The Transition Movement discussion
Discuss: State of the World 2013
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Chapter 27. Building an Enduring Environmental Movement.
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Mod
This chapter contains an interesting proposition for altering the current “environmental movement”. It is straightforward and clear. The author’s analysis is very easy to follow.
The essay is reminiscent of Chapter 21 (Moving Toward a Global Moral Consensus on Environmental Action) – both in its emphasis on an ethical dimension to the environmental challenges we face, but on its suggestion of building the movement by presenting it to people (both inside and outside the movement) in the same manner that religions present themselves in their missionary work.
The author suggests in his introduction that the environmental movement today appears to be foundering. He starts by offering the following quote of Peter Berg, from three decades ago.
… rescuing the environment has become like running a battlefield aid station in a war against a killing machine that operates just beyond reach … No one can doubt the moral basis of environmentalism, but the essentially defensive terms of its endless struggle mitigate against ever stopping the slaughter.
Now, as 2013 draws to a close, not much has changed. The long-ago victories of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species legislation in the U.S., rather than ushering in a forward-looking, environmentally-focused era offering hopes of global sustainability, have simply been followed by ever new defensive battles: against new technologies (fracking), against new or continued assaults on sensitive areas of the earth (the Arctic, the Amazon rain forest), against new focuses of increasing degradation and greenhouse gas emission (China), against the continued inability or refusal of the world’s nation states to come to any sort of agreements about ways of addressing the unfolding crises.
Thus Assadourian glumly concludes his opening remarks, “”It will require a dramatic reboot if the movement is going to reverse the Earth’s rapid transformation and help create a truly sustainable future – or at least help humanity get through the ugly ecological transition that most likely lies ahead.”
Are Today’s Environmental Organizations Succeeding?
There are many indications that the answer is “no”: from the failure to provide a vision of a sustainable future, to their status as “just another special interest”; from its emphasis on changing people’s behavior in ways justified by reference to “saving money” (buying better light bulbs, better cars; which simply reinforces the dominant consumerist bent of our thinking), to the way in which most organizations within the movement focus on a single aspect of the approaching tidal wave (climate change or biodiversity or industrial agriculture or deforestation) rather than attempting to think holistically; and from the emphasis on short-term fixes rather than addressing root causes. (Providing triage to the wounded, rather than defeating the killing machine.)
Assadourian emphasizes one particular problem with these organizations: the funding problem, which has led many of them to accept funding from the same corporate structures which are driving us toward the cliff-edge.
Even if most environmental groups had secure forms of funding that did not lead to conflicts of interest, the broader critique remains. The movement is trying to stem the tide of global ecocide with strategies that fall far short of what is necessary to create a truly sustainable civilization – whether that is due to short-term thinking, overspecialization, lack of vision, or the realities of making political compromises, especially when at the table with much more powerful actors.
A Deeper Environmentalism. In introducing this section, Assadourian harkens back to some of the themes of chapters 20 and 21. He relates how a group of prominent environmentalists met, in 2007, to discuss “how to redesign the environmental movement to combat the linked environmental, social, and spiritual crises facing humanity.” The group’s conclusion was that
… humanity needs a “new consciousness”, new stories, new values – including an “ethics of reverence for the Earth” and a sense of intergenerational responsibility.
He goes on to mention Arne Naess’s 1973 coining of the term deep ecology (see the collection The Ecology of Wisdom). Assadourian relates how Naess concluded
that we need a set of principles to guide our behavior and to reinforce our commitment to help our planet flourish. His hope was that each of us would make a personal “ecosophy” (ecological philosophy) stemming from these principles that would shape our broader values and lives … Naess, with deep ecology, was perhaps the first to propose making environmentalism a fully lived philosophy.
He then compares the shallowness of contemporary environmentalism (asking for donations, soliciting signatures on petitions, participating in a protest) with the sort of ecosophy that Naess felt was needed, and illustrates the inadequacy of the current “playing defense” paradigm by quoting theologian and environmentalist Martin Palmer: “Environmentalists have stolen fear, guilt, and sin from religion, but they have left behind celebration, hope and redemption.” This is a model which neither inspires nor motivates.
It turns out that what the author is advocating is a sort of quasi-religious ecosophy which can answer big questions, such as Why are we here? and What is our purpose? He proposes to base the answers to these questions, at least in part, on some of Naess’s principles of deep ecology, which although producing an ethical code difficult to follow, has the advantage of viewing human kind’s “purpose” as no more than “helping the earth to flourish – and certainly not impeding its ability to do so.”
Missionary Movements and Their Potential. In this section the author reviews some of the more successful religious missionary movements in the modern world, analyzing what and how they have been able to grow the religion’s numbers. He makes a cogent point I think when he contrasts what a missionary will do at a person’s door (really engaging the person in conversation, perhaps offering some kind of help, etc.) with the typical environmentalist door-knocker, who usually wants nothing more than a donation and possibly a signature.
The Rise of a Missionary Eco-Philosophy? Assadourian here speculates about how this type of proselytizing might work if the message being spread was not one of a religion and its practice, but rather of an eco-philosophy which was able to give answers to the Big Questions that leave people starved for answers. The philosophy could be made part of a movement which, like the religious missionary projects, do things like providing new schools, clinics, medical care, and other social services. The goal would be to “improve people’s lives while spreading a way of life that could compete with the seductive consumerist philosophy so dominant today”.
Getting from Vision to Reality. The concluding section has an up-beat title. But the title isn’t indicative of Assadourian’s outlook for the future, at least the near-term future. He begins by saying, “The odds are that the state of the world is going to get really bad – and much sooner than we think.”
Hopefully, he says, we will be able to prevent collapse
by following a new set of philosophical, ethical, and cultural norms that bring about a life-sustaining civilization, or what eco-philosopher Joanna Macy has called “the Great Turning”. The second hope is that, failing this – and failing to prevent “the Great Unraveling” – we preserve enough knowledge and wisdom so that as the dust settles in a few centuries, with the population stabilized at a lower number that a changed planetary system can sustain, our great-great-great-great-great grandchildren do not reinvent our mistakes … As Macy notes, “The awesome thing about the moment that you and I share is that we don’t know which is going to win out, how the story is going to end. That almost seems orchestrated to bring forth from us the biggest moral strength, courage, and creativity. When things are this unstable, a person’s determination – how they choose to invest their energy and heart-mind – can have much more effect on the larger picture than we are accustomed to think”
Let us hope that this proves to be the case. And that centuries from now an ecocentric civilization – celebrating its nurturing niche on a once-again flourishing planet – tells stories of the bold individuals and communities that changed humanity’s path in such a glorious way.
Mod
Hi Ted, Thanks for the great overview of my chapter. I hope it prompts some discussion--I'd be interested in hearing what the group has to say, whether they think it's a good idea and how to go about implementing if so.
And for those who don't have the book, this chapter is available online at http://blogs.worldwatch.org/sustainab... {Just scroll down the table of contents to chapter 27}.
Best,
Erik
For comments about chapter 27.