May 19th, 2012
Making the world around us a better place seems like a fairly universal, non-partisan goal.
But at least in Utah, the words “environmentalism” and “environmentalist” can have strong negative connotations. That connotation isn’t unjustified either; to me, the environmentalism of past generations seems grating, simplistic and occasionally condescending. Like the author of this Grist article, I’m concerned about the environment, but even I don’t really feel comfortable calling myself an “environmentalist.”
In response, I think that when we talk about the environment, especially in Utah, we need a better and less polarizing term that better captures our values. That term, I believe, is “stewardship.” Moreover, I think if we really want to push traditionally ”green” policies, we’ll only talk about “stewardship.” For the sake of effectiveness, let’s expunge “environmentalism” from our vocabulary.
One reason for using this word in Utah is obvious: stewardship is a canonical value of the LDS Church. “Environmentalism,” on the other hand, is vilified by the political right.
But stewardship is a broader term as well. Environmental writers from many locations and backgrounds use it frequently already. And in any case, it seems to capture a better sentiment: people are supposed to wisely take care of the earth. In that way, “stewardship” can help people see that widely held values align with concepts they might otherwise reject as “environmentalism.”
Stewardship is also an active value, rather than a prohibitive one. So, for example, stewardship might suggest that we should plant trees rather than not cutting them down, as environmentalism tended to emphasize. We should walk to get places, rather than not driving so much. We should conserve and recycle, rather than not dumping trash in landfills.
Where “environmentalism” has come to imply a whole slew of pain-in-the-neck rules and anti-behaviors, “stewardship” implies active engagement. The end result is similar — less pollution, more trees, etc. — but stewardship focuses on individual action and simply “deactivates” destructive behavior collaterally.
This isn’t a new or revolutionary argument. And of course it’s a semantic issue that needn’t change the actual policies currently being pursued by green-oriented Utah citizens. But it’s also an issue that if properly “packaged” with more accurate terminology, can help people see that they have more common ground than quarrels. In other words, Provo may never be a city of environmentalists, but it’s already filled with potential stewards.
A plaque on a foot bridge over the Provo River. It reads, “We do not inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
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May 19th, 2012
Environmentalism and ‘saving the world’ are almost exclusively preoccupations of the left. Outwardly they are noble pursuits, and yet they have always smelt a bit rotten. In order to find the source of the odor it is necessary to look beneath the surface and understand what is going on at the psychological level when someone takes up these causes. Clues are few and far between, so when you find something in the press that hints at a deeper malaise, it’s worth looking at it very closely.
The following comment by English journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft is one such. He said:
“The great twin political problems of the age are the brutality of the right and the dishonesty of the left.”
By far the more straightforward of the two is the ‘brutality of the right’ and it can be explained by pretty much any of us. For example if I were to summarise my approach to life it would go something like this: “Normally I try to treat other people with respect, but essentially I am selfish and that is what normally guides my actions. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.” In essence that’s it – the brutality of the right flows from our selfishness. Most of you will relate.
It’s Wheatcroft’s second ‘problem’ that is the clue to what is wrong with environmentalism that we really want to look at. If we drill down into what is meant by the ‘dishonesty of the left’ we eventually come to the concept of ‘pseudo-idealism’. Pseudo-idealism is not real idealism, its feel-good selfishness masquerading as idealism. The vast majority of environmentalists belong to this camp: they preach their cause not from a genuine concern for the environment, but from a genuine concern for feeling good about themselves.
The psychology behind it is that we are all variously embattled at one level or another, and so ‘do-gooding’ can be massively seductive because it is so guilt relieving.
However – and here is the danger – in order to get the full guilt relieving benefit from ‘do-gooding’ (or any of the myriad forms of political correctness including environmentalism), the practitioner has to delude themselves that they are not on a selfish trip. In most cases this is so patently absurd that they have to work very hard at maintaining it. As a result they can become not just a strident advocate, but fanatical and intolerant of others who continue to battle.
This is dangerous because such intolerance is repressive and in essence anti-progress; and I don’t just mean economic progress – at a deeper level this intolerance is repressive of all progress.
In Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face”. If that future isn’t now, it is very close. Political correctness has become so pervasive in all its various guises that the boot may as well have a ‘dolphin friendly’ stamp on it, and as for the face – well we aren’t allowed to discuss its race or its gender or even its age can we – but I can guess it looks pretty much like you and me.
So the dishonesty of the left is manifold – it deludes it’s self that it is selfless when in fact it is extremely selfish; and its insistence we all ‘do good’ masks a threat far more dangerous than the brutality of the right.
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May 16th, 2012
 If you were cryogenically frozen in the early 1970s, like Woody Allen was in Sleeper, and brought back to life today, you would obviously find much changed about the world.
Except environmentalism and its underlying precepts. That would be a familiar and quaint relic. You would wake up from your Rip Van Winkle period and everything around you would be different, except the green movement. It’s still anti-nuclear, anti-technology, anti-industrial civilization. It still talks in mushy metaphors from the Aquarius age, cooing over Mother Earth and the Balance of Nature. And most of all, environmentalists are still acting like Old Testament prophets, warning of a plague of environmental ills about to rain down on humanity.
For example, you may have heard that a bunch of scientists produced a landmark report that concludes the earth is destined for ecological collapse, unless global population and consumption rates are restrained. No, I’m not talking about the UK’s just-published Royal Society report, which, among other things, recommends that developed countries put a brake on economic growth. I’m talking about that other landmark report from 1972, the one that became a totem of the environmental movement. Read More
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May 16th, 2012
The Green Detroit Festival, a fair that will make its first appearance in downtown Detroit this weekend, hopes to bring small business entrepreneurs and eco-enthusiasts together under one tent.
The event runs Friday and Saturday, with an ambitious set of goals, including to promote sustainable lifestyles in the city, to showcase local green businesses, to educate construction professionals about green building techniques and to support local businesses.
The fair was organized by Bliss Cureton, a local entrepreneur who runs the Greenbliss Group, a collection of companies that sell environmentally safe cleaning products and offer eco-friendly home design services. She also received help (and space) from the Horatio Williams Foundation.
This may be the first year for the festival, but Cureton is no novice at environmental event-planning; she sponsored Earth Day events in Detroit the last two years. She told The Huffington Post she became interested in environmentalism after hearing about global warming at a party in 2007.
“I had little idea about what it was about,” she explained. So she began to investigate, doing her own research and learning even more about green practices after spending some time at eco-friendly home supply stores in Los Angeles. In time, Cureton developed a passion for home-related environmentalism, launching the Greenbliss website in 2010.
The Green Detroit Festival will leave few green stones unturned, with sections on organic foods, holistic healing, pollution prevention, energy saving resources gardening, home remodeling, wealth management, Michigan products and Detroit businesses. It will also feature speakers and demonstrations, a green job fair, a car show and resources for businesses and homeowners. About 25 vendors and several food trucks will participate in the fair’s green marketplace.
Cureton said she realizes sustainability may not currently be a top priority for many in the city, but hopes the hands-on nature of the Green Detroit Festival will provide a friendly atmosphere for Detroit residents to begin to learn more about environmentally-safe products and practices.
“I’m still one of those old school people who think you still have to touch it, feel it, to get it,” she said. “No one’s going to change overnight. You take baby steps and you gradually get there.”
The Green Detroit Festival takes place at 1010 Antietam in Downtown Detroit on May 18 and 19. Friday’s events last from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and will include free asthma screenings. Saturday’s events run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will include a pet adoption section. For more information visit greendetroitfest.com
Also on HuffPost:
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May 10th, 2012
Shelby Spees
Staff Writer
Illustration by Irene Wang
Governor Jerry Brown recently issued an executive order requiring state agencies and departments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, water use and grid-based energy use, according to an April 25 press release. Brown hopes that the state of California will become a leader in energy efficiency.
“We must lead by example,” said Brown, who hopes to take advantage of California’s collective purchasing power to set new standards for energy efficiency nationwide.
According to Brown, this initiative “will shrink our environmental footprint and save taxpayers millions of dollars.” The U.S. Green Building Council also promotes the savings benefits of environmental design, arguing that throughout “the life of the building, lower operations and maintenance costs will produce significant savings.”
