Brilliant post, Dave. Exactly right.

My guess is that the public is just way too tired of the media hype that comes from every single pronouncement on Global Warming.  

Back in the seventies we were supposed to be worried about the pending ice age.  Then we were suposed to see warming trends everywhere.  Now, we have to deal with record cooling in some areas and record highs in others.

Sure, climate change is complex and of course there will be changes up and down around the globe with any climate change.  It's just unfortunate that the reporters who cover the issue know nothing about climatology and atmospheric science and are only concerned with ratings.

Hype, hype, hype, from the reporters and scientists.  And we wonder why the public is becoming less and less interested.

"Environmental justice does way more to put a human face on vague eco-issues than RFK Jr. ever could."

How could environmental justice "put a human face" on wildlife and wilderness issues, which are the most important enviro issues by far?  Do we even want to "put a human face" on these issues?  Humans need to get over themselves and start respecting other forms of life.

And BTW, environmental justice is basically a social, not environmental, issue.  Not that there's anything wrong with advocating that poor people shouldn't be crapped on constantly, but it does the Earth no good for the environmental movement to be hijacked by leftists.

Jeff Hoffman

It's not a question of either/or. It's both/and. Earth and human. What we can do today and over the long term. We have to live and act now. All we have is the present moment. So whatever it takes to wake people up and we're all different. Some of us open our hearts more readily to human suffering, others to the suffering of animals, the loss of ecosystems, the overall degradation of the Earth. Some of us are more impacted by beauty than by destruction. Beauty speaks to us, and has the potential to heal. Maybe we should be advocating love and beauty to wake people up, who knows? I do know the doom and gloom thing too often has the effect of causing people to shut down, to go into automaton mode which only supports the status quo and makes matters worse. But when we focus on the positive, we're labeled as hopeless, new age, woo-woos. It's all very confusing. I conclude: we need to do it all.
In some ways I don't think it matters whether we love people more or non-humans/Earth more, because love is the solution. The important thing is putting the energy of love and compassion out there in the world. Consistently, every minute of every day. Somehow I believe this will make a difference. I believe that if enough of us act compassionately and keep love in our hearts and act from that, then there's hope beyond what seems "logical" -- for humans and, most especially, for the Earth/Gaia.

Fact are "inert"?

I always thought facts are immutable.

There are not differing opinions of "facts".

There are not two sets of "facts" that oppose another.  Otherwise, they cannot both be "facts" if they do not align.

For instance:

It can never be a "fact", that Stalin was a reasonable man.  This is not, and can never be a "fact".

It can never be a "fact", that millions were not killed under Communism.

It can never be a "fact", that Eric Clapton is the finest guitarist, because there is not way of establishing this "fact".  Facts and opinions are not the same.

It has not been established as "fact" that U.S. consumers are causing "global warming".

- Captian America

.....

America First The World Second

"[B]y helping improve the communities of the poor, with participation from environmentalists, a positive difference for the ecosystem could also result."

That's possible.  However, a more likely scenario is that environmentally destructive activities will be moved from areas that are already ecological disasters, where poor people live, to areas that were previously in good shape ecologically, which would be a very negative outcome ecologically.  This doesn't mean we can't advocate for the poor and the environment, but as another blogger said, it must be a not-in-anybody's-backyard movement instead of a not-in-my-backyard one.

What caused me to comment on this in the first place is that I feel a lot of pressure, which I consider completely illegitimate, for enviros to become just another group of leftists.  The Death of Environmentalism people are the ones who gave this idea a big voice, though I've also heard it elsewhere.  Well, guess what?  Those of us who are wilderness/wildlife advocates are not going to advocate for social issues, period!  How would enviro justice or anti-racist activists like to be told that what they really should be doing is working for endangered species and ecosystems, because those things need help far more than humans, who are thriving as a whole?

A much better idea would be for those who want to work for social issues like enviro justice to do so, while those of us who want to work for non-human issues work on those.  From those bases, we can make alliances.  In some instances we can help on each other's issues (we'll demonstrate against the power plant in your neighborhood if you demonstrate against logging), but mainly we should stick to our own work.  However, we can all SUPPORT each other politically, by both pressure and our votes.  Even together we're still a pretty small minority, but we're a significantly larger minority together than apart.  This type of alliance makes much more sense to me than badgering enviromentalists to work on issues to which they don't give as much priority, even if we're all on the same side on those issues.

Re whether to pursue strategies that advocate for changes that would result in "perhaps not the same outcome if the primary goal was to improve and protect the ecosystem itself, but an improvement none-the-less," my answer is an old Earth First! slogan: No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth!  Period!  Put another way, it's better to fight for something in which you believe and lose than to fight for something in which you don't believe and win.  Everything non-human on this planet is so devastated by human overpopulation, overconsumption, and other human activities that I cannot, in all good conscience, fight for anything less than full restoration of species and ecosystems, as much as possible.

Jeff Hoffman

Why that is would be an excellent subject for sociological study.

I hope you're not suggesting that sociologists are so stupid as to not have ever thought to investigate this issue.

Your question isn't precisely my area of expertise, and answers have been elusive. But what I've gathered from related human-environment research is that what really drives people's actions is a vision of the kind of person they want to be and the kind of life they want to lead. If a fact provides a useful rationalization for a value-system, it will be grasped and acted upon. If not, it will hang in someone's head like an isolated bit of trivia, no matter how important it seems to be to those of us who find our preferred ways of life supported by it.