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                                                  "Environmental News, Opinion, and Arts"                                      February 2005      




Report on the Death of Environmentalism
 is Merely Wishful Thinking

By Paul Watson             

 
Captain Paul Watson's Response to Michael Shellenberger and Ted
Nordhaus' essay "The Death of Environmentalism" 
         
Read Shellenberger and Nordhaus' article at, http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/little-doe/

"The entire paper (
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus' essay 'The Death of Environmentalism') is premised upon interviews with the most conservative, most entrenched and most bureaucratic leaders and restricted to the United States."  -- Paul Watson, Founder of Sea Shepherd

         Capt. Paul Watson, Founder of Sea Shepherd  
Voices of Authority

In their essay on the Death of Environmentalism, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus
state with great authority in their introduction that, "modern environmentalism is no longer
capable of dealing with the world's most serious ecological crisis." It would be more
correct to say that human society is no longer capable of dealing with what the authors
believe is the world's most serious ecological crisis. In fact I cannot imagine any movement
being capable of dealing with the enormity and complexity of global warming. It is also a
case of too little too late.

There are many environmental problems. The environmental movement has the
capability of addressing some of these problems to a certain degree but certainly not
all of them, and some not at all. I do not agree that global warming is the most
serious ecological crisis. It is in fact a problem caused by the more serious
ecological crisis of escalating human population growth and increasing rates of
material consumption.
In my opinion the most serious global ecological crisis is the escalating
diminishment of biodiversity and the fact that the Earth will lose more species of
plants and animals by 2050 then it has lost over the last sixty-five million
years.Global warming will certainly be a major contributor to this mass global
extinction but it is a problem caused by the first major threat and that is escalating
human population growth.

Rather than be critical of environmental movements, Nordhaus and Shellenberger
should understand that the environmental organizations have done the best they can
with the tools they have. After all it's pens, computers, cameras and meetings
against drills, bulldozers, chainsaws, harpoons, tanks, and missiles.

With respect to global warming, the environmental groups have pushed for more
energy efficient cars, they have indeed worked on treaties like the Kyoto Protocol,
and they have lobbied for legislation. In short they have done everything they can
within the limitations allowed by society and the law to promote change.

I notice they did not mention more radical activism, which the authors obviously
consider unacceptable. They did not interview representatives of Earth First,
Rainforest Action Network, Earth Island Institute or the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society.Yet they state; "in their public campaigns, not one of America's
environmental leaders is articulating a vision of the future commensurate with the
magnitude of the crisis. Instead they are promoting technical policy fixes like
pollution controls and higher vehicle mileage standards - proposals that provide
neither the popular inspiration nor the political alliances the community needs to
deal with the problem."

This is a very misleading statement. What the authors are saying is that in their
opinion not one of the people they interviewed is articulating a vision.Twenty-five
people does not a movement make.I would suggest that there are numerous
individuals and groups that are indeed articulating a vision.

David Foreman and the Wildlands Project is one example. Doug Tompkins and his
land purchases are another example. Bob Hunter has specifically articulated a vision
to address global warming in his book Thermageddon. I could name many
more.The environmental movement is not the restricted shallowness of a mere 25
organizations. It is a global network of diverse organizations and activists. It is
stronger today than it was 25 years ago and it grows in strength every day.

The problems of global warming, overpopulation, destruction of bio-diversity and
pollution are human societal generated problems. These problems were not created
by the environmental movement but rather the environmental movement is merely a
reaction to the problems.

The authors of the paper seem to suggest that environmentalists are responsible for
the predicament the world is in simply because they have failed to resolve the
problem.The authors then state that "environmentalists are learning all the wrong
lessons from Europe when they closely scrutinize the policies without giving much
thought to the politics that made the policies possible.

What the authors fail to realize is that what may be expected from more democratic
European political systems will not necessarily work within the confines of the more
restrictive democracy of a de facto two party system. In fact, both in Canada and the
United States have indeed given much thought to the politics that made those
policies possible and most "progressive" environmentalists in the United States have
rudely dismissed the Green Party and Ralph Nader in favor of the crumbs of amused
interest thrown to them by the Democrats.

