Environmental Failure: A Case for a New Green Politics
James Gustave Speth
With the unprecedented scale of environmental destruction we see today, it has been the failure of environmental organizations to build a strong, effective, political movement. While not discounting their accomplishments both past and present, it remains an issue that working within a political economic system dominated by corporations and heavily invested in economic growth has resulted in the current state of environmental destruction. Economic activity is now so large in scale that its impacts alter the fundamental biophysical operations of the planet. The system of modern capitalism as it operates today will only continue to grow in size and complexity, generating ever-larger environmental consequences and seeking to constrain efforts to cope with them. Working only within the system will, in the end, not succeed—what is needed is transformative change of the system itself.
Environmentalism has been pragmatic and focused on incremental changes, solving problems one at a time, more comfortable proposing innovative policy solutions than framing inspirational messages, dealing with effects rather than causes, accepting compromises and taking what it can get. It believes that problems can often be solved with net economic benefit, without significant lifestyle changes or threats to economic growth. Today’s environmentalism is not focused strongly on political activity or organizing a grassroots movement. Such initiatives have played second fiddle to lobbying, litigating, and working with government agencies and corporations.
Environmentalists don’t recognize that they are in a culture war—a war over core values and a vision for the future. The environmental agenda should expand to embrace a profound challenge to consumerism, corporate dominance, the functioning and the reach of the market and its unmitigated growth, and the anthropocentric values that currently dominate. We should be writing a new American story, as Bill Moyers has urged. Our environmental discourse has thus far been dominated by lawyers, scientists, and economists. Now, we need to hear a lot more from the poets, preachers, philosophers, and psychologists.
The best hope for real change in America is a fusion of those concerned about the environment, social justice, and strong democracy into one powerful progressive force. This will require major efforts at grassroots organizing; strengthening groups working at the state and community levels; and developing motivational messages and appeals. The new environmental politics must be broadly inclusive, reaching out to other communities of complementary interest and shared fate.
We need a real environmental movement — networked together, protesting, demanding action and accountability from governments and corporations, and taking steps to realize sustainability and social justice in everyday life. There are examples and signs that the environmental community is moving in this direction, but there is much work to be done. An instructive precedent is the civil rights movement. It had its grievances, it knew what was causing them, and it also knew that the existing order had no legitimacy and that, acting together, people could redress those grievances. It was confrontational and disobedient, but it was nonviolent. It had vision and an inspirational leader.