Angry in the Great White North

For the environmental moment, global warming has represented a clear and present danger.

It has nothing to do with temperature or sea levels or any other imagined apocalyptic change in Earth's climate.

It has to do with the way environmentalists have allowed themselves to be so invested in this one single issue, that now that the edifice is crumbling, real environmental issues are being ignored.  And they are likely to be ignored for some time, until environmentalists regain some measure of credibility.

The fact that I recognize this is, of course, of no use to anyone, since I'm not an environmentalist (though I do freecycle aggressively and baked the bulk of the bread and pastries we eat at home).  What matters is when environmentalists recognize this fact.

Now, there is a sign that this could be happening.  Writing on the Mother Nature Network, Chris Baskind points out the effect of becoming so completely taken over by the global warming cause:

Environmentalism has essentially become a single-issue movement, and this is as bad for our overall cause as it is the planet.

This is progress, driven by the specters of rising global temperatures, melting glaciers, and castaway polar bears. But the very nature of this climate theatre has pushed aside -- at least in terms of popular agenda -- the fundamentals of Environmentalism: clean air, clean water, and care for the biodiversity on which human life depends. As I've been writing for the past few years, there are numerous issues demanding immediate attention which cannot be shoved aside by a sole focus on climate change.

The problem with being a one-issue movement is it only takes a single game changer to bring everything to a standstill. We're living through one of these today, in the form of worldwide recession.

For Baskind, the future will be minimalist, and on a personal level, I get what he means.  Frankly, I'm a bit ascetic in my tastes, and certainly frugal.  Still, I expect he and I would disagree on the role of government in promoting such a lifestyle, and on the matter of personal freedom to pursue more that what one needs, and on how that pursuit drives the economy. 

But at least our disagreement wouldn't start and end with me dismissing his point of view as a complete and utter fiction, a fraud perpetrated by powerful people looking to upend Western industrial society for their own benefit.  That "debate" is over in seconds, and goes nowhere.

Now I don't doubt that Baskind believes in global warming like all good environmentalists do, but for Baskind, there are things that environmentalists have been ignoring, or only discussing in the context of global warming, that ought to be brought back into focus, and without the mention of global warming.  He lists stronger environmental legislation for clean air and clean water, investment in renewable energy (he mentions scalable energy, suggesting he's not trying to limit our energy use, and makes no mention of emissions as the reason to move from oil), restoring fish stocks, clean water for people in the Third World (again, no suggestion that people are the problem), and his favourite thing -- minimalist living.

Oh what the heck, I'll give him the link.  You can learn about minimalist living at his website.  Interestingly, he quotes from the IPCC on that page.  I wonder if he's planning to remove that reference, just to decouple his cause from global warming.  I'll send him an email and ask.  I'll let you know what he says.

In any case, Baskind is very perceptive, both of the state of the environmental movement and how people are perceiving it, and he sees the exclusive fixation on global warming as fundamentally unhealthy.  Let's hope for environmentalism in general, more people think like him.  But it will take some time for environmentalists to shake off the dust and debris from the global warming disaster.  They have no one to blame but themselves.

Well, they can blame Al Gore.