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At forty-six, I am a tail-end baby boomer, a member of a generation that began with too much and quickly became accustomed to, and dependent upon, a way of life that was — and still is — destroying our natural and only home. I come from the N Y.suburbs, from the grid. I come from a place where — as author D.J. Waldie states — “the necessary illusion is predictability.”
The American Dream is a predictable illusion performed daily for the masses. It is the fantastical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that keeps us bound to a life of conformity.Conformity in America today is the most dangerous peer-pressure of all. It lurks unseen as the primary enemy of our environment.
Our nation almost escaped an industrialized, conformist future when the hippies followed on the heels of the Beat Generation. They started communes and co-ops. They organically farmed and gave birth to their children in their homes. They had a vision of a better, simpler, “greener” way of living, but, for one reason or another, the hippie movement that embodied such a drastic change of lifestyle, and a different way of thinking, simply fizzled out. The majority of non-conformists returned to mainstream society with the idealistic notion that true societal change could be wrought from within.
Youthful idealism, unfortunately, has a short lifespan within the ranks of the social order, because it is there that hardcore realism prevails. When the two meet, we become — as author John Nichols, in his memoir, An American Child Supreme, says —
“Trapped. Caught between capitalism and democracy.”
Nichols goes on to ask the astute question of our time: “How did a person live in just the democracy part of America?”
How indeed?
We are all caught between capitalism and democracy. This is our American fate, the mind-boggling conundrum we must deal with-and yes, while the nation is a republic(though a democratic one) and while capitalism has demonstrable good, it's the marriage of the two that is leading to what I believe to be fascism in this country, where the only votes that count are the ones of corporations. It is also the true dilemma of American environmentalism.
Thoreau’s eloquent words were misinterpreted. One heartfelt sentence fooled us into believing that if we preserved pieces of wildness, we could continue with — and justify — our current way of life. As long as we were “saving” certain parts of the environment, it became okay to accumulate frequent-flier miles and put fifty thousand miles on the car every year. Sanctuaries, refuges, preserves — call them what you will — they were long thought to be shelters from the coming storm of increasing industrialization, urbanization, over-population, pollution and consumerism.
They were not, nor were they ever, the preservation of the world.
American environmentalism is failing us because we are forgetting its single-most important message, something David Brower once said: “We have to drop our standard of living, so that people a thousand years from now can have any standard of living at all.”
It was over thirty years ago that the “Archdruid” said those words. He didn’t give examples. It seemed obvious what he meant.
American environmentalism today is the ironic and ubiquitous joke of a $50,000 SUV wearing a Sierra Club bumpersticker. It is a perpetual money-machine, a convoluted mass of non-profit organizations competing for the largest piece of American remorse.
We’re befuddled and mixed up; we think that the underlying philosophy of environmentalism is about “saving” a specific place, rather than how we choose to live in a certain place. We feel guilty about what our American standard of living is doing to the environment.
And we should.. We are co-conspirators in acid rain, global warming, ozone depletion and so much more. Guilt becomes remorse. Remorse becomes a check in the mail to “save the wilds.”
Those well-intentioned donations from private individuals, however, are not enough. Our new breed of environmentalism is an ever-growing entity that requires constant feeding beyond what mere individuals can offer, so it teams up with corporate America and subverts the “save the wilds” message into something like this internet ad: “Saving the great places — Chevy Silverado at work with the Nature Conservancy.”
That’s right, the marriage of a gas-guzzling pickup and an environmental organization. Click; a “special advertising section” pops up, informing me that there are millions of acres of wetlands lost each year and that they are crucial to the survival of wildlife. They are also “a key to our own survival.”
General Motors is a big supporter,” the ad continues, “donating cash and Silverado pickup trucks as part of a 10-year, $10 million support program.” Off to the side is a picture of a shiny 2003 Silverado, with the caption, “A Chevy Silverado is the first tool the Nature Conservancy reaches for when there’s work to do.”
Really? What about a good old-fashioned shovel?
The ad goes on: “With room for six in its extended cab, Silverado 4x4s get field biologists and agronomy experts through muddy terrain [it’s wetlands, after all] without tearing up the landscape.”
