You might want to mention that other bashing - where  people from ED say (and I'm paraphrasing just as you are) "None of you dirty hippies who oppose Lieberman-Warner know anything about practical politics. You just sit down and shut up, cause your noise is interfering with deal-making by those of us who know what we are doing ,which does not include any environmental groups but us."

is a old habit that dies hard.

I have taken a page from Ronald Reagan who followed the commandment, "Though shall not speak ill of another Republican."

Now there are groups in the green world that I wouldn't walk across the street to spit on. But I don't put our "business out on the street." I may bite my tongue, but I follow the rule of "thou shalt not speak ill, of another environmentalist."

Dave is right. There are plenty enough real bastards to go around. We don't have to love everyone in our movement. But we should apply ourselves to changing the world. Not going to heaven.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

but also think that most of the folks in the vehemently-pro and vehemently-anti camp haven't actually read the details of the bill, and (on both sides) might change their tune if they did so.  

In other words, knee-jerk bashing is indeed bad.  But I'd like to see a lot more nuanced analysis so that the conversation can become more thoughtful and critical (on both sides) than it has been to date.  Whatever one thinks of EDF and FOE, they have at least been leading that effort - the former from the perspective of policy details and the latter from the perspective of environmental details.  And we need more of that type of discourse, not less.

You write:

I'm entirely open to the possibility that EDF says that, but can you point to an example?

I'm entirely open to the possibility that detractors of Lieberman-Warner say supporters are "earth f*cking, corporate bootlicking sellouts," but can you point to an example?

I agree with this question. I haven't seen L-W's detractors(of which I am one) condemn its supporters as bootlicks or sellouts.
I for one understand and appreciate the "perfect is the enemy of the good, we have to take whatever's politically possible" argument, even though I often disagree with it, and I don't attack as sellouts those who argue it.

I think the problem is with the concept "politically possible" and what could be seen as a defeatist attitude toward it.
If this is a choice between the "Here I stand, I can do no other" principle vs. the "art of the possible" principle, there seems to be a chicken-or-the-egg question.

Is it, the restrictive political climate compels one to take a moderate position?;
or is it, an intrinsically timid, accomodationist temperament compels one's moderation, and this in turn enables and encourages a restrictive political climate?

Maybe, if the mindset was more intrepid, we could clear away more obstacles and render the path less restricted.

I agree that it's ridiculous to be coming down on each other, within the green movement and with people who are willing to at least give the green movement the benefit of the doubt. I just came from another corner of the web where the discussion is about how offensive the recent Time magazine cover is because of the soldiers lifting a tree instead of the flag. Most people there think it's offensive and try to claim they feel that way because it's exploiting that symbol, but it's clear that virtually everyone claiming it's offensive thinks climate change is "over-hyped." Others called the story boring and said they'd rather hear about vets than climate change. There is still a lot of work to do. I suspect there also might be strong resistance building to the idea of climate change requiring a war-size effort to fight as well. That idea has barely broken into the mainstream (or maybe still hasn't), and yet it's already being spoken out against, and undoubtedly you can imagine some will be calling the idea offensive.

The same site recently had a poll about the news story people are most tired of, and climate change was one of them. Most Grist readers undoubtedly think the story isn't getting enough attention, and yet a lot of people there think it's getting too much. The fact that it's grouped in as just another news story is offensive to me.

The comments at that particular site are mostly from people who are so militantly against the idea of climate change being serious (which I don't really understand why they're so vehement, considering all the side benefits for health, energy security, the economy), but you can see in the polls that things are more evenly split, yet you don't hear from the people concerned about climate change much in the comments. People (including me) are put off by the outspoken comments from the other side, and yet here we bicker amongst ourselves. Mind you, if you're not "debating," then there's probably not much to say. We still need to convince everyone else that climate change isn't a "vague threat," a "hoax," or "over-hyped." I have no idea how to begin to do that, but clearly we shouldn't turn on each other because it's easier, and just because we can still think logically after reading each other's comments.