How the Environmental Movement Became Just Another Washington Power Bloc
People hear “non-profit” and tend to think of ragtag operations run on a shoestring by selfless activists; the large, well-known ones are major corporations with multimillion dollar budgets, and people who operate multimillion dollar companies tend to have nice salaries and nice offices.
Increasingly, being an environmental activist, at least in the upper reaches, is becoming a well-paid, high-visibility job.
What these activist groups have to “sell” is their ability to get things done in Washington, which means their ability to get access to politicians. Environmental groups could offer this through access to their membership and by encouraging their members to support the politicians who were friendly to their issues. Voting power meant re-election for the politicians, re-election meant moving up the seniority ladder, and seniority meant exercising power — which made the politicians more attractive to the environmental groups. What’s more, for every elected politician, there are dozens of staff positions, committee staff, and dozens of staff positions within the non-profit groups.
Quickly, there arose an “environmental activism industry” — thousands of people whose livelihoods depended on environmental activism. The environmental activism industry, in turn, depended on one thing: the government’s power to effect change in the environmentalists’ favored direction.
Now, forty years later, we see the results. As the Examiner pieces today show, the environmental movement has become a billion-dollar industry, providing thousands of people with jobs, all devoted to managing — and, in general, to increasing — the government’s power.
There is “green power” — but it’s big government political power. There are “green jobs” — but they are for the politically connected people who direct and wield the political power.
And there are the rest of us, who wonder how such a worthy endeavor became just another power bloc.
While I am not certain, I believe that the enviro-left has used the EPA to help destroy our economy. By using the power of the government to set rules and regulations that both punish industry and inhibits growth, the left has killed our manufacturing base. And it has made many law firms millions at our expense-the taxpayer.
Nobody will argue against having clean air and water, but the way the radical left and the politicized EPA have gone about this there is only one reason: to hurt America. I would venture to say that the environment is secondary to increasing the power of government to control the economy as the over-riding philosophy of the EPA and the enviro-left.
Mr. Martin:
“Now, forty years later, we see the results. As the Examiner pieces today show, the environmental movement has become a billion-dollar industry, providing thousands of people with jobs, all devoted to managing — and, in general, to increasing — the government’s power.”
I’ll be reading this series with interest. I hope that some investigating has been done into their funding.
I work in the US Oil Patch, and have some idea of the stupefying amount of money that oil companies have at their disposal. Last summer my ship was chartered to help complete Shell’s Perdido Spar project.
The Shell Company Man aboard us during a safety meeting told us that that project was a year behind schedule and a billion dollars over budget…and that Shell did not care, as long as the job was completed safely.
(This is THE big reason that Perdido, in 8,000′ of water and 200 miles out to sea, made the news for all the right reasons).
The point is that foreign state-owned oil companies, (ARAMCO, Statoil and PeMex, for example), make each of the “7 Sisters” companies look like bush leaguers.
And if you’re growing rich exporting oil to the US and Western Europe, it would only make good business sense to fund pressure groups that seek to prevent your customer from achieving energy independence.
I am not at all aware of any significant environmental political groups similarly bedeviling the governments of Saudi Arabia, Russia or Mexico…you?
No-one is going to stand by and let their rice bowl be broken if they can help it.
One of the strengths of Eric Hoffer’s theory of mass movements is that he predicted the course of movements which hadn’t yet occurred when he wrote in 1950. He wrote that a mass movement has three main stages: A disgruntled intellectual discredits the existing order, enthusiasts and fanatics take up the cause mainly for person reasons, then practical men of action make their careers in the movement. It starts as an ideal and ends as a power structure. That’s what the environmental movement has done, turned an idea into a lobby.
I guess my own migration away from liberalism in the 1990′s was coincided by my realization that the Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, and Greenpeace were all becoming breeding ground for flaming anti-business / Big Government solutions.
Now, part of my bona fides in arguing with liberals is that I used to be one…before I woke up and realized that Government is most of the problem.
While I would not go as far as Michael Savage in saying that liberalism/progressivism is a mental disorder, I do think it is a “thinking disorder” marked by:
(1) an inability to take a course of actions through to the natural logical conclusion,
(2) an over-reliance on anecdotal data, which produces emotional reactions, (3) an inability to rationally argue the merits of their beliefs, and to use actual facts in an intellectually honest manner.
Thanks for this article. Having labeled it “Big Green,” we now deal with it better than the vaporous cloud of the “environmental movement.”
