permaculture

[Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>]

Just received in email. Starts out depressing but gets better at the end:


   /The Withering of the American Environmental Movement
   /The Thrill is Gone

*By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR**
*

   *"The Dark Ages. They haven't ended yet." *Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

*A** kind of political narcolepsy has settled over the American 
environmental movement. Call it eco-ennui. You may know the feeling: 
restlessness, lack of direction, evaporating budgets, diminished 
expectations, a simmering discontent. The affliction appears acute, 
possibly systemic.**

Unfortunately, the antidote isn't as simple as merely filing a new 
lawsuit in the morning or skipping that PowerPoint presentation to join 
a road blockade for the day. No, something much deeper may be called 
for: a rebellion of the heart. Just like in the good old days, not that 
long ago.

What is it, precisely, that's going on? Was the environmental movement 
bewitched by eight years of Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore? Did it suffer an 
allergic reaction to the New Order of Things? Are we simply adrift in a 
brief lacuna in the evolution of the conservation movement, one of those 
Gouldian (Stephen Jay) pauses before a new creative eruption?

Perhaps, the movement, such as it was, experienced an institutional 
uneasiness with the rules of engagement during the long cold war in 
Clinton time. A war (War? Did someone say war?) where hostilities, such 
as they were, remained buried beneath graceful gestures at meaningful 
discourse-where the raw passions for rare places are, at the insistence 
of lawyers and lobbyists, politically sublimated or suppressed altogether.

Environmentalism has never thrived on an adherence to etiquette or quiet 
entreaties. Yet, that became the mode of operation during Clinton and it 
has continued through the rougher years of Bush and Cheney. Direct 
confrontation of governmental authority and corporate villainy was once 
our operation metier. No longer. None aggression pacts have been signed, 
an unofficial détente declared. Was it sealed in the spring of 1993 on 
the lawn of Blair House, perhaps, while the cherry blossoms where in 
bloom? Did the late Jay Hair, CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, 
forge a deal in the fall of that year to green light the logging of the 
last ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest? (What was the late Vince 
Foster's role in all of this? He had one, you know, but that's another 
story.) Cold wars, naturally, engender such paranoid perambulations.

More than a decade later, this much is clear: the vigor of the 
environmental movement has been dissipated, drained by the enforced 
congeniality displayed in our disputes with Clinton and Bush, the 
Democrats in congress, and the grim, green-suited legions of the Forest 
Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Despite the rampages of the 
Bush administration, the big green groups can't even rouse themselves 
into much more than the most reflexive kind of hysteria, fundraising 
letters printed in bold type.

Like so many vacant-eyed victims of Stockholm Syndrome, most 
professional environmentalists find themselves conscripts to the 
conference room and the consensus table, situations about as satisfying 
as computerized chess or phone sex. (I'll sign up for one jolt of 
Electro-shock over four years of group therapy any day.)

Accusations of elitism, hurled at us like political creampies, from the 
property right jihadis, hit their targets more often than not these 
days. Once highly regarded (and deeply reviled) as fierce advocates of 
the "public interest," environmentalists now are largely dismissed in 
the living rooms of America as merely another "special interest" group 
(weaker than most), peddling its meager influence on the Hill, angling 
for access to the anterooms (never the control room) of power, or, at 
least, a line item in the federal budget.

What's worse, our best efforts these days hardly seem to even raise a 
hackle on the hierophants of industry. After okaying the logging of 
ancient forests, signing off on anti-wilderness legislation in Oregon, 
Idaho and Montana, pampering the whims of Bruce Babbitt (and Dick 
Cheney), endorsing NAFTA and GATT, the failure to stand up for high 
level whistleblowers like former BLM head Jim Baca, the mainstream 
environmental groups don't scare anyone anymore. Except maybe their own 
members. Yes, they may scare them a great deal, indeed.
*
Something Happened
*
The surest sign of decadence in a social/political movement is its 
engagement in the suppression of internal dissent: such decadence now 
erodes the moral core of the environmental movement. Stray beyond the 
margins of permitted discourse, publicly critique the prevailing 
"strategy," strike out in an authorized new direction and the overlords 
of the environmental movement crack down. They enfilade the insurgents 
with legalistic maledictions, gag orders, and accusations of sedition.

Witness the Sierra Club's threats to sue renegade chapters that publicly 
opposed anti-wilderness bills proposed by the Club's political favorites 
in Montana. Or its attacks on anti-war protesters in the Club's ranks in 
Utah. Or NRDC's attempt to squelch the filing of endangered species 
petitions, for on-the-run critters such as the Queen Charlotte's 
goshawk. Or the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund's arm-twisting of its own 
clients in the spotted owl cases. Or the Environmental Defense Fund's 
betrayal of at-risk communities across America when it endorsed Dow 
Chemical's proposed "revamping" of the Superfund Act. (Col. Fred Krupp, 
EDF's CEO, was once overheard telling Carol Browner, Clinton's head of 
the EPA, "You are our general. We are your troops. We await your 
orders.") Or the sado-masochistic pleasure that NRDC (yes, them again) 
displayed while boasting about "breaking the back of the environmental 
opposition to NAFTA."