But having said this, lets return to Europe and the claim by the authors that the
"achievements" made in Europe will reduce carbon emissions from anywhere to 50
percent to 80 percent over the next 50 years. Sounds good, but these reductions will
still be insufficient to solve the problem and expanding human populations in
Europe and elsewhere, especially in an increasingly industrialized China will simply
negate them. In other words, even in Europe there may be the appearance of solving
the problem but this does not translate into actually solving the problem. The
authors then state "And yet there is nothing about the behavior of environmental
groups, and nothing in our interviews with environmental leaders, that indicates that
we as a community are ready to think differently about our work."

My answer to that is there are plenty of people with diverse ideas, thinking
differently about the issues and the problems and solutions. The point is that none of
these people were interviewed by the authors, nor will they be interviewed because
they are not recognized as legitimate spokespeople for what the authors believe the
environmental movement to be.

This entire paper is premised upon interviews with the most conservative, most
entrenched and most bureaucratic environmental leaders and restricted to the United
States.As such it is flawed from the beginning and has no grasp of the true
complexity and the great diversity within the international and U.S. environmental
movements.
The authors also write as if the solution can be found by simply having these 25
environmental "leaders" rethink and restrategize their positions.

The Importance of Individual Initiative and Action

What I take most exception to is that Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus state
that focusing on individual issues is counter-productive. It is my belief that most of
the progress made in the environmental movement has been accomplished by
individuals and groups focusing on specific objectives. It is the cumulative success
of these objectives that makes a movement.

For example, because of David Wingate, the Bermuda Storm Petrel was saved from
extinction. This is a major accomplishment by one person. And there are the
individual contributions of Jane Goodall, Birute Galdikas, Karen Silkwood, Chico
Mendes and so many more over the years. This movement has a history of unique
ideas, imaginative actions and strong individual leadership.

Furthermore, the real strength of the environmental movement is not the large
environmental organizations. It is the thousands of small organizations that form the
true backbone of the movement.

The environmental movement is not just the Sierra Club and the NRDC, it is also
Earth First! and like it or not the Earth Liberation Army.There is in the world today,
a growing, dynamic, diverse and strong environmental movement. That is the great
strength of the movement - it's incredible diversity. Diversity in ideas, actions,
strategies, tactics, and operations.

The Laws of Ecology

The problem is not in the movement. The problem is outside of the movement. The
answer is plain and simply that there is a continual daily and global violation of the
four basic laws of ecology.

1. The Law of Biodiversity
   2. The Law of Interdependence
   3. The Law of Finite Resources.
   4. The Law of Species Precedence or that the survival of a species takes
precedence over the individuals of another species.

   It is not fair, nor is it credible for Shellenberger and Nordhaus to conclude that
the environmental movement is a failure based on the movement's inability to stop
the hominid juggernaut from charging forward towards destruction.The problem is
gargantuan whereas the movement is relatively small. And if history is a judge, the
movement will always be relatively small.

The reason for this lies in the reality of human evolutionary behavior. Specifically
the following:

   1. Humanity is anthropocentric and focuses on issues that are human oriented
and therefore other species are relegated as secondary or dismissed as unimportant.
And this is of course a violation of the law of interdependence and the law of
Species Precedence.
   2. Humanity has increased its numbers to dangerously high levels and is
increasingly becoming more consumptive of global resources.
   3. Escalating populations of humanity aspire to increased wealth and material
possessions in a world of finite resources.
   4. Escalating technological advances translate into greater resource extraction -
not less. Therefore the rate of resource consumption is accelerated by technological
advances.
   5. It is the Tragedy of the Commons. Individuals in general will not change in
an environmentally positive way because there is no individual motivation for such
change within the context of the present socio-economic and political system that
encourages competition, growth, and anthropocentric attitudes.
   6. A majority of human beings suffer under mass forms of collective psychosis
otherwise called religions where reality is abrogated for anthropocentrically
oriented fantasies that justify and encourage the alienation of the human species
from the ecology of the Earth.

