This week, house Democratic leaders unveiled revolutionary climate and energy policies, proposing a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions and seeking to dramatically expand America’s use of renewable energy by 2025. But the wagons of polluters are already circling, with Energy and Commerce ranking Republican Joe Barton claiming, “The cap-and-trade plan is … so proudly ignorant of the daily economic reality faced by working people that I do not believe it could survive a vote in either the House or Senate just now.”
This shot across the environmentalist bow parrots one of the pervasive arguments against environmentalism: that it hurts jobs of producer economies – often the jobs of rural and Middle Americans – through undue environmental restrictions. And, worse yet, that environmental advocacy tends to come from consumer economies, the affluent urbanites who enjoy the benefits of environmentally destructive producers, but can’t tolerate their costs or even look down on the people with whom their cosmopolitan lifestyle is interdependent.
The argument against environmentalism triggers a less talked about internal debate among affluent environmentalists – disdainfully called the “liberal elite” or “hysterical greens,” and, in sweeping generalization, often including college students – who, correctly in my view, see the aforementioned charge as a valid one. The internal conflict arises between two groups I call listeners and speakers, regarding how to respond to those with whom environmentalists disagree. Both listeners and speakers do tend to agree sustainable practices are critical to economic and biological survival.
Listeners argue environmentalists should leave “non-environmentalists” alone. We may enact environmental regulations in our local communities, perhaps, but we should refrain from advocating environmental regulation for communities unprepared or otherwise unwilling to accept them. Listeners argue for modesty, that as much as environmentalists believe their decisions are based on what appears to be the most sound information we have, we could very easily be wrong. And, at least in part, we probably are.
It is on this basis listeners contend that environmentalists shouldn’t press their philosophical ideas onto others, especially at the expense of traditions or economic livelihoods. To the listeners, if a community wishes to teach its children creationism rather than evolution, so be it; if they wish to pollute rivers and streams to secure economic growth, environmentalists shouldn’t self-righteously get in the way. Besides, so many environmentalists (in America) come from the ranks of the “better off.” So who are environmentalists to tell those less fortunate they must sacrifice jobs or abandon their beliefs simply because we say so? The listeners fear aggressive advocacy comes across as an attempt to keep blue-collar workers from earning the standard of living enjoyed by the “liberal elite.”
Speakers argue economic equality suffers by listening alone – that by restraining from “oppressive” advocacy, listeners proliferate the gap between rich and poor. For example, allowing conservative schools to teach creationism rather than evolution, the speakers argue their students might be precluded from high-paying jobs in the biological sciences. They argue that preserving natural resources is critical to long-term economic development, and that if the listeners pursue conservation in their own community but allow it to be ignored elsewhere, we will end up with local communities of resource abundance and others that are depleted of their natural wealth and indefinitely poor. This arrangement would hardly be fair. If environmentalists were, hypothetically, on the right track, shouldn’t they seek to prevent this future inequality by moving forward with conservation together?
There is also the question of how effective environmental protection would be if it weren’t comprehensive. Speakers argue interconnectedness of our environment means insensitive actions of a few can affect everyone. Essentially, even if a coastal hippie commune goes balls deep locally with its environmental obsession, the affluent from a chemical plant upriver will hit them anyway. Speakers often express concern about the effects of environmental degradation suffered by millions around the world who endure a level of poverty that even the poorest, most hard-working Americans can scarcely imagine. These millions usually bear the most severe environmental costs that finance the American lifestyles.
Hopefully speakers can acknowledge that environmentalists simply won’t know if they’re right aside from the test of time. Speakers cannot deny that people with whom we disagree aren’t simply uneducated and “backward” primitives, but intelligent, informed and passionate individuals who have legitimate – and frequently overlooked – objections to the claims and hypocrisies of environmentalists.
Those who care about the environment should take care to listen to their objectors, no matter how frustrating. Failure to do so can lead to trouble dealing with resistance, recognizing the economic consequences and inequalities environmental regulations impose, and addressing the mistaken assumption that environmentalists have all the answers all the time, which they simply do not. For environmental advocates, humility shouldn’t mean weakness, nor should passion and advocacy mean oppression and dogmatism.
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Sustaining a balance
Daily Emerald
April 1, 2009
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