RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #744

[Guest guest]

The Environmental Movement--Part 4

REBUILDING THE MOVEMENT TO WIN

 

The environmental movement is a huge, powerful political force

that would appear to be unstoppable. In 30 short years it has (1)

passed a dozen pieces of national legislation, creating a

government regulatory system that its adversaries dubbed " command

and control; " (2) forced corporations to reveal each year that

they routinely dump millions of tons of cancer-causing chemicals

into our common property (our air and water); (3) launched a very

fundamental critique of the entire industrial enterprise, that it

is not " sustainable; " and even (4) challenged the bedrock idea

that all human activities add up to " progress. "

 

Furthermore, by publicizing evidence of environmental damage, the

environmental movement has gained the support of most of the

public. Large majorities of the public -- at least two thirds --

when asked, say they want the environment protected, even at

considerable expense.[1]

 

Yet despite these phenomenal successes and the political power of

these issues, in recent years anti-environment forces have gained

the upper hand. Progress toward environmental protection has

stalled and in some instances slid backward. In Washington, the

environmental movement has been on the defensive, really, since

Ronald Reagan took office in 1980. Things improved only

marginally during the Clinton/Gore years.

 

How did anti-environmental forces become so powerful? During 30

years of hard work, self-styled " conservatives " have mobilized a

huge constituency that accepts a corporate-driven

anti-environment agenda. Most such " conservatives " tend to hold

traditional European beliefs: that nature was created, in a

primitive and unfinished state, by a Christian God who also put

humans on Earth, separate from nature and superior to it, with a

sacred duty to improve the environment by dominating and

controlling it. In this view, humans are entitled -- even obliged

-- to exploit nature because God put them on Earth for that

purpose. (The alternate view, that humans are the appointed

stewards of God's creation, is a distinctly minor strain in

Christian and secular European thinking.)[2]

 

This " conservative " constituency includes various groups that

share one or more of the following goals:

 

(a) to reduce taxes to make government smaller (and as a

consequence, intended or not, to reduce the number of government

jobs, which tend to be union jobs and which tend to be available

to non-white people);

 

(b) to increase U.S. military power, and to avoid entangling

alliances (such as the U.N.) so that the U.S. can remain free to

pressure any country, as needed, to protect access to foreign

supplies of cheap labor and raw materials;

 

© through " free trade " agreements, to give U.S. corporations

freedom and power to maneuver abroad, to evade taxes, to bribe

public officials, to support private armies, to exploit

indigenous labor, to extract natural resources and to dump

toxicants, as needed to improve profitability;

 

(d) to stamp out abortion and homosexuality, to return women to

their early 20th-century roles, and to enforce overt allegiance

to selected Christian slogans in our public institutions;

 

(e) to keep the economic " playing field " tilted to the advantage

of white people by denying the existence of white privilege,

which gives unearned advantages to whites from birth onward (a

subject to be explored in some detail in our next issue);[3]

 

(f) to imprison non-whites in numbers far out of proportion to

their rates of involvement in various criminal behaviors,

applying a different standard of justice to whites;[4]

 

(g) to punish the poor by making their lives difficult;

 

(h) to routinely violate international human rights agreements

and standards by making it difficult or impossible for U.S.

workers to form unions, bargain collectively and, if all else

fails, to strike;

 

(i) to create and sustain an enormous industry devoted to

distorting, ignoring and, in some cases, fabricating scientific

" facts " without any basis, as needed to retain political

advantage;

 

(j) to retain and expand the influence of private wealth in

public elections;

 

(k) to slowly replace popular democracy with control by corporate

elites.

 

Naturally few or no " conservatives " hold every one of these

views, and some " conservatives " find some of these ideas utterly

repugnant. Still the " conservative " movement is a huge tent

holding many different people, some of whom hold each of these

views, and because they can work together they create a potent

political force that promotes the corporate anti-environment

agenda in return for support on other " conservative " agenda

items.[5]

 

Today the traditional environmental movement is not

well-positioned to prevail against these pro-corporate

anti-environmental forces because the traditional environmental

movement was founded on the assumption that legal and scientific

expertise, and rational debate, would suffice to protect the

environment. Without detracting from the very substantial

legislative accomplishments of the traditional environmental

movement -- achieved through years of dedication, personal

sacrifice and extraordinary effort -- it nevertheless remains

true that the " traditional strategies and policy solutions being

employed are proving to be increasingly limited, " notes Professor

Daniel Faber at Northeastern University.[6] This is something of

an understatement. Traditional approaches have relied on

lawsuits and on lobbying, and neither tactic is presently very

effective. Legislatures and the courts are dominated by

" conservative " activists who see the environment as something God

intended us to exploit and who tend to believe that, since the

corporate agenda works for them, it's good for us all.

 

In sum, to build on the successes of the traditional

environmental movement and overcome the anti-environment forces

now arrayed in Washington and in statehouses across the country,

some new approaches will be needed.

 

Since 1980, an alternative to the traditional environmental

movement has been slowly forming in the U.S., though so far it

has gained little national visibility. It is called the

" environmental justice " movement, and though it has some problems

of its own, it represents a different approach to environmental

protection, one that speaks to people about protecting the places

where they live, work, and play.

 

As Daniel Faber has documented[6], the fabric of the

environmental justice movement is woven from six strands:

 

(1) The civil rights movement. Apartheid officially ended in the

U.S. in 1964, but environmental racism is still all too common.

