Learing from the radical environmental movement

[sarahlee]

Learing from the radical environmental movement
A good friend of mine, Chris Manes, just published a paper in Yale's, "The Politic," called "Radical Environmentalism: Part II"

Relevant to conversations constantly in threads here is that Chris writes about how the radical environmentalists helped the mainstream environmentalmovement gain control of the language.

It would seem that a radicalized left -- as in deliberately outside the "mainstream" -- has a tendency to pull everything to the left. How? It makes "reasonable" but decidedly progressive positions seem "moderate."

It is exactly what Limbaugh, Savage et al., do for the right. They make garden variety conservatives -- who are bad enough -- look respectable. In fact, they provide "cover" for those conservatives to move right and still appear to be "moderate."

If the leadership of the left had any sophistication at all, they would cultivate the "far left" specifically for this purpose.

Chris give permission to copy and share around:

===Quote===
Radical Environmentalism: Part II
By Christopher Manes

During the 1980s, when greed was good and trees (according to a certain president) caused pollution, I ran into a merry band of radical environmental activists who called themselves "Earth First!" Most took part in legal protests against activities, such as clearcutting, that threatened irreparable ecological harm to the natural world. Some engaged in civil disobedience, by standing in front of bulldozers punching roads into pristine wilderness or by occupying old growth trees slated for cutting (a practice that came to be known as "tree-sitting"). And a few carried out patently illegal acts of "ecotage" or "monkeywrenching" - vandalizing heavy equipment used to destroy wild areas, placing metal spikes in timber to damage saws in mills, and causing assorted other kinds of property damage intended to frustrate the plans of the resource industry to exploit the natural world.

Earth First!, along with other radical environmental groups like the Sea Shepherd Society (notorious for sinking illegal whaling vessels), had a profound effect on the mainstream environmental movement at the time. They made the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and other traditional organizations look downright moderate by comparison, giving them political cover to take more aggressive stands on ecological issues. To government officials facing angry eco-demonstrators with war cries like "Go Clearcut In Hell!," sitting down and talking with respectable environmental lobbyists content with half a loaf, must have seemed like walking from a mosh pit into a cotillion.

<snip>

Perhaps most significantly, radical environmentalism gave the environmental movement a new language for discussing the challenges raised by our industrialization of nature. Instead of focusing on recreation and human health hazards, the radicals spoke in terms of habitat, biodiversity and ecological meltdown. Before Earth First! came along, hardly anybody in the environmental movement, much less the government agencies in charge of our public lands, even knew what the term "old growth" meant." By the end of the 1980s, it was the common parlance, and passion, of mainstream groups, and an ecological reality that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management had to address for the first time. Roland Barthes called the available political options that exist in a culture a function of the "universe of discourse," and the main strategy of politics is to control the scope of that universe. If so, the radicals gave the environment movement an expanded discourse for protecting the natural world.

Finally, the radicals brought a whole new philosophical perspective to environmentalism, in the form of "deep ecology" or "biocentrism." First articulated by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, and disseminated in America by Bill Devall's and George Session's book, "Deep Ecology: Living As If Nature Mattered," biocentrism offered a new way to think about nature and humanity's relationship to it.

<snip>

Agree with it or not, deep ecology's ambitious reinterpretation of the environmental movement's principles galvanized a generation of activists, and found fertile soil in universities, where it informed fields of knowledge, such as "ecocriticism" in literary studies, ecopsychology, and conservation biology.

With the coming of the 1990s a quietude seemed to settle over radical environmentalism. Earth First! broke down into factions. The incidents of ecotage declined dramatically. And while ecological civil disobedience continued in particular environmental battles, such as the fight to preserve old growth redwoods in Northern California, it was no longer as widespread as in the heyday of Earth First!

<snip>

. . . The fact is radical environmentalism became less prominent in the 1990s, not because it had failed, but because it had succeeded so well. The radicals suffered a fate similar to successful third parties in America: their agenda was adopted to a greater or lesser extent by many mainstream groups. Once "old growth" and "biodiversity" started appearing in the policy options of even the most timber-industry-friendly Forest Service official, it has to seem less urgent to spike trees to publicize the issues.

<snip>

But perhaps more problematic is the way modern conservatism has captured the "universe of discourse" about the environment in recent years. Traditional conservatism had some semblance of respect for the environment, because it was embedded in a language of rights and obligations. Mostly this was just lip service, but it was intelligible lip service that acknowledged some obligation among members of society not to despoil the natural world, if only because it seemed wrong.

Modern conservatism has for the most part abandoned this discourse, and replaced it with the imperatives of cheap labor and cheap resources, as the key to prosperity (interpreted to mean corporate profits). I think it is fair to say that modern conservatism really isn't about anything else but cheap labor and cheap resources, and virtually all of its policies are directed at this goal, whether it's outsourcing jobs, encouraging capital flight, destroying unions, or fostering unaffordable health insurance. The result is financial insecurity, loss of negotiating power for most working Americans, cheaper labor, and thus higher corporate profits. Conservatism has been Walmartized.

In this world of cheap labor conservatism, there is no room for Goldwateresque appeals to rights and obligations. There is no room for any environmental discourse, as was so thoroughly demonstrated when Bush's energy policy was crafted exclusively through discussions with energy companies, without any input whatsoever from environmentalists. The modern tongue of conservatism speaks only about cheap products. And cheap products require ruthless environmental exploitation, the de-legitimization of environmental regulations, and the disregard for any values in the natural world.