You don't have to be versed in the works of Hannah Arendt or Michel 
Foucault (although Madness and Civilization ought to be required reading 
for all activists and other "eccentrics") to understand the dynamics of 
power and repression at work here. Activists are now aliens on the 
political landscape; their relationship to the lawyers, lobbyists, 
economists, marketing agents, PR flaks and CEOs that management the 
environmental movement parallels that of welfare mothers to the welfare 
bureaucrats: abusive indifference.

To quote Jospeh Heller: Something happened. Somewhere along the line, 
the environmental movement disconnected with the people, rejected its 
political roots, pulled the plug on its vibrant and militant tradition. 
It packed its bags, starched its shirts and jetted to DC, where it 
became what it once despised: a risk-aversive, depersonalized, 
hyper-analytical, humorless, access-driven, intolerant, centralized, 
technocratic, dealmaking, passionless, direct-mailing, lawyer-laden 
monolith to mediocrity. A monolith with feet of clay.

The environmental movement didn't so much go awry as it simply 
flatlined, cruise-controlled right into an entropic cooldown-the 
ultimate thermodynamic fate of all closed systems. The Group of Ten 
(aka: Gang Green) now manifest all the intensity of an insurance cartel; 
their executives and administrative underlings are much more likely to 
own dog-eared copies of Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal or (god 
forbid) Kissinger's Diplomacy, than Donald Worster's Rivers of Empire 
<*_http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195078063/counterpunchmaga_*> 
, Jack Turner's The Abstract Wild 
<*_http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0816516995/counterpunchmaga_*> 
, Bill Kittridge's Hole in the Sky 
<*_http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679740066/counterpunchmaga_*> 
or Doug Peacock's Grizzly Years 
<*_http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805045430/counterpunchmaga_*> 
. Forget the eyes, a person's bookshelf is the real window to their soul.**

National environmental policies are now engineered by an Axis of 
Acronyms: EDF, NRDC, WWF: groups without voting memberships and little 
responsibility to the wider environmental movement. They are the 
undisputed mandarins of technotalk and lobbyist logic, who gave us the 
ecological oxymorons of our time: "pollution credits," "re-created 
wetlands," "sustainable development."

In their relativistic milieu, everything can be traded off or dealt 
away. For them, the tag-end remains of the native ecosystems on our 
public lands are endlessly divisible and every loss can be recast as a 
hard-won victory in the advertising copy of their fundraising 
propaganda. Settle and move on, is their unapologetic mantra. And don't 
expect them stick around to live with the consequences of their deals 
and trade-offs.

Into this political vacuum rough beasts have already been loosed and 
others are bound to follow. The decline of a militant environmental 
movement has been countered by the rise of a militant anti-environmental 
movement, unrestrained, and all to often encouraged by, the agents of 
federal and state governments. The new anti-environmental movement, a 
strange hybrid of Aryan Nationists, gun-fetishists and the loonier 
incarnations of the Wise-Use crowd, have used arson, muggings and deaths 
to intimidate local environmental activists across the West.

The ranks of this malicious melange continue to expand up and down the 
spine of the Rockies and across the Great Basin. Like deranged Deadheads 
on tour, these neo-militians follow roving weapons bazaars (some of 
which were reportedly backed by arms merchant and Iran/contra star 
Richard Secord) across the rural backwaters of the American West, from 
Libby, Montana to Tonopah, Nevada.

At these moveable conclaves of righteousness, the blonde, blue-eyed 
penitents can purchase enough firepower to call forth the Second 
Coming-a state goal of some attendees. Here's the Defense Dividend we've 
all been waiting for, where the Pentagon largesse of the Cold War is 
offered for sale on the homefront at discount prices: tanks, 
armor-piercing bullets, APCs, night-vision gunsights, Humvees. It's all 
there for the bidding.

Living embodiments of the quaint cultural traditions of the West 
memorialized at places like Wounded Knee and Sand Creek, these 
characters are preparing to defend what's theirs and what they think 
ought to be theirs. By force if necessary-perhaps preferably.

What do they want? Simply unfettered rights to grazing, mining and 
logging on public lands, the federal lands themselves revested to the 
states or private corporations and, to quote one Arly Gruder, a rancher 
from somewhere near Salmon, Idaho, arguably America's most inhospitable 
town: "To run all the damn feds, Jews, Spics and homo-enviros the hell 
out of here." Run them back across the 100th Meridian, no doubt. But how 
far? Back to Brooklyn? Back to Juarez? Back to Buchenwald?