How is that possible? Does it hover above the ground? And here comes the kicker:
“General Motors is dedicated to protecting human health, natural resources and the global environment. This commitment is evident in GM’s relationship with The Nature Conservancy, the world’s leading private international conservation organization.”
I wanted to get this mixed message straight in my mind: buy a V8-powered pickup — save wetlands; support GM — donate to the Nature Conservancy. This seemed strikingly similar to the oxymoronic Vietnam War philosophy of destroying the village in order to save it.
Bill McKibben, in his book, The End of Nature, argues the premise that nature and wildness are no longer segregated from the surrounding cities and industrialization. The natural world still left in our parks and preserves isn’t natural at all; it is tainted and changed by what man has done. The culprits, he says — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons — “are the result not of some high and distant drama, a few grand explosions, but of a billion explosions of a hundred million pistons every second, near and far and insidiously common.”
Think of all those GM pistons pounding away, dedicated to protecting the global environment!
The President and CEO of the Nature Conservancy is Steven J. McCormick. He is a lawyer.Washington Post reporters Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway spent months looking into the compensation of Mr. McCormick. In the end, they published an article subtitled, “Conservancy underreported President’s pay and perks of office.” Their investigative piece revealed a tangled web of deceit and misinformation, but the gist of it is contained in this one paragraph: “McCormick ultimately provided information showing that his compensation and benefits for 2002 totaled about $420,000.”
I somehow expect our environmental “leaders” to live and behave a little more like Gandhi than some corporate executive, a little more like Jesus than a wealthy television evangelist. The profession of “environmentalist” should not be one that is hypocritically grounded in the white-collar world of $1,000-suits and million-dollar mansions. Lest you think that I’m highlighting only an anomalous example of our country’s environmental groups, here’s something to consider: In a 1994 report, the top twelve environmental organizations in the United States — the Sierra Club among them — were listed as having assets in excess of $1.2 billion. Major donors to these top twelve included Arco, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Exxon, Weyerhaeuser, to name just a few. The average salary of the top executives in the groups listed was just under $175,000. And that, mind you, was a decade ago.
Mainstream environmentalism has become — exactly because it is “mainstream” — one giant, ridiculous oxymoron. It has become part and parcel of what it opposes. It is in bed with the very forces it claims to fight against. It is wholly and happily fixed in the capitalistic part of America.
Why have Brower’s words disappeared into the ether? What happened to living simply so others could simply live? What caused so many of us to give in, and be taken in so easily?
Metaphorically speaking, maybe we just got tired of being on the bus. Public transportation of that kind no longer suited us. The more that stepped off, the harder it became for the ones that stayed, until eventually only a bewildered driver remained, piloting the empty bus further down the road while pondering the good excuses everyone had used to disembark.
I’m afraid our big brains might have us heading toward some Kurt Vonnegut future where humans eventually devolve into listless, flatulating seals. Ironically, the very thing that allowed us to survive and prosper as a species — our remarkable adaptability — is the same thing that is doing us in. We have adapted to breathe foul air, drink chemically treated water and eat food that isn’t natural or healthy. As the man says, “So it goes.”
But wait, I don’t mean to be so cynical. Our future isn’t yet written in stone. It’s not too late to change. Not quite.
To fix what ails our environment requires, to a large degree, going backward in order to move forward; using less in order to have more. We must give up certain things; sort out the beneficial technology from the destructive dross.
True environmentalism means sacrifice. Not the false sacrifice of monetary donations to today’s wealthy environmental orgs, but the true surrender of the mainstream ease and affluence in which we find ourselves. It requires a substantial change in how we view the place where we live — it requires a new, long overdue cultural revolution.
Saving the environment isn’t rocket science or something it takes a Ph.D. to explain. It doesn’t require years of academic studies and sheaves of economic charts and graphs. It doesn’t involve schmoozing and lobbying in Washington. It doesn’t even begin in the voting booth.
Saving the environment doesn’t require millions of dollars, just millions of people voluntarily choosing a simpler way of life. It begins right here, right now, with individuals willing to put their so-called environmental beliefs on the line.