Now, from my perspective, this leaves modern conservatism morally and philosophically bankrupt, but politically it has come to own the language our culture uses to address environmental issues. The fact that environmental issues played no role whatsoever in the recent presidential campaign speaks to how successfully modern conservatism now frames this debate: so successfully that for most people there appears to be nothing to debate. For radical environmentalism to have any impact, it must break into and overcome this language. The deep ecology gambit, which proved so useful in invigorating the environmental movement, does not seem to be up to this task.

<snip> . . . It may be that to counteract cheap-labor conservatism, environmentalism cannot be about the environment at all, but about the deeper considerations of how we live and work and relate to each other. This is an old debate among environmental activists: is the movement about being progressive on just one issue, or on every issue? Do you have to fix everything in society to defend the environment, or is environmentalism separate from some larger progressive movement? The controversy, which was once more or less academic, is likely to become urgently practical during the next four years.

---
Christopher Manes was an activist with Earth First! and an associate editor of the Earth First! Journal. Manes has since withdrawn from the Earth First! movement and now advocates compassion for animals from a Judeo-Christian perspective. He wrote "Other Creations: Rediscovering the Spirituality of Animals" in 1997

---
Published at:
http://www.thepolitic.org/news/2005/02/21/Features/Radical.Environmentalism.Part.Ii-862866.shtml

Not listed in the published version of this article, but Chris also wrote a book in 1991, (I think), called “Green Rage.”

[kaho]

1. ...follow this pathway to political irrelevancy....

...nothing GWB would like better.

Using subterfuge, smoke and mirrors to advance a political agenda is destined to lead to more failure. Particularly in this age of communication via blogs.

Radicalisation of the Democratic Party is a total losing strategy. Leave that to the Greens or the fringe loonies on the even extremer left wing.

(And I agree that deep green environmentalism is about more than the environment.)

[sarahlee]

3. No one is advocating subterfuge

The progressive left and radical left are already out there.

You miss the point. The Republicans don't talk about Rush all that much; they know he is their "fringe loony" but they don't say that in public because he keeps the base fired and can make their agenda seem reasonable.

[sandnsea]

2. cultivate the "far left"

I absolutely agree. That's why I've been calling on people who aren't really Democrats, but are truly leftists, to just say so. Move out of the Democratic Party and strengthen their own political views. It provides a sharp line of distinction as well as a whole new political view that isn't really being heard in this country. It would also help for them to promote positive solutions instead of just being against everything. They could spend more time promoting green buildings and sustainable energy and things like that, instead of always being seen as people who are against any kind of progress.

[sarahlee]

4. They do promote

green buildings and sustainable energy - can't help it if most "progress" is killing the planet.

I would think that the 3 major reports that have come out over the last 30 days on Global warming pretty much proves they have been correct.

[sandnsea]

5. Who said they weren't?

My point is that they tend to focus on stopping things instead of solution oriented alternatives. A slight shift in focus would mean they would get listened to more and get the credit when new technologies are implemented. The logging environmentalists here are still focused only on stopping logging, instead of being equally focused on certified wood and sustainable forests that are not tree plantations. Slight shift, the benefits would be immeasurable.

[xpat]

7. Why only leftists?

It seems to me that the more important political cleavage in the US is not left/right but imperialist/anti-imperialist. Not only the left and the right, but the center contain pockets of anti-imperialist sentiment that is unrepresented either by the Republican Party (imperialism with an iron fist) or the Democratic Party (I could do it better the Bush - John Kerry).

This anti-imperialist tendency gets very little exposure in the arena of political ideas. I suspect, for as much as any other reason, because it is lost in the two-faced single party system. To break out of that closed environment and to create political institutions that express the anti-imperialist agenda would probably have a salutary effect on political discourse. It might even help to fracture and fuse the Rep and Dem Parties, causing a realignment on fundamental issues.

I'm willing to concede those two parties their whine constituencies, whether it be the anti-abortion whiners on the "right" or the pro-abortion whiners on the "left". These and other so-called values issues are, as far as I can see, simply sideshows in the political carnival. As every barker knows, there's a sucker born every minute, so cede the suckers to the Dems and Reps, while building a political movement that can destroy the empire.

Whenever I think about this issue, I come back to Thom Hartman's consistent message about the corporate take over of American politics and the need to return to Jeffersonian principles. In today's political environment, that program sounds radical, but is, in fact, the essence of what our country is about.

[sarahlee]

9. As I continually hear

some Democrats promoting Hillary as a candidate for 2008, I imagine that the Democratic party may well be dead anyway. I know that without some real changes in agenda and repspresentation, the Greens and Independents on the left won't get fooled into trying one more time to save the party from itself as they did this past election.

They voted for Kerry to save the world from Bush and still got Bush.

[kaho]

6. Harry Frankfurt of Priceton....

....has a very pertinent essay in Arts and Letters Daily (ALDaily.com). See it at

http://www.jelks.nu/misc/articles/bs.html

[sarahlee]

8. I don't see the connection

I am not talking about and Chris wasn't talking about misrepresenting anything.

The point is for mainstream democrats to not seperate themselves from the radical left. Or to at least not publicly bash them.

Same way the right does not publically attack Limbaugh and Ann and Hannity.

[Radical Activist]

10. This is a good article

There are times when it is smart for campaigns to play moderate and appeal to the middle. The problem is that if the entire party does that all the time it begins to hurt us in the long run. The DLC moderate strategy is good for some elections but eventually it will enable the Republicans to move the entire nation further to the right. This has been happening for at least 20 years.

Every time a timid moderate Democrat tries to shut up people like Howard Zinn or Dennis Kucinich out of fear of alienating the middle, it allows the extreme-right Republicans to keep moving what is defined as mainstream to the right.

Real change is always instigated by the radicals before the moderates timidly follow along. If we stifle the far left then the moderate Democrats will be stuck going nowhere and losing.