California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, which supports Brown’s assertion, says that “green building may cost more up front, but saves through lower operating costs over the life of the building.” CalRecycle also emphasizes less quantifiable benefits such as “improving occupant health, comfort, productivity [and] reducing pollution and landfill waste.”
The University of California Davis Energy Efficiency Center is responsible for much of the research behind the governor’s new mandate. According to a UCD news article, “lighting accounts for nearly 30 percent of California’s electricity use,” which means that Brown’s initiative to lower grid-based energy use by 20 percent by 2018 will involve replacing inefficient electrical lighting with new technologies like LED and CFL, or compact fluorescent lamp, which readers may recognize as the spiral light bulbs with a lifetime from 8 to 15 times that of incandescent bulbs.
Green building technology approaches smart design from many angles, from urban planning to energy and water efficiency. Many may be familiar with environmentally friendly materials, which are often recycled and have low toxicity, and according to CalRecycle, green builders will also plan to use fewer materials overall.
By next year, “green buildings will support nearly 8 million workers in a range of occupations including construction managers, carpenters, electricians, architects, truck drivers and cost estimators, among many others,” the U.S. Green Building Council writes.
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May 10th, 2012
I just got an email from the Sierra Club, wanted me to get on board for a piece of environmentalism that goes like this:
This year, Assembly member Felipe Fuentes has a bill that would allow the Calico Solar Project, a solar project in California that will cover 4,613 acres—four times the size of the Golden Gate Park- within an area key to the survival of the desert tortoise- to bypass the environmental review process that almost all other projects are subject to.
I see no reason that anyone or anything should be exempt from the standard environmental review processes. Having said that, it’s always struck me as inflexible to refuse to make tough choices. Imaging 4,613 acres as all PV, we’d have about a gigawatt (after using a capacity factor of 0.2) , a replacement for a coal-fired power plant. I hate to sound insensitive, but considering the larger ecological and health-related issues of burning coal, I would think that the savings would justify exiling some desert tortoises.
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May 7th, 2012
I still have dirt under my fingernails, dirt that my pink nail brush couldn’t quite reach even with furious brushing, dirt that likely lingers with bacteria that would make a hypochondriac shudder, a clean freak, well freak, but for me serves as a reminder of a day spent under a veiled sky pleading for the sun to come out while transplanting sorrel, helping five-year-olds press radish seeds into the earth, and even digging for worms.
Photo Image: psmag
It was a good day. But almost every Saturday during the growing season is a good day, because I get the absolute bliss of working in a botanical garden.
My friends don’t understand it.
How after a full week’s work, I can voluntarily sign away my Saturday’s as well.
It’s not for the money.
There’s something important, something primal about being outside, about getting dirty, that we as Americans stuck behind our screens – computer, television, telephone – lose touch of. Even environmentalists aren’t immune. As we grow intellectually more aware of the planet we’re trying to save, our direct experience, interaction, relationship with that planet dwindles to what we can see on Google Earth.
It’s an awareness of this paradoxical situation - that we’re growing more aware of the environment even as our interaction with the natural world declines – that makes my most recent read – My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism - so fabulous. Gessner narrates a recent trip down the distinctly urban Charles River as a reminder that while protecting the wilderness “out there” is important, so too is getting to know the wilderness “right here”. He’s not alone in this assessment, Paul Kingsworth over at Orion in his piece Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist hi-lights this problem as well.
When you intellectualize the environment, along with the good – a better framework for understanding natural systems – at least two problems emerge. The first is that protecting the environment becomes like eating your vegetables – something you have to do for health, because it’s good and not because well it has value in and of itself.
Here’s the thing.
I love veggies. On more than one occasion - last night for example , after a dinner of chickentikka masala spiced chicken served on a bed of mashed cauliflowers (mashed with just a hint of shredded parmesan cheese) and a side of roasted broccoli (with plenty of red pepper flakes), I’ve emerged feeling guilty because I’ve learned to associate delicious, stomach busting meals with “unhealthy.” Except, it was not only delicious, it was fantastically nutritious. A meal I’d happily eat again, and again, and again.
