The Future of the Environmental Movement: Part I - History

From the desk of April: earthapril@gmail.com

In March 2005, Dr. David Orr, Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College in Ohio, spoke at the Arkansas Environmental Education Association's annual conference at UCA. The title of his presentation was, “The Fifth Revolution: Ecological Design Intelligence”. Being a cultural and ecological visionary, his words outlined the history of the environmental movement, earth literacy (understanding environmental issues), and the future of environmental ideas and practices. He looked at where we came from, where we are, and where we need to go.

In the long beginnings of humanity there was little of what we would call the environmental movement. We didn’t need the term because we did not understand how human activities affected the environment in which we lived. This is not because our lives did not irreversibly harm the land on which we resided, or because humans were not becoming ill from the gathering of many people in one place. Rather, we simply didn’t understand our impact on the land or the connection between our living practices and our own health.

After the plague in Europe, we began to recognize that certain health conditions were happening in the close living quarters of the cities. From the enlightenment we learned to use reason, rather than superstition, to track diseases and the surge in population within cities. We are also realizing that with new technologies come new forms of pollution. In retrospect, those that might be called environmentalists today were then called naturalists. They were those that valued the simplicity of the natural world over the complexity of the man-made world. An example is Henry David Thoreau who wrote “ Walden Pond”.

Then along came the industrial revolution, where we began to build large systems with no regard for the effect they would have on our current environment or future resources. We furiously burned coal, oil, and natural gas in extraordinary and unsustainable amounts. As a whole, society failed to anticipate any future problems from this blind burning of fossil fuels. However, there were budding environmentalists at the time that recognized we could not continue on that path for very long without producing any problems. Their job as they saw it was to prove that these practices could, would, and probably were already going wrong. They believed that if they could show society the facts that they would in turn change their behaviors. So, these early environmentalists began the science of studying and proving the negative effects of the scientific revolution.

In turn, they became focused on reform of nearly everything about the way we lived and what we produced within cities. This made a union between environmentalists and social reform activists. Thus women’s groups became active in the environment. At the same time, John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, was trying desperately and quickly to preserve and maintain natural areas to remain untouched by point-source pollution and development. Meanwhile Aldo Leopold, author of “Sand County Almanac” showed that it was human’s responsibility to preserve the natural world.

Failing to anticipate the problem was one thing, but mass society ignored warning signs and preliminary information from scientists about environmental trends. Unfortunately, society failed to notice when the predicted problems arrived. Slow trends like soil erosion, deforestation, global warming, and others seemed to creep up on us. We had visionary environmentalists at that time that tried to use preexisting and newly created facts, studies, and science to show us, incontrovertibly, that we were in the throes of our own ignorant and unsustainable past. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” tried to show that numerous severe problems were already upon us. As if that were not enough of a warning sign, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio actually caught fire.

Environmentalists tried to prove that they were right and that we should all begin to change. Again they thought that if society heard the right facts that they would simply have to change. Unfortunately, society as a whole denied this knowledge and refused to alter their behaviors. They continued with a mass mentality and group thinking only hearing the information they chose to hear, which was mostly that which encouraged, “business as usual.”

Environmentalists at this point had a few choices. They could give up on mass society and escape to try to build utopian-like living conditions that were in harmony with the natural world. This was the basis behind the hippie communes, ashrams, and back-to-the-land movement. Others that decided to continue trying to change the movement of mass society could do so in one of two ways: By using the political machine to do lobbying, utilizing ethical business practices, and showing economic advantages or they could operate from outside the political realm with direct action and protests like tree sits, banners, lockdowns, rallies, and much more.

Regardless of these divisions, some progress was made as we attempted to wake up the public and cleanup our land. Environmentalists created and passed the first major legislation in favor of the environment like the National Environmental Policy act (which created the Environmental Protection Agency), the Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, Water Pollution Control Act, and others. Earth Day also arose with the simultaneous initial activation of thousands of grassroots activists and campaigns. Scientists tried to collect and collate data into real arguments for the environment’s sake. Organizations like Earth First, Greenpeace, and others became effective in their own ways. This was a potent time for environmentalists as they continued to gather momentum, small legislative successes, and increasing evidence of global climate change.