Less is more. Backward is forward.
We all have to drop our standard of living so that people a hundred years from now can have any standard of living at all.
The American Dream is a predictable illusion performed daily for the masses. It is the fantastical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that keeps us bound to a life of conformity.Conformity in America today is the most dangerous peer-pressure of all. It lurks unseen as the primary enemy of our environment.
Our nation almost escaped an industrialized, conformist future when the hippies followed on the heels of the Beat Generation. They started communes and co-ops. They organically farmed and gave birth to their children in their homes. They had a vision of a better, simpler, “greener” way of living, but, for one reason or another, the hippie movement that embodied such a drastic change of lifestyle, and a different way of thinking, simply fizzled out. The majority of non-conformists returned to mainstream society with the idealistic notion that true societal change could be wrought from within.
Youthful idealism, unfortunately, has a short lifespan within the ranks of the social order, because it is there that hardcore realism prevails. When the two meet, we become — as author John Nichols, in his memoir, An American Child Supreme, says —
“Trapped. Caught between capitalism and democracy.”
Nichols goes on to ask the astute question of our time: “How did a person live in just the democracy part of America?”
How indeed?
We are all caught between capitalism and democracy. This is our American fate, the mind-boggling conundrum we must deal with-and yes, while the nation is a republic(though a democratic one) and while capitalism has demonstrable good, it's the marriage of the two that is leading to what I believe to be fascism in this country, where the only votes that count are the ones of corporations. It is also the true dilemma of American environmentalism.
Thoreau’s eloquent words were misinterpreted. One heartfelt sentence fooled us into believing that if we preserved pieces of wildness, we could continue with — and justify — our current way of life. As long as we were “saving” certain parts of the environment, it became okay to accumulate frequent-flier miles and put fifty thousand miles on the car every year. Sanctuaries, refuges, preserves — call them what you will — they were long thought to be shelters from the coming storm of increasing industrialization, urbanization, over-population, pollution and consumerism.
They were not, nor were they ever, the preservation of the world.
American environmentalism is failing us because we are forgetting its single-most important message, something David Brower once said: “We have to drop our standard of living, so that people a thousand years from now can have any standard of living at all.”
It was over thirty years ago that the “Archdruid” said those words. He didn’t give examples. It seemed obvious what he meant.
American environmentalism today is the ironic and ubiquitous joke of a $50,000 SUV wearing a Sierra Club bumpersticker. It is a perpetual money-machine, a convoluted mass of non-profit organizations competing for the largest piece of American remorse.
We’re befuddled and mixed up; we think that the underlying philosophy of environmentalism is about “saving” a specific place, rather than how we choose to live in a certain place. We feel guilty about what our American standard of living is doing to the environment.
And we should.. We are co-conspirators in acid rain, global warming, ozone depletion and so much more. Guilt becomes remorse. Remorse becomes a check in the mail to “save the wilds.”
Those well-intentioned donations from private individuals, however, are not enough. Our new breed of environmentalism is an ever-growing entity that requires constant feeding beyond what mere individuals can offer, so it teams up with corporate America and subverts the “save the wilds” message into something like this internet ad: “Saving the great places — Chevy Silverado at work with the Nature Conservancy.”
That’s right, the marriage of a gas-guzzling pickup and an environmental organization. Click; a “special advertising section” pops up, informing me that there are millions of acres of wetlands lost each year and that they are crucial to the survival of wildlife. They are also “a key to our own survival.”
General Motors is a big supporter,” the ad continues, “donating cash and Silverado pickup trucks as part of a 10-year, $10 million support program.” Off to the side is a picture of a shiny 2003 Silverado, with the caption, “A Chevy Silverado is the first tool the Nature Conservancy reaches for when there’s work to do.”
Really? What about a good old-fashioned shovel?
The ad goes on: “With room for six in its extended cab, Silverado 4x4s get field biologists and agronomy experts through muddy terrain [it’s wetlands, after all] without tearing up the landscape.”