While I’m not a big fan of Savage’s delivery, his point is correct: liberalism or more accurately, progressivism, is indeed a mental disorder since the end result is their control over you and your life. Environmentalism provides them with the best excuse to do this. “Don’t you want clean water and air for your children?” or “Why do you hate the planet?” they will cry. Then here’s a shiny new regulation that you didn’t approve that dictates some part of your life that didn’t need regulating and will cost you more money and doesn’t make sense, drawn up by someone who thinks that mankind is a disease upon an otherwise pristine world, and that you really have no business being here. Haveaniceday.
Normal people have no desire to control anyone else.
It is a mistake to reject the idea that laws are not needed to protect the environment. One of the biggest drawbacks of a capitalistic economy is that success means constant growth and pressure on the natural environment. The creation of an “industry” which helps to check the pollution naturally produced by a profit-driven economy should be of no surprise to anyone. The word “industry” shouldn’t be scary – especially to folks who read the articles and post on PM. I will look forward to reading the rest of this. I hope that a reasoned alternative to the current status is suggested rather than a fallback to the pure libertarian position (which is what I expect).
Libertarians wear the darkest blinders of all.
This is one of those comments that says a lot less than it seems to.
First, the notion that anyone in this article is suggesting no environmental laws is a straw man.
Second, the notion that “capitalism” and a growing economy inevitably results in environmental destruction is simply false: in fact, as capitalisms have advanced, the environmental impacts have consistently lessened. You want environmental issues, try a communist country, eg, Romania in the lte 20th century or China now.
Before the enactment of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act I would argue that it was Capitalism and the drive for personal profit that directly caused the environmental problems in the United States. You say Capitalism cleans up the environment? Use European nations as well as the United States as examples? Now that is an intellectually dishonest argument if I ever heard one. It was the regulation not the Capitalism that did it. Left alone our system would cause environmental havoc. I think you know that.
Government regulation and laws allowing civil litigation were the driving force behind the clean-up efforts.
The folks here on these pages want less government, less regulation and less interference in private corporate affairs. Companies will be “good stewards” of the environment and will be punished by the public who won’t buy the company’s goods and services should the company not act responsibly. That notion is a Libertarian mantra and pipedream.
I just don’t believe it to be true. Not with modern propaganda devices. Look at what BP is doing now. The airwaves are saturated with dirty oil money pleading their corporate responsibility case. Sierra Club will plead to the emotions. It has to in order to counter this stuff.
China may turn out to be a much better steward than the United States. Their system is set up for quick response. Ours is slow. China can pump money and recourses to a problem when they feel it gets bad enough. They have a centralized economy much better equipped to deal with environmental problems. They have invested billions in high-speed rail, clean coal technologies, electric cars, electric bicycles – the list goes on and on. They will clean up their act way before we do. China is not hampered by the necessity of profits from the start. China can “pre-invest” in clean technology for the good of future generations. They can take the long view. We must take the short view.
Advocacy groups serve a good purpose. They are a check against the constant corporate lobbying to tear down environmental regulation.
The Endangered Species Act is the most anti-democracy law that has ever been passed in this country. I know from personal experience how this works.
Some activist environmentalist can decide that that you are using too much irrigation water. He avers that your water use is harming salmon. He can go to a friendly judge and get an injunction preventing you from using irrigation water whose rights have been in effect since the early 1900s. The court can then require you to show that your use of the water is not harming salmon. (Good luck proving a negative.) This requires far more money than the average small farmer, rancher, or citizen can scrape together. Thus the irrigation water is ordered shut down pending proof of no harm to salmon.
Want to use your own well water to water your lawn and garden. Even there, the environmentalist can unilaterally charge that you are doing harm to the water table. Up until last year, the states contolled subsurface water issues and the laws tended to be friendly to private well owners. Unfortunately, Congress passed a law last year giving them control over all waters, surface and subsurface, in the continental U.S. Meters, water fees, and usage limits are coming for those who have their own water wells.
The ESA has made this type of thing possible. Where some activist Greenie can make your life miserable and force you to spend huge sums of money to protect your property. The idea behind capitalism and democracy is that a citizen can be secure in the ownership and rights of enjoyment of legally owned property. Not according to the ESA. It is much worse for any extractive industries such as mining, oil, or logging. The death of our extractive industries has contributed highly to our loss of jobs and rising trade deficit. All of these industries need to be re-started and the ESA needs to be redone with an eye to making it more friendly to private property.
Nate, the problem with your point about using European examples as well as US ones is that you seem to be under the impression that non-Communist European countries aren’t capitalist. This would be a real surprise to, say, Germany: for all the talk about a “third way”, they are quite definite about preserving a free market as they define it. And the non-Communist European countries were improving the environment before the Communist ones fell.