These favorable projects were quickly overshadowed by a long sequence of enormous disasters like Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Challenger Shuttle, Exxon Valdez crisis, Persian Gulf War and its burning oil wells, China's Three Gorges Dam, and the Shell in Nigeria disaster. There were long-term political standoffs between conservative and liberal factions in Congress, which always seemed to end more or less in a draw. Opinion polls showed that Americans favored the environment over economic development and a Gallup poll found that 76 percent of Americans called themselves "environmentalists."

By this time, however, most environmentalists realized that we had failed to solve what were truly very evident environmental problems. Environmentalists recognized that what portions of society were not in denial were paralyzed by apathy. Just stating the facts about our environmental situation was not enough anymore. This fear-based motivation to produce environmental action was not creating new environmentalists. To add insult to injury, the political machine began to reverse earlier environmental legislation. The environmental movement began to slide slowly backward. The environmental movement had clearly reached a critical point.

Having reviewed the lengthy history of the environmental movement, in the next article we will discuss where we are now and where the movement is headed.

The Future of the Environmental Movement: Part II - Solutions

From the desk of April: earthapril@gmail.com

Now here we are. Environmentalists understand that society has reached the last stage where the environmental problems that we know so much about, are beyond our capacity to solve for society as a whole. They have become overwhelmed by the complexity of the problems. The ratio of our creative energy of the past to our ability to maintain those creations is totally out of whack (i.e. when you build a mall it is a claim on future resources to maintain it). We have discovered that we can no longer rely on our creating new technologies in the nick of time to save our current societal organization. We also became grudgingly conscious of the fact that there is no one energy source that will support society as we know it. When we run out of oil, coal, and natural gas this point is the keystone that when pulled will crumble the foundation of our society. This last stage shows us that we cannot pull ourselves out of the problems that we have created, using the structures that created them.

What is this the last stage of? These stages, developed by Archeologist Joseph Tainter, show why and how a complex society collapses. This does not mean complete annihilation, the end of the human race, or even a loss of our current quality of life. This comparison only shows that we cannot maintain our current organization of human societies.

So, in the face of this information, what are environmentalists doing now to carry us into the future? Many are doing the same things they have always done. We still have the full spectrum of environmentalists’ practicing their variety of ideologies (like naturalists, recreationalists, direct actionists, environmental scientists, hippies, lobbyists, and the like). There are very few idealists left, because there is no way to escape environmental contamination anymore. For those that accept that society is on the verge of collapsing, we know that we cannot wait for the political machine to finish all the other things on their list (of things to change to improve society), before finally getting to their last item – the environment. These environmentalists understand that the environment can no longer be seen as another issue; in reality it is the lens through which we see the list of issues.

David Orr, suggests that to get through this collapse we need the Fifth Revolution which is one of Ecological Design Intelligence. We need to learn to define intelligence differently. He suggests that it now become an understanding of how to fit our human needs into the laws of the natural world. We all will learn to become citizens of the land on which we live (without having to compromise our current quality of living). It is only through ecological design intelligence that we can come to cultural intelligence. A transformation of this type will require a combination of all past environmental strategies, research, and technologies. This reorientation is not the future of the environmental movement. It is our collective future!

We understand that there may not be enough fossil fuels or even single fuel to maintain our vast, sprawling automobile oriented communities. Instead, it is time to create human-centered environments or smaller-scale living arrangements. Within a small scale such as one large building, wind and solar energy can create more than enough resources to sustain such a scale. We will need to use not one source of energy, but a diversity of many sources of energy. We will mimic the natural world to fit our structures and needs into the surrounding ecological systems. David Orr created a living systems building at Oberlin College that outputs more energy than it uses and purifies its own wastewater by mimicking living systems. Thus, our future lies in creating our homes and businesses, both rural and urban, to be self-sufficient and fully sustainable.