How is that possible? Does it hover above the ground? And here comes the kicker:
“General Motors is dedicated to protecting human health, natural resources and the global environment. This commitment is evident in GM’s relationship with The Nature Conservancy, the world’s leading private international conservation organization.”
I wanted to get this mixed message straight in my mind: buy a V8-powered pickup — save wetlands; support GM — donate to the Nature Conservancy. This seemed strikingly similar to the oxymoronic Vietnam War philosophy of destroying the village in order to save it.
Bill McKibben, in his book, The End of Nature, argues the premise that nature and wildness are no longer segregated from the surrounding cities and industrialization. The natural world still left in our parks and preserves isn’t natural at all; it is tainted and changed by what man has done. The culprits, he says — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons — “are the result not of some high and distant drama, a few grand explosions, but of a billion explosions of a hundred million pistons every second, near and far and insidiously common.”
Think of all those GM pistons pounding away, dedicated to protecting the global environment!
The President and CEO of the Nature Conservancy is Steven J. McCormick. He is a lawyer.Washington Post reporters Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway spent months looking into the compensation of Mr. McCormick. In the end, they published an article subtitled, “Conservancy underreported President’s pay and perks of office.” Their investigative piece revealed a tangled web of deceit and misinformation, but the gist of it is contained in this one paragraph: “McCormick ultimately provided information showing that his compensation and benefits for 2002 totaled about $420,000.”
I somehow expect our environmental “leaders” to live and behave a little more like Gandhi than some corporate executive, a little more like Jesus than a wealthy television evangelist. The profession of “environmentalist” should not be one that is hypocritically grounded in the white-collar world of $1,000-suits and million-dollar mansions. Lest you think that I’m highlighting only an anomalous example of our country’s environmental groups, here’s something to consider: In a 1994 report, the top twelve environmental organizations in the United States — the Sierra Club among them — were listed as having assets in excess of $1.2 billion. Major donors to these top twelve included Arco, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Exxon, Weyerhaeuser, to name just a few. The average salary of the top executives in the groups listed was just under $175,000. And that, mind you, was a decade ago.
Mainstream environmentalism has become — exactly because it is “mainstream” — one giant, ridiculous oxymoron. It has become part and parcel of what it opposes. It is in bed with the very forces it claims to fight against. It is wholly and happily fixed in the capitalistic part of America.
Why have Brower’s words disappeared into the ether? What happened to living simply so others could simply live? What caused so many of us to give in, and be taken in so easily?
Metaphorically speaking, maybe we just got tired of being on the bus. Public transportation of that kind no longer suited us. The more that stepped off, the harder it became for the ones that stayed, until eventually only a bewildered driver remained, piloting the empty bus further down the road while pondering the good excuses everyone had used to disembark.
I’m afraid our big brains might have us heading toward some Kurt Vonnegut future where humans eventually devolve into listless, flatulating seals. Ironically, the very thing that allowed us to survive and prosper as a species — our remarkable adaptability — is the same thing that is doing us in. We have adapted to breathe foul air, drink chemically treated water and eat food that isn’t natural or healthy. As the man says, “So it goes.”
But wait, I don’t mean to be so cynical. Our future isn’t yet written in stone. It’s not too late to change. Not quite.
To fix what ails our environment requires, to a large degree, going backward in order to move forward; using less in order to have more. We must give up certain things; sort out the beneficial technology from the destructive dross.
True environmentalism means sacrifice. Not the false sacrifice of monetary donations to today’s wealthy environmental orgs, but the true surrender of the mainstream ease and affluence in which we find ourselves. It requires a substantial change in how we view the place where we live — it requires a new, long overdue cultural revolution.
Saving the environment isn’t rocket science or something it takes a Ph.D. to explain. It doesn’t require years of academic studies and sheaves of economic charts and graphs. It doesn’t involve schmoozing and lobbying in Washington. It doesn’t even begin in the voting booth.
Saving the environment doesn’t require millions of dollars, just millions of people voluntarily choosing a simpler way of life. It begins right here, right now, with individuals willing to put their so-called environmental beliefs on the line.
Less is more. Backward is forward.
We all have to drop our standard of living so that people a hundred years from now can have any standard of living at all.