Unless you’re defining “capitalist” as “anything that hasn’t got enough environmental regulation to make me happy”, it’s wrong; if you are, it’s fallacious.
You’re right that advocacy groups are useful, and in any case there’s nothing much that can be done about them Constitutionally.
However, chlorine is also useful. Too much of it is noxious.
In their quest for the perfect liberal / environmental ideology, they have completely given up on actual Conservation. Preserving open space and woodlands is forgotten by modern environmentalists in favor of worrying over what kind of car I drive, what I put in the trash, and how I heat my house.
This should be interesting; to be factually correct, this series will need to trace the early anti-utility sentiment’s role (especially the Storm King pumped storage proposal by ConEd in NY) and anti-nuclear power sentiment as a subset of that.
Secondly, the blind faith of the lazy media, in accepting the Chicken Little Doomsday hypotheses so integral to enviro hysteria and then to “progress” must be illuminated (viz: Alar, PCBs, Global Cooling, etc.)
Third, the evolving Democrat legal and regulatory structural complicity with enviro hysteria that is now de rigeur, especially on the coasts. Just consider oil and (shale) gas drilling and ‘urban environmental justice’ (say the latter with a straight face) and of course the lefty National
Council of Churches et al getting into the enviro business and even offering “green” utility service.
And that leads us ‘naturally’ to the environment as a religion; this conveniently follows the American Indian pagan beliefs of nature and land, but steps in just in time as the traditional Christian churches wither into oblivion.
So many places to explore and such deep and broad roots, this green tree has…
I urge everyone to read the following to see how environmental regulations have been designed to hurt competitors in the market and NOT protect the environment:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv19n4/v19n4-4.pdf
Normal people have no desire to control anyone else.
You are wrong there. I’d say that between Cultural Socialists and Economic Socialists (in total about 80% of the population) we are screwed.
And there are the rest of us, who wonder how such a worthy endeavor became just another power bloc.
It seems to be the way of things, whenever any type of assemblage gets legs and power, the so called mission gets perverted and politicized as the internal power struggles and infighting set in.
As the Sierra Club grew bigger and more powerful, increasing the money thread grew in prominence. Maybe even some not so Green investments, as was revealed about holier-than-thou Ralph Nader.
All kinds of well-meaning groups follow this pattern, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Even the Nature Conservancy might try to profit from land it has acquired in the name of protecting it, like for logging and timber.
It seems that whatever organization you affiliate with in the name of your beliefs and ideals, there is a strong likelihood that organization will become perverted as time marches on.
What exactly do you mean by The Nature Conservancy might try and profit. It is an non-profit entity. Who exactly is profiting?
Referencing a 2003 WaPo and Congressional inquiry
Reportedly, the Senate inquiry began after a Post series in May of 2003 reported on a wide range of questionable Nature Conservancy practices, including selling properties to its trustees, who reaped large tax breaks; engagement in multi-million dollar business deals with companies and their executives while they sat on the governing board advisory council…
See “criticism” at this link
You do realize that you linked me to a wikipedia page. Sorry this is not a reliable source. Also, article itself just says that there was an inquiry. It does not suggest that there was any actual wrongdoing. Nice try, but anyone with a grudge can start an inquiry.
I don’t know the particular numbers in volved, but I’d say that, generally, the growing list of employees of the Nature Conservancy (and all other such “non-profit” groups) – the additional lawyers, lobbyists, clerks, inspector-types and others that are added to the constantly billowing size of all such environmental special pleaders – are the ones who profit from the onerous growth of such organizations; their careers and salaries, their benefits and retirement plans all require an ever-expanding organizational income and, then, in order to mollify its base of financial support, ever greater proof of influence over events, which, of course, leads to an ever-expanding payroll of more lawyers and lobbyists. A certain circle dance is performed over the shriveling corpse of the productive sector of our economy. Eventually, of course, this whole tableau collapses in upon itself, but not before bringing all of us down with it.
Perhaps even starting with the best of intentions, thus does our destruction make, as we do not actually stop to pay attention to where our chosen paths do eventually lead us.
Non-profits are allowed to be profitable. That is not against the rules. They would be pretty bad business if they were not making any profits. I thought people here were capitalists. If the business is expanding it is doing something right, and creating jobs. Mostly what the TNC does is create and manage conservation easements. If people want to donate to TNC there is nothing wrong with that. There is no CEO or shareholders that are profiting.
Sorry Brian . . . TNC is not the warm-fuzzy you seem to think it is. Nature’s Landlord . . . or the Federal Government’s Realtor . . . to point out a couple of alternative monikers, is far from benign on the public stage.