Our future lies in building small, human sized communities where all necessities are within walking or biking distance. Conway’s Mayor, Tab Townsell, has put together a powerpoint presentation titled "Design for the Future" (6mb) where he outlines how he wants to transform Conway into one of these human centered environments. His proposal would take a current neighborhood and lessen each house’s surrounding land. This land would then be collected to surround the neighborhood. The city would maintain this natural land for each neighborhood to be used for recreation, gardening, relaxation, or as a way to move between neighborhoods. In addition, businesses would be in clusters with these neighborhoods.  Businesses’ signs would all be lowered to a human height and sidewalks and bike pathways would be more proliferous than streets. Transportation will change to increased use of mass transit and personal transportation vehicles like skateboards, bicycles, roller-skates and other modes that can carry us short distances with little over-all energy consumed. Thus we could effectively walk through natural areas to get food, fuel, entertainment, and goods all while still in the city!

Not only will our buildings, cities, and transportation need to be sustainable, but our home lives will need to make some adjustments as well, though, again, quality of life need not be compromised. We will need to return to simplicity, or local functionality. Simplicity is not about poverty or deprivation. It is about discovering what is "enough" in your life, based upon thoughtful analysis of your lifestyle and values, and then discarding the rest. It is also about local functionality in finding products near your home (simplicity) instead of having them brought to you from the ends of the earth (complexity).

Volunteer simplicity is about raising the quality of life. Look around and see what you really need. Commercialism tells us constantly that we “need” specific products. By eliminating the extras in your surroundings, you will be freeing yourself. You don’t own your “things,” they own you through their payment, maintenance, replacement, and dependency. The volunteer simplicity movement is about finding more value out of less “things.” It is about finding out how much is enough. In The Simple Living Guide, Janet Luhrs demonstrates how to live a deliberate, simpler life -- and savor it. Luhrs says, "Simple living is about living deliberately. Simple living is not about austerity, or frugality, or income level. It's about being fully aware of why you are living your particular life, and knowing that life is one you have chosen thoughtfully. Simple living is about designing our lives to coincide with our ideals."

However, simplicity is also about finding local solutions or methods of local functionality. Could you live your current life with things bought or found within only 10 miles of your home? You can follow or trace the beginnings of all the items in your home and even some of your actions to see who, where, and how you are touching the planet. (Try reading the book, Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things). Complexity in product use and purchase comes from many factors: where it was produced, how it was produced, how many ingredients were used to produce it, where its ingredients came from, how the ingredients traveled, how the people were treated in the production of the ingredients and final product, how many resources were used to produce the product and/or packaging, how many times the product changed hands before reaching you, and much more. Try to calculate how much energy was used to bring an item into your hands. This is called resource productivity- doing more with less, wringing up to a hundred times as much benefit from each unit of energy or material consumed. Everything came from somewhere and everything has had a life before it came to you. Try to simplify these paths and you will lessen your impact on the earth. Paths = energy.  Less energy, less impact.

In this vision, our food choices will be made from our local options. This means nothing can be eaten which is not in season, canned, or otherwise self-preserved. Exotic foods, packaged, pre-made, frozen, or otherwise having traveled long distances or gone through innumerable steps of preparation and packaging, will no longer be available. We will eat grub instead of food. Grub is healthy, local, sustainable food for all, food that supports community, justice, and sustainability, and it is universal. Check out www.eatgrub.org to see how food becomes reclassified as grub. In addition, the way that we store, cook, and package our foods will need to be reoriented upon the loss of fossil fuels (plastics, cooking fuel, surfactants, etc.).

In short, we will learn to place value on things because of the time, energy, and resources used to make them, not because of who made them, how they look, or who else wants them. 

Over time, the environmental movement has been fragmented into a variety of ideologies and methods. This is due, in a large part simply to humanity's history.  Environmentalists had to travel the path like everybody else learning what works and what does not.

It is time now for our many paths to converge in an understanding of Ecological Design Intelligence. Diversity eventually leads to unity. Sustainable urban planning, fossil fuel-free transportation, living systems architecture and building, voluntary simplicity, resource productivity, local functionality, eating grub, and so much more all will lead us to a better future for our children and all children of the earth.  However, this is only if we utilize these tools with a simultaneous understanding and overlaying implementation of Ecological Design Intelligence.

As we accept and execute this new intelligence, our lives will become examples of how to sustainably remain within society on our land without adding any more waste, taking any more resources from the future, and without changing our quality of life. The environmental movement has not failed, they have only just begun their journey to transform the earth. The next step is in helping society to design their lives around ecological principles, without compromising quality of life. It is possible. It is exciting. It is contagious! Join the revolution - the ecological evolution!