This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

This open-for-business approach was so adept at attracting big donors and elite access that many older, more established green groups raced to get with the agreeable program, taking an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” attitude to brazen extremes. It was in this period that the Nature Conservancy started loosening its definition of “preservation” so that conservation lands would eventually accommodate such dissonant activities as mansion building and oil drilling (laying the foundation for the group to get in on the drilling action itself). “I used to say that the only things not allowed on Nature Conservancy reserves were mining and slavery, and I wasn’t sure about the latter,” said Kierán Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Now I may have to withdraw the former as well.”33 Indeed the pro-corporate conversion of large parts of the green movement in the 1980s led to deep schisms inside the environmental movement. Some activists grew so disillusioned with the willingness of the big groups to partner with polluters that they broke away from the mainstream movement completely. Some formed more militant, confrontation-oriented groups like Earth First!, whose members attempted to stop loggers with sabotage and direct action.