In other words, no amount of organizing, writing, lecturing, film-making,
conferences, politicking, concerts, Hummer burnings or other activities will force,
entice, convince or encourage the masses of people to abandon their big cars, large
homes, high caloric intake, pleasures, drugs and entertainment.Nor will any
movement convince those who do not have all or any of these things to no longer
seek to attain them.

The Oiliocratic Oligarchy and the Environmental Movement

The human species has taken hunting gathering to ghastly excess. We have become
hunter-gatherers extraordinaire and we will continue to adapt to diminishment until
there is little left. Consider this: As human populations continue to grow and
demand for resources increases, we are approaching the limits to natural resources
like fossil fuels, fisheries, arable land, minerals and most importantly - water.

Everyone knows this yet the human reaction is almost universally one of denial.All
human societies are now fatally addicted to oil. You cannot deal with an addicted
person with reason and logic. We will therefore continue to consume oil at whatever
cost it will take to do so.This is why Americans and Iraqi's and Afghani's are dying
right now. The media and government can bluster about patriotism and freedom and
democracy but we all really know what it's about. Especially now that the
government of the United States is a de facto oiliocratic oligarchy.

In fact, media, government and corporations are so intertwined as to be one voice.
Sure there are differences like left and right but liberal and conservative are just
divisive descriptions for people who live relatively comparable life styles.So we
can be certain that all fossil fuels will be exploited wherever and whenever they are
located. Drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is not a question of - will it
happen but of when will it happen? The best environmental groups can ever hope to
do is stall the process - but that oil will be taken, you can bank on it.

And drilling will happen in Antarctica and the tar sands of Alberta will be exploited.
There will not be one pocket of oil, gas, coal or tar sands on this planet that will not
be tapped, drained and consumed.The oil corporations will take what they want
using whatever political, economic, cultural or military leverage that is required.

The environmental movement cannot and will not be able to stop them. If you don't
believe me, ask yourself this question. Do you drive a car, fly in planes, travel on
buses or trains or use any machinery that utilizes a petroleum product? If so and of
course you do, then are you willing to no longer do any of the above? If your answer
is yes, you will be defined as a member of a very insignificant and wacky minority
and your choice of abstaining will not even be noticed.

What we have in other words are 6.4 billion oil addicts and we all need our daily fix
to keep on functioning.Which means of course that there is no strategy that can be
developed to convince people to not consume oil and because the burning of oil is a
major contributor to global warming, finding a solution is practically non-existent.

Putting people first because Shellenberger and Nordhaus say so

The writers Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus make many
generalizations in their paper, again based on the fact that they only interviewed 25
elite people.For example they quite bluntly state, "Why, for instance, is a human-
made phenomenon like global warming - which may kill hundreds of millions of
human beings over the next century - considered "environmental"? Why are poverty
and war not considered environmental problems while global warming is? What are
the implications of framing global warming as an environmental problem - and
handing off the responsibility
for dealing with it to "environmentalists"?
  
When did they decide that environmentalists do not regard poverty and war as
environmental issues. I think most environmentalists would look on these two issues
as environmental issues.
  
As a co-founder of the Greenpeace Foundation, I can attest to the fact that we were
first motivated by our opposition to nuclear testing and that whereas the green
stands for the environmental concerns of the organization, the peace stands for it's
opposition to war. Greenpeace was founded by environmentalists from the Sierra
Club and by Quakers.
  
Most wars are fought over territory and resources and the 21st Century will see
numerous conflicts over resources. There are now wars for oil and the water wars
are on the approaching horizon. Most environmentalists are well aware that human
beings are a part of the environment and not separate from it. The problem is that
most of society, those who are not environmentalists, tend to see humanity as
separate and above the environment.
 