Tim Findlay’s report, Nature’s Landlord, includes the lead-in:
“Unless we as a people are willing to accept the continued loss of not only private property and individual rights, but of large portions of our national culture and customs as well, the Nature Conservancy must be brought to heel. Right now, it is a well-fed and generally admired beast leading us in a wild run that is as destructive in its seemingly friendly character as it is in its seldom-seen attacks. This is no errant clumsy puppy we can finally calm. It is a runaway predator that will turn on us in defense of its territory. The Nature Conservancy is the wolf we raised ourselves, the grizzly we fed from the table. The monster we made with indifference. If it is left to go on growing, it will be the master and we the obedient slaves.”
You can download the entire report at:
http://rangemagazine.com/pdf/spr03_landlord.pdf
In other parts of the world, TNC has been more than complicit in the making of conservation refugees. There’s a lot to learn, and this is only scratching the surface.
Brian, good job of ignoring and talking past anything in my response to your question of “What exactly do you mean by The Nature Conservancy might try and profit. It is an non-profit entity. Who exactly is profiting?” I answered you. The people who profit in cash money are the ever-increasing cadre of environmental workers whose contribution to the wealth and general welfare of the nation is about 20 years into a severe diminishing returns nosedive.
And, I left unmentioned those who profit in power – the partnership of far leftwing government bureaucrats and environmental organization leaders who play a game of musical chairs in and out of government office whose obvious goals are the accumulation of heretofore unconstitutional powers to control the behavior of the populace in almost all the avenues of commerce and personal freedom, diminishing our “undeserved” wealth through the dwindling of the availability of natural resources, and reshaping our political system into one of a “more fair” socialist authoritarianism, striving to fit us into the mold of a new world order, controlled by their wise international apparatchik soul mates who think just as they do. Yes, this is how they profit. And, we better put the brakes on these people before we’re all foraging for firewood to heat our caves and cook our found berries, overlooking the wreckage of a once great industrial and technologically advanced civilization. This last is slightly hyperbolic, but not impossible to imagine as the final outcome of Big Green’s campaign to literally lighten the footprint of man on earth.
So grassroots activists became a constituency and the constituency became a lobby and the lobby became a big business and the big business became big government and that’s how we got Van Jones. I finally understand.
Very succinct, David. That is EXACTLY how it happened.
Proves the maxim that very great nation is just a third-world shithole waiting to happen.
Wahtever it began as, the Protest Industry and it’s subsidiary, Big Green, are now simply anti-capitalist, anti-free market, anti-business and anti-people. They agrressively push socialism, collectivism and statism. The Green thing is just a mechanism to advance that agenda and has nothing to do with conservation. They don’t care about conservation or making the Earth a better place on which to live. When Big Green stops working for them they will find another mechanism for pushing collectivism.
I was an enthusiastic contributor to the very first Earth Day. I can’t believe how dumb I was to believe all that nonsense. During my professional career I came into frequent contact with environmentalists. Close contact revealed what a nasty, malevolent, selfish, misguided pack of totalitarian philistines these people are.
As Obama Green Jobs Czar and admitted Communist Van Jones described his job, before being outed as a Truther and ousted…
“Community organizing within the federal family.”
The Green movement and its sister AGW* are both excuses for the collectivist, statist push. It doesn’t seem to bother them that many of their adherents (see poster child Al Gore) are some of the most egregious users of the planet’s resources.
Nor do they seem deterred by East Anglia revelations and substantial errors in what they pointed to as warming proof positive, the gold standard, the IPCC reports.
*Obama’s Science Czar John (“I’m kinda into eugenics”) Holdren has suggested a more explosive term to fill you with fear and loathing so the state can take over your life…
Global Climate Disruption
When I came out of my tent this morning, my socks were frozen on the guy line again. Miffed, I forgot how to spell “what” and “aggressive” and inserted a rogue apostrophe into “its”. With socks thawed out and in a better mood I refer you to a contest at small dead animals to find a replacement for the daft phrase “Global Climate Disruption”. The entries are here. The winner was Irritable Climate Syndrome.
In a world where prosperity depends on economic success and economic success entails a more important role in international affairs (see G8,G20, etc.) governments are in competition with each other not so much for prosperity but for political power and prestige (Military supremacy creates fear and is expensive for a government, economic supremacy creates admiration and influence and it cost the government nothing). One way to be more successful is to encumber and slow down the economic efforts of your competitor. This is why labour unions and some of the chaotic Civil Rights Movements and anti-War Movements of the 70-ties and 80-ties have always been secretly and directly or indirectly financed by the Soviet Union and even China. Their interest was never the advancement of the working class but creating havoc or the slowdown of the enemies’ economy. Today it is the Big Green that is slowing down our economy and therefore destroying businesses and industries or forcing them to relocate to countries where no-one cares about the environment. It started with Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico and now Vietnam India and China. These are the biggest beneficiaries of our local environmental fanatics and it would not surprise me if some of them are on the Chinese payroll. They don’t care about the environment or must be extremely stupid not to know that if environment-protection standards and labour standards are not internationally and equally implemented it does not help the planet and it is only an impediment to local business and industry. The question, as always, is cui bono?
