doing the exact same thing. However it is intensely naïve to advocate no control over immigration. You must be advocating another method to deal with uncontrolled immigration. If it is the one I outlined with Rocio, I hope you can see the problem with it.

Now on to the subject of coolness. I have no desire to air in public how other Grist posters seek status. It is a personal act, we all do it, most deny it, and none of us want to have our noses rubbed in it. But, I have been waiting for someone to call me on it--how unfortunate for you.

Coolness (status, position, rank, standing, station, prestige, fame, prominence, distinction, importance, renown, influence, eclat, celebrity, esteem, glory, big shot) depends on the social circle you identify with. And, like a peacock's feathers, coolness has to be displayed. For example, if you fancy yourself a member of the East Coast intelligentsia, driving a hummer would be a mistake. If on the other hand you can find a way to subtly advertise the fact that you are blogging while on a ski vacation in the alps (even though it consumed a couple of years worth of Hummer fuel), as you have done in the past, now that, is cool, and so very Euro to boot. You get the picture or do you need more examples?

It's normal to strive for coolness (status, position, rank, standing, station, prestige, fame, prominence, distinction, importance, renown, influence, eclat, celebrity, esteem, glory, big shot), Tom, although you are going to deny it as is stereotypical. Normally, people don't call each other on it, because that is not how the game is played, but in this case, you just plain asked for it. Now you can point out where I seek status. I will in turn pull out of my hat some more of yours. It could get interesting, but that is not generally how the status seeking game is played out. Usually, people tolerate one another's displays of status so that when their turn comes, their display will be tolerated. It is a largely subconscious quid pro quo interaction.

Finally, I'm not sure what to make of your China remark. They have a long way to go and a lot to learn, but if they can learn from our mistakes, they may eventually be better stewards of the environment than we are. The world may be a better place for China's entry into the free market. We can only hope. If you are dissing environmentally superior technology and the mass production that makes it available to the common man, tell me about it in a letter carried by a postman in a gas powered van. Don't use your computer made in China via the Internet which is reducing the use of transportation and other environmentally destructive commuting and shopping trips by untold numbers.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Few Americans are more fed up with the unending human caravan of illegal immigration -- or more familiar with its macabre toll -- than rancher Mike Vickers.

Multitudes of bedraggled migrants cut through his South Texas homestead every day to skirt U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints on their journey north, and many do not make it out alive. Vickers has found frightened children sitting in fields alone, abandoned. His dogs once brought home a human head.

He very badly wants to stop the trail of death and despair that passes by his doorstep. But when he considers the wisdom of building twin steel walls along the Rio Grande to seal off the Mexican border -- the plan Congress approved early Saturday before heading home for the November election -- his verdict is swift and harsh: stupid idea.

Other people seemed to have missed something too:

Many expressed shock that a proposal they considered a pipe dream by pandering Washington politicians had been approved, and that a fence they likened to the Berlin Wall could soon separate them from their neighbors.

Does anyone support this wall?

"Zero -- that's how many people I know who support this. People are opposed from Brownsville to El Paso," said Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, head of a group of frontier leaders called the Texas Border Coalition.

"The Rio Grande is a very historic and scenic place, one of the natural treasures of Texas. We're going to wall it off?"

And will this hurt the economy??

Mexican shoppers are a major source of money for Texas border towns, and gleaming malls and vast big-box outlets have been built to cater to them.

Between 1978 and 2001, Mexican shoppers made 26% of all retail sales in Brownsville, 35% in McAllen and 51% in Laredo, according to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Local officials said more recent estimates are higher.

It is nothing more (nor less) than racism?

To Mike Allen, a former Catholic priest who helped the poor in the colonias of Texas' Hidalgo County, then switched careers and became a leading economic booster for the border region, the fence is a manifestation of politics at its ugliest.

"It is just so sad that the relationships we have worked years to build are being torn down by politicians in Washington, who quite frankly don't have any idea what they are doing," Allen said.

"I'll say it: It's the browning of America, and people are afraid of that. That's what this is all about. I have lived on the border most of my life. I'm not scared."

How did this happen?  No one thinks this is a good idea, no one thinks it will even work to address the problem of illegal immigration, it will harm the environment, it will harm farmers, it will destroy property values, eliminate views, kill wildlife, AND hurt the economy.  So how the hell did it get voted in, by a fairly healthy margin, in both the House & the Senate??

I will admit that Hillary is far from perfect, but generally she votes how I would vote.  How did she go so wrong?  Along with everyone else?

Kaela

Nevertheless, point taken, Biodiv.

Thanks for standing up for my Senator's husband.  He was indeed a good president.  And a good New Yorker, and a good Harlem tenant.  (No, I mean that, I am not being cheeky.)  In retrospect, though, here are my misgivings: the welfare compromise (did "triangulation" really require that?); the health care collapse; the neglect of the genocide in Rwanda, 1994; the failure to show enough concern after the horrific, 9/11-ish bombings, the "embassy bombings," in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, in August, 1998 (but, to be fair, I have not read Richard Clarke on that subject).

On balance, yes, Bill Clinton was a great president.  And I am happy about the Fox News episode (which I did not witness).

But don't trust me, on judging the characters of politicians.  Keep in consideration, after all, that I like Pervez Musharraf.  No, I am not going to buy his book; but I hope he gets his own TV show.  Right, what a wonderful idea: The Bill and Pervez Show!