So Shellenberger and Nordhaus are being unfair in accusing environmentalists of
not being sensitive to the fact that people are of the environment and not apart from
it. What they are actually suggesting is that environmentalists begin to identify more
with people issues and move away from what they consider non-people issues. In
other words, the environmental movement should put people first and trees and
animals, creeks and salamanders second. But this of course would be contrary to
the law of interdependence of species.
  
I suspect that what Shellenberger and Nordhaus are really advocating is the death of
environmentalism and replacement with humanism. They would like us to embrace
politics, economics and culture to advance human concerns and human causes, to
work with unions and progressive organizations to challenge the Republican right
wingers. In other words, they are talking about redefining the environmental movement as if it
was the Democratic Party.

And lets face it, the environmental movement, especially the rising spectre of the
Green Party is a threat and a distraction to the Democratic Party. They would like
nothing better than to engulf and absorb environmentalists. But although some
environmentalists may be left and blue and a few right and red, others are neither
and have no use for political definitions.

To be green is to reject right and left, and to be green is definitely not blue or red.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus state that "Most environmentalists don't think of "the
environment" as a mental category at all - they think of it as a real "thing" to be
protected and defended. They think of themselves, literally, as representatives and
defenders of this thing." Yes except, we also think of it in terms of self-defense also.
When I protect a whale, I know I am not just defending the whale, I am also
defending myself and the oceans.

The law of interdependence recognizes that the "thing" out there includes the
"thing" somewhere else. I don't think that Shellenberger or Nordhaus have any idea
of how environmentalists view themselves and their relationship to the environment.
They have their own perceptions and they have the views of the 25 people they
interviewed and yet they have the audacity to describe how the entire movement
thinks. It really is quite incredibly arrogant. Even more incredible, they then move
on to say that environmentalists are narrow-minded and suggest that we believe for
example when we talk about global warming it must be exclusively within the
framework of the environment and not include the economy, industrial policy or health care.

This suggests that environmentalists are simple minded and do not think outside of
what they define as environmentalism. As any Greenpeacer, Earth Islander, Earth
Firster or Sierra Clubber can attest, discussions on global warming do indeed
incorporate the economy, industrial policy, health care and many other factors. I
think that if Shellenberger or Nordhaus would bother to review past and current
issues of the Earth Island Journal, the Earthfirst! Journal or Worldwatch amongst
many other environmental publications they would find that social issues,
specifically social justice issues are a
large part of the coverage of these organizations. The fact is that environmental
groups have been involved in the debate on world trade issues. Environmental
groups have forged alliances with labor unions, political parties, social justice
groups. In fact,
environmental groups have done all of the things that Shellenberger and Nordhaus
are
advocating for them to do.

In their paper, the authors state the following:

Consider what would happen if we identified the obstacles as:
   1. The radical right's control of all three branches of the US government.
   2. Trade policies that undermine environmental protections.
   3. Our failure to articulate an inspiring and positive vision.
   4. Overpopulation.
   5. The influence of money in American politics.
   6. Our inability to craft legislative proposals that shape the debate around core
American values.
   7. Poverty.
   8. Old assumptions about what the problem is and what it isn't.

While these two were writing their paper, many environmental groups were or had
previously considered each and every one of these points. They set these points
down like they are some intellectual revelation the rest of us have not heard of, or
considered
before. They make the blanket accusation that environmentalists look on the
problem as too much carbon in the atmosphere and the only viable solution is to
lower carbon emissions.
  
My response is to say the following:

   Consider what would happen if we identified the obstacles as:
   1. Six point four billion people and growing.
   2. Inability of people to stop wanting more consumer products.
   3. Inability of people to stop manufacturing consumer products.
   4. Inability of humanity to kick the oil addiction.
   5. Inability of people to identify with the Earth and to discontinue beliefs in
spiritual nonsense.
   6. Inability of most people to recognize themselves as the problem.
   7. Humanity's obsession with trivial problems and trivia in general.
   8. The fact that most of humanity doesn't really care i.e. general apathy and
certainly general non-involvement.

Our Failure to Kick God's Almighty Ass

In short, Shellenberger and Nordhaus are attempting to scape-goat
environmentalists for the failures of humanity overall. Perhaps they are suggesting
the Christian solution that environmentalism must die for the sins of humanity.
 