Listen to Hugh McKeen, a rancher and former commissioner in Catron 
County, New Mexico, who told reporter Tony Davis that his neighbors and 
friends are arming themselves, preparing for a new range war, against 
greens and their sidekicks, the illegal immigrants: "The people have 
fought for this land in the past. There have been killings over water. 
It runs in the genes. You have very independent people here. They want 
to be left alone. But the government oppresses them. And the 
environmentalists come in here and want to oppress their life." 
Apparently, the West is theirs to waste by virtue of the Doctrine of 
Manifest Genetics.

The absence of a forceful opposition from progressive greens and the 
appearance/reality of collaboration with the federal government by 
Beltway groups, only strengthens the cause of the extreme right. As the 
left migrates toward the center, the right repels further to the 
right-and the government follows suit. This a recipe for a future in 
which things, to crib from Thomas Pynchon, will not be quite so amusing.

**Toward a Resolute Clarity of Place**

Still there's no reason to beginning strumming a threnody just yet. 
Beneath the six-figure salaries, limo-driven executives, and glossy 
magazines clotted with ads for SUVs, there's a flickering pulse to the 
grassroots environmental movement, in the hinterlands and barrios, in 
the secret gardens of the Bronx and amid the toxic detritus of New 
Orleans. Foucault and Tom Paine sang the same refrain: the more 
pervasive the repression, the more profound the rebellion to come. Well, 
the rebellion has started. *


         In the southwest, a small outfit called Living Rivers is
         campaigning to decommission Glen Canyon Dam and restore the
         Colorado River. In Montana, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies
         remains the grizzly bear's most unflinching ally and advocate.
         In the Pacific Northwest, the Western Land Exchange Project is
         nearly alone in challenging the disposal of public lands to
         private concerns and the Center for Environmental Equity is
         chasing the big gold mining companies out of Oregon.. In the
         Midwest, Heartwood is defending the incredibly diverse
         hardwood forests of the Ohio Valley and waging an intense
         campaign against the proliferation of noxious and inhumane
         confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs. In the heart of
         cancer alley, the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (aka
         LEAN) is taking on chemical and oil companies, as well as the
         toxic sludge left behind by Katrina. In South Dakota, the
         Lakota Student Alliance is waging a courageous battle to have
         the Black Hills and other sacred lands returned to the Sioux
         Nation. Deep in Appalachia, Save Our Cumberland Mountains is
         fighting the most destructive form of mining ever devised by
         man or satan: mountain top removal.

*Like snowpeaks sprouting from a far horizon, these scattered pockets of 
resistance can help us triangulate our way back home, entrench with a 
resolute clarity of place. And that move, as Terry Tempest Williams 
suggests in her shimmering book The Unspoken Hunger 
<*_http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679752560/counterpunchmaga_*> 
, may be the most radical act of all.**

Environmentalism was once a people's cause, unaligned with any political 
party and independent from the demands of the shadowy syndicate of 
mega-foundations (Pew, Rockefeller, Ford) that now hold the mortgage on 
the movement-those high priests of what Foucault called "condescending 
philanthropy." Environmentalism was once driven by a desire for social 
justice and an unremitting passion for the wild. We need to tap back 
into those populist currents. Let the vision attract the money and don't 
allow it to be refracted through the ideological prism of neoliberal 
foundations.

The power of the environmental movement derives from its essential and 
shared imagery, its sensual tangibilities. Simply put: the destruction 
of the wild sparks militancy in the heart. At least it does for me. Wild 
places communicate their own passion and power, sensations that are the 
antithesis of political abstractions.

It's all about the singular sense of openness on the Snake River plains. 
The way light plays across ancient petroglyphs on the canyon walls of 
Navajo sandstone outside Moab. The smell of sagebrush in the high desert 
on the north slope of the Ruby Mountains. A cool rush of wind unleashed 
by distant storms hammering the Gallatin Range. The bluegray fogbanks 
that sleeve up the North Santiam River canyon on an August morning in 
Oregon. The crisp shock of being busted out of a raft by a rapid on the 
Selway River. The carcass of a grizzly-clean salmon annealed by the 
Alaskan sun to a granite boulder along the MacNeil River. The 
surrealistic explosion of October color from dense forest of oaks, 
poplars and maples on Nebo Ridge in southern Indiana. The cry of a lone 
coyote trembling across the sepia sky in the predawn badlands of South 
Dakota. These are the threatened images that haunt my nights, the green 
fires that burn in my soul. You have your own. Nearly everyone does. 
Everyone with a heartbeat.
*


         The power of the people can still overwhelm the influence of
         big money. Look at Chiapas. Read Edward Abbey. Listen to
         Mandela and Evo Morales. Anything is possible. Find your
         place, take a stand. People will join you.

*Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like 
Green to Me: the Politics of Nature 
<*_http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html_*> 
and Grand Theft Pentagon 
<*_http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567513360/counterpunchmaga_*> .
**
*

--
Keith Johnson
"Be fruitful and mulch apply."
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 5516, Bloomington, IN 47408
(812) 335-0383
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