On the 2004 election: Not clear if the Bushward Latino shift mattered much, since they are mostly not in swing states.  (And I am so glad that the GOP shot themselves in the foot, Latino-wise, with all this anti-immigrant nonsense.)  It was probably the slight but very very meaningful shift of Catholic voters that tilted the election Bushward in Ohio, and elsewhere.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Word, BioD.

It is nothing more (nor less) than racism?

Yes, Kaela, with an admixture of electoral desperation and shameless base pandering.

grist.org

   Back when I lived in the states, one of the things I did was teach English to undocumented workers.  

   So, I got to know quite a number of them as people, not as numbers.

   They were not all perfect, but despite their poverty and the difficulties of their situation, they were kind, caring and generous to each other and folks around them.

   I always thought that if I could keep them in place of a certain group of native born Americans (guess!), I would.

   So, you know where my values are.

    Since it will replace the Statue of Liberty, we might as well tear that down.

   But, really, even if people don't like immigrants, this wall will not stop people (I can think of many alternative routes), but will do great harm to a fragile ecosystem.

   And it becomes a symbol.  A symbol or a closed America, a fearful America.

   Sigh.

   To be honest, I really can't understand it.  I am at a loss as to how this can happen.  

                                                                           pace,

patrick

"Oh, and knowledgeable people don't think it will actually stem illegal immigration."

actually makes your editors look bad. Try drinking some free trade coffee tomorrow before representing Grist with such drek.

Beyond the obvious sub-standard writing abilities of the article's writer, I'm ready to assume that this person never lived in a country that DOES have a wall. I know this because actually border fences DO curb migration; this is historically proven and it wouldn't take much fact-checking on the part of your editors to discover that.

Dear Kaela, your name is very pretty, but your argument for how the border fence would actually hurt the economy is so weak that I think you couldn't have invested much thought into that. How Texan border towns fare is certainly not the sum total in factors to consider when evaluating whether the fence will hurt or improve the economy. Honestly, I suggest you rethink this. Actually, border fences can boost economies.

I live in Israel and though our border fence is not popular with American left-wingers (not that they have the first clue re: our politics, current situation, etc) it is rather successful at keeping out suicide bombers (actually, border fences can save lives - you may be unaware of how many Mexican people die of dehydration as they try to make it from the border to the nearest southwestern city each year) which is indeed our SECURITY fence's main purpose, as we're quite content with our illegal workers, though I'd suggest we remedy that problem the same way the U.S. should remedy its illegal worker situation - we need and want those workers; let's make them legal, give them rights but not citizenship.

A friend is visiting me from Germany right now; he is from Cologne. When the Berlin wall came down, it HURT their economy so badly that his father was laid off and because he was 40 at the time, he has not found work since. His family were impoverished by the fall of the Berlin Wall - and they are not alone. It's interesting how many Americans talk about the Berlin Wall when they know nothing about it.

Dear forum participants, I'm sorry for your ignorance of border fences and how they impact economies and people, but I'm more sorry you choose to make that ignorance public. Europeans are right - it is time Americans learn to read.

And I'm an ex-pat - born in Wisconsin. Having been a member of the American Green Party for many years, I find I can no longer associate myself with their intellectual shortcomings. I pray that American liberals educate themselves and learn to think critically - to think beyond the leftist brainwashing. America, no the world, needs you and you are just as stupid as the Simpsons.

People are arguing over what method to use to better regulate immigration. We don't have a fence between Canada. Immigration regulation works fine there without one because the wealth disparity is not as great. The problem with your wall analogy is that it insinuates the Iron Curtain was a good thing and that it should have been maintained.

The physical fence is very related to environmentalism because it will destroy the natural flow of wildlife corridors.

Your fence works as did the Berlin wall for the same reasons. Both governments use/used the fence to slow people down long enough to shoot them. We are not going to shoot poor Mexicans who throw a ladder on the fence and a backpack over it (assuming the Republicans don't maintain a majority). That is why the proposed physical fence won't work as well as yours.

I can't really defend a lot of Americans. The majority don't "believe" in evolution. The Majority put Bush in office twice. But, to date, religious hatred has been held in check by our liberal culture of tolerance. Although, your religious problems are starting to spill over here. The office workers supervised by a good friend of ours were recently gunned down while Israel and Lebanon blasted away at each other. My daughter was recently not allowed to return to classes because of a bomb scare at a nearby temple.

The ongoing damage wrought on America by Bush will end with this term. If and when we will recover from his reign, time will tell. He has set into motion the seeds for religious hatred by eroding the separation of church and state and by stacking the Supreme Court. I just hope the embers die with his term. The last thing this country needs is what you have.

My family of four would hit the couch at 7:00 along with the Simpsons every week for many, many years. Maybe you just didn't get it. The scene where Homer's bare ass was dragged over the glass dome of the Mega church was priceless.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Bring your ire to the L.A. Times:

As Congress approved building the fence, it was hard to find a South Texas politician, merchant, economic analyst or academic who believed a wall would work.

Don't shoot the messenger.

    Any lasting solution must be a "win-win" negotiated peace between the parties involved (and not imposed by folks in the US or elsewhere).

    The proposed US border fence will only move the migration to other places along the border.  People will go around it, over it, under it.  People will find a way (boats anyone?).  Animals will not.

    Imagine the cost of the fence put into fighting global warming, invested in windmills and solar panes in Mexico.

    That would be useful.

patrick