In any case, the real failure is the inability of the human race to accept collective
responsibility for the problems. Humanity is locked into a system of anthropocentric
thought that dictates restrictions on solutions based only on the economic, political,
cultural and social realities that have been deemed as acceptable by anthropocentric
thought.
  
It goes back to the old Earth First! saying of "subvert the dominant paradigm." As
unrealistic as that might be, it is a requirement for real change.
  
Recently I was in West Africa. In Dakar, I saw a dirty, chaotic, polluted city of two
million people. Senegalese fishing is collapsing. The animals are disappearing. The
water is becoming scarce. Garbage is tossed on the beaches for the tide to take
away. Children were everywhere, many were begging. In a country where the
average annual income is
only $1600, people were still buying gas for $4 a gallon. They were buying
cigarettes and beer, American running shoes and designer clothing. Their primary
concern was not ecology, the preservation of wilderness, or the protection of
animals, nor was it air or water pollution. Instead the primary concerns were
consumerism and the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
  
The plane that I left Dakar on was full. The airport was crowded. People pushing
and shoving and feeling very proud of the fact that they have saved enough to afford
the flight and expenses to get them to Mecca where they walk like mumbling robots
around a stone in a square for a few days repeating the mindless rhetoric about God
being great.
  
Now this is the number one obstacle to change - this fanatical obsession with pie in
the sky lunacy called religion. These Haj bound pilgrims have found their solution
because poverty and pollution are unimportant as long as they believe in Allah. And
the same holds true in the United States where the American God will demonstrate
his love by allowing his followers to accumulate wealth without guilt, just so long
as they vote to keep men from the abomination of sleeping with other men.
  
So it is true that environmental movements have failed to address this major
obstacle to addressing problems and few will ever dare to do so. This leaves the
environmental movement in the frustrating position of attempting to educate people
about problems that they see as secondary to their beliefs.

How can we address over population when all of the world's dominant religions
stress the importance of bringing more people into God's world? How can we
address over population when all the world's dominant religions insist that humans
are better than, superior to, and lords over all other species? I did not see anywhere
in their paper where Shellenberger and Nordhaus suggest we tackle religion.

But We Do Love Our American Automobiles
  

They did make a big deal about cars and how environmentalist failed to kiss ass to
the unions and wanted too much clean air and thus failed to compromise. In other
words, environmentalists failed by advocating for higher standards instead of
compromising with the auto workers.
  
But the real problem is that it does not matter if cars are fuel efficient or not. All this
energy for fuel efficiency will not solve the problem. The fact is that there is a finite
amount of fossil fuel on the planet. All of this fossil fuel will be exploited as long as
there is money to be made by doing so. Fuel efficient cars may buy a few more years
of time but it will not stop the depletion of the resource. Besides, most fossil fuel is
consumed by industry and agriculture, fishing and shipping.

Collectively cars are also a major consumer but the difference between a Hummer
and a Prius is relatively minor compared to fuel consumption in all areas. What fuel
efficient cars do is to provide the market with a niche to appease the so called
environmentally sensitive consumer. It's really more of a feel good product.

And We Must Not Speak the Truth, it Upsets People

A few years ago, I was invited to a panel in Great Britain to address the hazards
faced by workers building Trident nuclear submarines. The union had invited
environmentalists, health professionals, social justice advocates, lawyers etc, to find
a solution to rising cancer rates amongst Trident workers.
  
There was lots of rhetoric and solidarity talk and so forth and people were feeling
good about the meeting although they did not even come close to offering a solution
other than to advocate voting for the Labour Party.
  
I was not very popular when I spoke up and made a simple suggestion. I said that the
workers should quit working on Trident; that if one was going to work in an
industrial ship-yard with nuclear materials, one should expect and certainly not be
surprised if some people are afflicted because of their involvement. The solution it
seemed to me was to not work on Trident.
  