For a brief but more thorough history, I urge you to read the following, which originally appeared as a comment on Dr. Jennifer Marohasy’s climate website:
http://rayharvey.org/index.php/2010/01/a-brief-history-of-environmentalism/
http://rayharvey.org/index.php/2010/05/the-truth-about-sierra-club/
Here’s a more thorough version:
A Brief History of Environmentalism
One thing that gives the Big Green lobby a non-transparent advantage is their tax exempt status. Money can come in from private donors or shakedowns from corporations and be washed before returning to the influence peddling business. The organizations are run as both non profits,assuming a 80% managerial take, and political directives. The opportunites for slush funds, soft money, unrecorded income, and IRS non scrutiny are enormous. Regular corporations have to keep much tighter records subject to auditing. Both corporations and Big Green have to sell influence and products. One of those has no public stock valuation and a possible subterfuge in tax reporting. Big Greens tax exempt status give them an ‘above the law’ leverage.
Americans should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen. The signs became obvious long ago to anyone with a modicum of common sense and an awareness of what has been going on in the environmental movement for the past 40 years.
Environmentalists have been operating without any semblance of intelligent opposition evident from any elected official from either party at all levels of government. Concerns for the environment and the natural world have been turned into a sacrosanct issue, untouchable by common men who were largely responsible for egregious blasphemy against their cleverly created Gaia religion.
The eventual outcome was the creation of the EPA, an organization with unquestioned and unchallenged authority to impose draconian rules and regulations on any and every entity that could be connected to the natural world.
An intellectual elitist dream; to exercise dictatorial control over an entire nation without having to be subject to judgment or investigation by an electorate too ignorant to recognize or understand what was at stake as evidenced by their indifference to the impending disaster; nothing less than the survival of the planet and the human race was at stake and only they, the possessors of the most brilliant minds unencumbered by any reverence for archaic religious symbolism and on the basis of pure scientific principles devoid of any nasty capitalist distractions, could direct and control this noble effort; to achieve what could not be achieved in the free market, to be in a position of complete control over every aspect of American life; the intellectual elites Nirvana.
While it must be acknowledged that air is cleaner, water is purer and streams, lakes and rivers are cleaner, arguably all could have been achieved without the rabid anti-business, anti-development, anti-capitalist approach that has wreaked havoc on the American economy that continues, unabated, today.
Corporate America and especially those that have any commercial connection to natural resources, animal, vegetable or mineral are only interested in making a profit by the most devious means necessary and, to the tenured College professor, the driving force behind this idiocy, profit is the epitome of evil and must be superseded by purely altruistic environmental concerns; never mind that, as any hard working member of the “ignorant” masses will testify, high mindedness doesn’t pay the mortgage or put food on the table.
The law of unintended consequences soon reared its ugly head, continues to be largely ignored or denied and wreaks havoc to this day.
Something must be done to restrict EPA’s overwhelming influence on public policy. The environment is a significant issue that must be seriously addressed but it cannot dominate the arena of public policy at the expense of all other equally important public concerns; in particular the economy, energy policy, defense, employment and innovation to name just a few.
great comment, thanks
Good links on the environmental movement. Do you know who the players are? Few do…watch for the names, Jane Lubchenco and Julie Packard. Jane is the head of NOAA and Julie is head of The Monterey Bay Aquarium, John & Lucile Packard Foundation, Chair of the Pew Family Trust Foundation. Julie, Jane And Barry just formed an inter-agency “task-force” and signed an MOU on ocean management. Julie is in control of 30 billion dollars that will make her the curator of the worlds first living planetary aquarium right here in California. It’ll be a giant version of Monterey Aq. fed by tourism and the takeover of the state universities systems. Indoctrination and junk science go hand in hand.
We are a group of ocean minded people and have 50 yrs of proof and facts on this very thing. We know the story and the players. We are coming to stop them with our own grassroots non-profit. We are an adhocracy to expose the truth.
Please contact me Charlie Martin, jeff@jeffcrumley.com,
This story needs to get into the mainstream and it will take us as the public to stop this insanity.