The environmental regulatory system created during the 1970s and

1980s had the unintended effect of funneling pollutants into

communities of color. Well-off white people can usually buy their

way out of polluted neighborhoods, but people of color and the

poor often cannot. Pollution trading schemes, being promoted by

some traditional environmentalists, may be economically efficient

but they tend to heap additional burdens and injustices on the

poor and people of color.

 

(2) The occupational safety and health movement. The U.S. passed

its first national job safety law in 1970, but since then

enforcement has been lax or nonexistent. Furthermore, the law

excludes tens of millions of workers, such as farmworkers. At

least 60,000 workers die each year as a result of injuries and

illnesses related to dangerous working conditions. Another

850,000 are made sick. (See REHN #578.) At least 35 million

non-union workers say they would join a union if they could, to

protect themselves, but U.S. laws violate international human

rights standards by making unionization an uphill battle. Added

to existing unions, those 35 million would create the largest

union movement the U.S. has ever known, effectively shifting the

balance of power between the corporate elite and wage earners.

 

(3) The indigenous peoples' and native land rights movements,

made up of Native Americans, Chicanos, African Americans, and

other marginalized indigenous communities struggling to retain

and protect their traditional lands. Partly these groups are

fighting to control land resources, and partly they are trying to

retain cultural lifeways that are threatened with extinction by

the dominant society.

 

(4) The toxics movement (also known as the environmental health

movement) has been fighting for the clean-up of thousands of

contaminated waste sites across the country since 1978. The

toxics movement has also taken the initiative in discouraging

toxic technologies such as municipal garbage incinerators,

pesticides, so-called " low level " radioactive waste dumps,

coal-burning power plants, buried gasoline tanks, toxicants

dumped by the military, and more.

 

(5) Solidarity movements, human rights movements, and

environmental activists in the Third World are providing powerful

allies and examples of extraordinary, fearless activism. In South

Africa, Mexico, Burma, Indonesia, Nigeria, Central America, in

the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere local groups are fighting

the same fights being fought in the U.S. but with fewer resources

and against greater odds -- sometimes sacrificing their lives in

their persistent demand for environmental protection,

sustainability, self-determination, and justice.

 

(6) Community-based activists working for social and economic

justice have traditionally focused on issues of housing, public

transportation, crime and police conduct, access to jobs, a

living wage, redlining and lender practices, affordable daycare,

deteriorating schools, and dozens of other neighborhood issues.

They have not traditionally viewed their work as " environmental "

but now when they work on lead poisoning, cleaning up abandoned

toxic sites ( " brownfields " ), poor air quality, childhood asthma,

and other issues with an environmental component, they are

indisputably a part of the " environmental justice " movement.

 

In addition to these six strands, we see a powerful, burgeoning

seventh -- people whose health has been affected by multiple

chemical sensitivities, birth defects, breast cancer,

endometriosis, lymphoma, diabetes, chronic fatigue, veterans

affected by Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome, and many others.

 

An eighth strand includes the international " zero waste " and

" clean production " movements, which are quietly revolutionizing

the material basis of the industrial enterprise.

 

 

This powerful environmental justice movement -- which clearly has

the potential to become a new political mass movement -- is still

in its infancy. To grow to its potential it will need to be fed,

nurtured, cared for. It will need resources. In their report,

GREEN OF ANOTHER COLOR, Daniel Faber and Deborah McCarthy show

that, of all funds available for environmental work during the

period 1996 to 1999, some 96% went to the lawyers and scientists

of the traditional environmental movement, and only 4% went to

all the thousands of groups working to build the " environmental

justice " movement.[6] To really protect the environment (and

overcome the political power of the anti-environment

" conservatives " ), these funding priorities would have to change

substantially.

--Peter Montague

==========

 

[1] U.S. attitudes toward many environment-related questions can

be found at

http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/major_proposals_detail.cfm?issue_type=env

ironment & list=8

 

[2] Clive Ponting, A GREEN HISTORY OF THE WORLD (New York:

Penguin Books, 1993; ISBN 140176608). See Chapter 8.

 

[3] See, for example, Peggy McIntosh, " White Privilege: Unpacking

the Invisible Knapsack (1990). Available on the web at

http://www.uwm.edu/~gjay/Whiteness/mcintosh.htm

 

The same essay has appeared under different titles in a number of

places, among them RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER: AN ANTHOLOGY, edited

by Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins (Belmont,

Calif: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1992), pgs. 70-81.

 

See also: Rinku Sen and others, THE PERSISTENCE OF WHITE

PRIVILEGE AND INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IN US POLICY (Oakland,

Calif.: Applied Research Center [3781 Broadway, Oakland, CA

94611; Tel. (510) 653-3415], 2001). Available at:

http://www.arc.org/downloads/trji010417.pdf

 

[4] See

http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/justiceforsome/jfs.pdf

 

[5] See Jean Hardisty, MOBILIZING RESENTMENT (Boston: Beacon

Press, 2000; ISBN 0807043176) and Godfrey Hodgson, THE WORLD

TURNED RIGHT SIDE UP (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997; ISBN

0395822939).

 

[6] Daniel R. Faber and Deborah McCarthy, GREEN OF ANOTHER COLOR

(Boston, Mass.: Northeastern University, 2001), pg. 2. Available

at:

http://www.casdn.neu.edu/~socant/Another%20Color%20Final%20Report.pdf