Of course the participants were appalled. The unions dismissed me as anti-worker.
My fellow environmentalists dismissed me as insensitive to the unions. But the fact
was that no one was confronting the reality that these "workers" were voluntarily
involved in a hazardous occupation and furthermore they were producing a weapon
of mass destruction
designed to inflict death and destruction.
  
This was of course an abstraction to them. They saw themselves as workers entitled
to health coverage and entitled to a wage and the product of their labour was
unimportant.
  
In other words, they did not want environmentalists to point out reality to them, they
wanted environmentalists to support what they wanted for their own purposes. I
told them I had no intention of being their eco-whore and left the meeting.
  
The greatest obstacle to environmentalists is articulating reality so that the public
can understand what they mean. Environmentalists should not be incorporating
fantasy into their explanations. Environmentalists should not take on the role of
making people feel better about what they are doing. Environmentalists should be
screaming reality into
the faces of consumers and workers involved in environmentally destructive
occupations.

Greenpeace Did Present Another Alternative

   As a co-founder of Greenpeace, I believe that what transformed Greenpeace
from a small local grass roots group in Vancouver Canada to a major international
environmental organization today is that it was the first group to understand the
nature of media in relation to environmentalism. We gave the media what the media
wanted - drama, action, outrageous comments and controversy.
  
We live in a media culture and Greenpeace was the first group to participate in this
media culture whereas most other groups were outside as commentators
occasionally.The problem with Greenpeace however is that they allowed
bureaucracy to take over and this stifled imagination and the evolution of tactics
forcing the organization into reruns for the last fifteen years.
  
But Shellenberger and Nordhaus did not even mention Greenpeace in their paper.
In fact, this is not a serious critique of environmentalism by environmentalists as it
is a critique by liberal democrats of the environmental movement.

Halleluiah, I have found the Lord.

My favorite part of the paper is where they say:

"Environmentalists need to tap into the creative worlds of myth-making, even
religion, not to better sell narrow and technical policy proposals but rather to figure
out who we are and who we need to be."

I guess they figure that if religion has worked for the Republicans it can work for
the Democrats. And unfortunately some environmental groups are falling for this.
The Sierra Club has invited Barack Obama to be a keynote speaker at the Sierra
Summit scheduled for September 2005.

I am not personally impressed with Obama. I do not trust any politician who thanks
God for his victory. And I have not heard him say anything new or enlightening.
What I have heard is that he is half black, a good family man and he believes in
God. That may mean something in some circles but not much in mine.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus conclude their paper by asking:

"Are existing environmental institutions up to the task of imagining the post-global
warming world? Or do we now need a set of new institutions founded around a
more expansive vision and set of values?"

I don't think there are any human institutions, let alone environmental institutions,
that are up to the task of imagining the post global world. So far the best reports on
the consequences of global warming have been published by the Pentagon and it
was not a
pleasant scenario.
  
Strangely the authors of the report seem to think that solutions can be found by
abandoning "traditional" environmental approaches (I was not aware we had been
around long enough to have traditional approaches) and embracing issues like the
high cost of health care, R& D tax credits and the overall competitiveness of the
American auto industry.
  
I can't imagine how addressing any of these issues will convince people to stop
driving cars, flying in airplanes and using electricity or having less children. I
suspect that the real reason for this paper is to promote the death of
environmentalism as a means to founding a new movement to be led of course by
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus and nouveau Shellenberger and Nordhaus
groupie and disciple Adam Werbach.

Perhaps I am being cynical but I fail to see the point in publishing a declaration on
the death of environmentalism as if it was some divine proclamation from some
God. The environmental movement is far from dead. It is perhaps the most vibrant,
complex, and important movement in the world today. It may not be winning every
battle but the enemy is all powerful and well organized.

It is the Jedi knights against the Empire for sure and numbers and victories do not a
movement make. A movement is a force motivated by inspiration with objectives,
sometimes defined and sometimes not. Its strength lies in ideas, dreams, imagination
and courage. It grows like a cancer on the body of the opposition and by sheer
stubbornness, persistence and determination it prevails or it is lanced from the body
and fails. What a movement does not do is declare its own death and demand its
own surrender.