Like eating our veggies we have associated protecting the environment with guilt. Something we feel bad if we don’t do but ignoring how awesome the environment is.
Climbing trees, floating in watering holes, watching chipmunks, these are all things that delight. Why wouldn’t we want to keep these around?
The other problem is that it acts like we human beings aren’t part of the environment, leading us to ignore the natural systems right beneath our noses. People – even New Yorkers – are always shocked when I point out that the Bronx River is a fresh river that one can go kayaking on, or that a new species was just found in Central Park. Even in the most urban environs humans and the environment coexist.
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May 7th, 2012
Recent shifts in aesthetics consider the relationship between aesthetics and everyday architectures and how our aesthetic experience might contribute to environmentally- and socially-sustainable practices. This paper is an examination of aesthetic experiences in domestic settings and how positive and negative aesthetic experiences shape our approach to domestic practices, sustainable decision-making, and our wider feelings about the home environment. In particular, I consider domestic-aesthetic experience within the kitchen, exploring how both the physical design of the kitchen and bodily schema enacted there constitute aesthetic experiences.
Arnold Berleant’s engagement model provides some guidance as to how aesthetics might be engaged in everyday life, in that he provides a basis for thinking about aesthetics without any requirement of artwork or artistry. Instead, aesthetic experience is constituted by a full-body engagement or sensory-continuity with a landscape or environment, which can easily be applied to a domestic setting in which one is often relaxed, engaging in household chores, and apart from the spectatorship or performance of a traditional aesthetic model. I argue that Berleant’s model provides a good framework for considering the total experience of domestic practices, in which one feels at home in both their bodies and surroundings. I explore whether this re-engagement with bodily experience of a place and practice can be linked to ethical outcomes such as environmental sustainability.
Building on Yuriko Saito’s work on civic environmentalism and aesthetics, I examine the ways in which aesthetic factors affect our decisions and whether calls for sustainable consumption and design can be supported by a renewed attention to the aesthetics of everyday life. Saito observes that the aesthetic engagement of people with certain places can be channelled into ethical outcomes; here, this is applied to everyday domestic practices. For example, the embodied experience of cooking relates not only to what we end up eating, but also to the ways in which the kitchen is designed and maintained and the ways in which food is selected and consumed. Motivations for sustainability are, as a result, intimately linked with both pleasure and displeasure in daily life, demonstrating the subtle significance of domestic aesthetics within environmental aesthetics, architecture, and thinking about environment on the whole.
Jessica J. Lee, York University, CA
jlee11@yorku.ca
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May 3rd, 2012
May 3, 2012
By Matt Palmer
While watching the news last night I saw a cool story about a Pastor in Welland, Ontario who is spearheading an effort to create a completely off-grid community for disadvantaged, low-income and homeless people, by building low-cost environmentally sustainable homes. One of the main ingredients in the homes – straw. The homes cost about $70,000 each to build, far less than the average, and the town where they are building the pilot project has donated the land.
The city of Toronto has recently instituted a mandatory green roof bylaw for industrial, commercial and some residential new builds. The impacts of this type of legislation could are significant. Making more space for urban gardens on vacant land or roof tops makes a lot of sense.
I could write for days about solutions being discovered and implemented all over the world, a global movement to use less, consume less, and become more environmentally responsible. Despite this, we all know that there is much we can do to be better stewards of the planet and its resources. But, it feels good to know how much effort is going into solving complex problems that affect us all.
Yet, over the last few days, I have seen a few different articles by environmentalists, including this one from the Huffington Post, coinciding with the Conservatives first year in power as a majority government, calling for all-out war against government and corporate interests. I know it has become an over-used quote from a great song but one has to ask “War, what is it good for?”. What are the costs of engaging in a war?
First of all, it is clear that environmental groups are under serious attack. Some may feel the attack is justified. Over the past many months the Federal Government has put in place a strategy seemingly with the intent of marginalizing certain environmental groups, and their ability to intervene in the approval process of industrial projects like pipelines. With the changes to terrorism guidelines and definitions, environmental review panels, and now investigations into charitable tax code violations – are environmental NGO’s spending more than 10% of resources on political advocacy – the Government is streamlining industrial approval processes, and limiting who can intervene.