Environmentalism is Dead, Long Live Shellenberger and Nordhaus

What this paper states therefore is that Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus
have resigned from the environmental movement and are seeking to make their way
in life under some other definition, which if they are successful will make them
wealthy, famous and whatever.

But what they will not do is revolutionize the masses to act on global warming
because global warming is not something that can be prevented since the
consequences are now upon us and will continue to manifest themselves in the form
of climate change, increased storms, rising sea-levels and all sorts of as yet
unimagined ways.

The environmental movement can only find ways for people to cope with the
consequences of the problem. To stop global warming now is all but impossible. It
would require the complete voluntary global shut-down of humanity's economic
systems and that will not happen.

Thermageddon

In his book Thermageddon, Robert Hunter predicts that the point of no return on
global warming will be reached by 2030. By then he says, the Arctic Ice cap will be
on the verge of vanishing entirely during the summer, which means its surface will
change from white to black, making it absorb heat instead of reflecting it, (it is
actually happening now),
and thus altering the planet's albedo. Beyond the moment of final polar dissolution
argues
Hunter, there will be absolutely nothing we can do to stop or reverse the
transformation set in motion. He then states that the consequences will be a
temperature-induced Gtterdmmerung so sweeping and destructive that there are
presently no words to describe it.

I agree with Hunter on everything but the time frame. Thirty years may be his time
frame for averting the disaster but that presumes that humanity will actually address
the problem. As we mainline the black gold into our societal arteries, we are literally
riding much too high and fast to dwell on the consequences. "Hey man, I'm on a
high, don't be a
bummer."

Not even the ultra-liberals will support the shutting down of the global petroleum
industry. That just is not going to happen. Hunter envisions a world global energy
revolution but in a world where more and more people are retreating into cocoons of
religious ignorance and oil industries actually control the most powerful government
in the world, such a revolution is not going to happen.

Change can only be expected after the full force of the disaster has been
experienced. The recent Tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean will be considered a picnic in
comparison to the climate induced disasters that await us over the next few decades.

But I am one of those environmental wackos that Shellenberger and Nordhaus
dismiss as environmental Cassandras. Never mind the fact that Cassandra for all her
doom and gloom predictions, was proven to have been right on the mark.

We Deserve a Break Today so Give us a Shellenburger and Nordhaus
Happy Meal


Shellenberger and Nordhaus want to give us happy meals wrapped up in positive,
pretty wrappings. They want to repackage environmentalism as something more
enticing to the consumer. In other words they want to sell a feel good product and
not risk discouraging the consumer.

Because this is what they are in fact doing - catering to the consumer. For large
environmental organizations, that is what people and specifically their memberships
are. They are clients. They give money and in return they want a product. Some
want to see results, most just want to feel good about themselves as concerned
advocates for a better environment.

Environmental groups solicit support through direct mail and advertising and then
work to hold onto their clients by promises, merchandising, and positive
reinforcement of their product. And the product is the illusion of solving
environmental problems.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus simply want to repackage the illusion into a non-
environmental more inclusive social activism approach. Nothing very revolutionary
here, just changing the window dressing. They are seeking foundation funding for
their "new" and "revolutionary" manifesto of post environmentalism. And they will
probably get funding. I will not be surprised. People love to try new diets, new fads,
new ideas and
new illusions.

Meanwhile at the top of the world the hole in the ice gets larger every year. At the
bottom of the world, ice is shifting. In the oceans currents are changing course.
Winds are moving in new directions. Storms are appearing where storms were not a
problem before like last year's hurricane in Southern Brazil. In fact the nightly news
reports of late
look like previews for the recent move, The Day After Tomorrow.

The more things stay the same, the more things change.

Captain Paul Watson is the Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, serves as National Director on the Sierra Club, and was a Co-Founder of Greenpeace International. Currently Watson is captaining his ship north to do his part
for the seals. He has not yet given up on the movement.


www.seashepherd.org
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