The stated intent of these government measures is to keep radical environmentalists from impeding needed projects from moving forward in a timely fashion. Is it really necessary to have 4,000 plus interveners in the Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings, when many people will be arguing the same point? Would reducing the number of interveners, but still ensuring that experts and community leaders have time to state their case, limit the ability of environmental groups and First Nations to have their legitimate concerns heard with the potential of stopping approval?
But is there in fact a darker strategy at play? What if part of the strategy of these moves by the Government is to increase the anger among environmentalists, provoking them to speak out more vehemently, passionately, thereby making them seem even more radical and scary?
This is not a defence of any side, rather to ask, is this way forward, to call for war, to increase the conflict, and the rhetoric? How we produce, distribute and consume energy is a serious issue. We can and must be better than where we are at in this debate and where it is heading. Pipelines are not perfect, but neither are wind turbines, solar panels, bio-fuels, nuclear etc. Any choice we make will have impacts on the environment. Our depth of understanding of those impacts is greater with some fuel sources, than with other sources. It is prudent to figure out the impacts of newer technologies so we can work on lessening them.
Man has an impact on the environment. We need resources to live. Harnessing resources comes with costs. If we launch into a “war” over the environment all of us will lose. Arguing for certain energy sources based purely on economic issues (jobs) is short-sighted, just as arguing against oil and pipelines, or wind and nuclear based on environmental impacts misses the bigger picture of how our global system works.
We cannot switch away from oil and fossil fuels overnight, most people understand this, yet the myth persists that we can, and that there is a conspiracy holding us back. Talk to any scientist working on long-term battery technology, an essential component that would lead to greater success and implementation of intermittent energy sources like wind and solar, and ask if some conspiracy has held them from making advances? It might just be the laws of physics that is holding them back.
I was watching a video the other day by a prominent environmentalist, and one of his pitches for the future was lighter electric automobiles made from carbon fibre technology. Absolutely a great idea, but in his pitch of how we “get off our addiction to oil” he fails to point out where “carbon” comes from. Oil. Is this a conspiracy?
Environmentalists, as well as corporations and governments, need to continue to push, to ensure that oversight of industrial projects is rigorous and that consequences for mistakes that cause environmental damage are serious. That includes major alternative energy projects. How this push happens is important, because here is a possible unpleasant unintended consequence that is already playing out all over the world: as communities discover that all energy projects come with trade-offs, forces within those communities rise up to protest and to work to stop them. Oil pipelines, natural gas drilling, coal mining, large-scale wind and solar projects, nuclear plants, and hydro-electric projects around the world have run into issues with protests by community and environmental groups. If these types of energy infrastructure projects start getting denied, and it is already happening, where does that leave us for the future and meeting the energy needs of the planet?
Most oil and gas companies have come a long way in their environmental practices, some are exceptional in their efforts and successes. All these companies must be even better in their environmental performance, and as shareholders in these companies – either directly through stock ownership or mutual funds – we have a responsibility to ensure that environmental stewardship does not take a backseat to profits. Greener more sustainable practices have been proven time and again to increase the bottom line.
As voters, and citizens we are responsible for holding our elected officials accountable, and not just at election time.
So does this have to be a war? I have a sense that some people reading this will say absolutely yes, it does have to be war. What does that say about our society, and about us as individuals if that is the case? Is war in line with the morals and values we say we want to live by?
As we move to become systems thinkers, perhaps options other than all-out war become visible, and feasible.
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May 3rd, 2012
 By Nick Simeone, AFPS
WASHINGTON, May 3, 2012 – Climate and environmental change are emerging as national security threats that weigh heavily in the Pentagon’s new strategy, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told an environmental group last night.
“The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security,” Panetta said here at a reception hosted by the Environmental Defense Fund to honor the Defense Department in advancing clean energy initiatives. “Rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” Panetta said. [WOTN Editor comments in bold/brackets: These scenes have played out numerous times in movies and Al Gore sci-fi documentaries, but natural disasters continue to unaffected by man, and moderate compared to long-term geological records.]
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