The absence of anything on climate change seems notable. Even if your assumption is that by implementing your manifesto we'd solve that problem, it seems worth being explicit about it, maybe in ecological restoration.

On a more nit picky level, this statement is not true.

Our economy must move from reliance on a single concentrated source of energy (oil)...

Our energy - for electricity, transportation fuel, manufacturing, heating, cooking, etc. - comes from different sources, although the majority are fossil. If you mean for the diverse clean energy bullet to be just about transportation, which would make the statement true, than you should clarify it.  

And if you mean diverse clean energy to be all encompansing than, in my mind, a smart grid is a crucial part of that and maybe doesn't need a separate bullet.

Your electric vehicle bullet differs from the others in being very prescriptive. In the long term we need transportation that is sustainable. Electric cars might play a big part but who knows? I think the green manifesto might be better served for a call for sustainable transportation that could encompass all sorts of private and public transportation options.

As for global warming, the decision not to mention it was deliberate. I do think that implementing the manifesto would address it. But the recommendations are meant to be positive. Global warming gets plenty of press elsewhere, and I'd like for greens to have at least one part of their program that doesn't revolve around fears of apocalypse. I think you're right that it might fit neatly into the eco-restoration bit, though.

Re: the energy bit, you're right, it's a bit muddled. The overall point is that (in my opinion -- not sure how idiosyncratic this is) in the long term, all power is going to be electric, and derived from renewable sources. Fossil fuels and biofuels may both be necessary in varying proportions during the transition, but I think it's important to be explicit that they are transitional, lest we build (or just continue to grow) a subsidized infrastructure supporting them that will be difficult to dismantle.

The all-electric thing is what's behind the electric car bullet, but yeah, since I'd like this to be acceptable to a broad array of people, maybe I'll make it more generic.

Thanks again.

Oh, and if anybody out there is knowledgeable about agriculture, I think that bit could use some work.

grist.org

On local ag, you sound a bit prescriptive re: people's behavior ("people must...."). Better to stick to public policy. You might say something like: "Redirect the $10-$20 billion per year now spent subsidizing energy-intensive industrial agriculture toward rebuilding sustainable local and regional food networks."

Generally, I think this Exercise  is a great idea and something that a pub like Grist could really add to the national debate. At a time when Dem. politicians are floundering in their efforts to elucidate an agenda--any agenda--it's up the intellectuals to step in and make something happen. After getting lots of commentary and honing it real well, submit it to the NYT and other powerful national outlets. Careful not to tone it down much. We need an honest agenda, not some focus-grouped-to-death, endlessly framed nonsense that neither offends nor appeals to anyone.

I disagree with people trying to "hold Bush to" his statements about our "oil addiction," because his speech amounted to a load of bollocks.  There's nothing there to hold him to. But his speech did, I think, open space within the national discourse, within opinion-making media organs like the NYT, to talk seriously and critically about energy policy. So let's get on with it.

I've got a post brewing in my head about why the energy markets are anything but free, exposing the absurdity of John Tierney's powerful-sounding argument about how the free market's going to sort out the energy mess. I've got a busy weekend ahead, but I'll try to get something out early next week.  

Peace, and I'm out.

Victual Reality

To me, there may be two additional questions that need to be asked in and around these changes:

1. What are the material consequences of our technological choices?  Technology is always just reconstructed nature from somewhere, is it not?  What are the ecosystem costs of electricity, computers, automobiles, etc.?  We seem to have adopted a great local ethic for our food consumption; let's begin to recongnize that what we surround ourselves with has the same kind of politics as what we eat.

2. What are the implication of an "efficiency" ethic?  This question may sound heretical, but a careful look at the history of the efficiency idea finds it closely linked to a whole package of cultural changes that came with the industrial revolution or the machine age.  Let me propose the idea that "efficiency" is  problematic because it imposes a machine metaphor into the center of our value system.  I think it is important to use metaphors that value the kind of world we want.  In that case, we do not want energy "efficiency," we want sustainable energy.  We do not want technological "efficiency" we want technologies of life.  Etc.

I think some of us do know, based on recent battery technology advances.  And based upon  the problematic nature of the alternatives, biofuel, methanol from coal, and fuel cells.

This may not be apparent to the public yet or to legislators particularly.  But the technology and economics dictate a battery electric solution.

A big part of the manifesto ought to involve explaining the individual/family economics behind this vision and the other part of the vision, powering battery electric cars with small wind and solar actually owned by homeowners with incentives from government.

By shifting subsidies for big energy companies (15 billion per year for oil companies alone) to these incentives for homeowners and small businesses.

Your point about prescriptions is a good one though.  People dislike the know-it-all attitude behind this aproach.

A Frank Loyd Wright quote comes to mind.

"Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change."

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/franklloyd102048.html

Honest arrogance may not be an effective  political tool. Unfortunately public policy involves the realm of politics.


http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

1.  Your ecological restoration point is broad enough to cover most wildlife/biodiversity/ecosystem health questions, but I think the crisis is dire enough that some of these have to be short-term priorities as well -- for instance, protecting species that are down to populations of dozens or hundreds.  Agreed, healing the earth will take a long time, but we have to act fast to stop the bleeding.

2.  MIA: public lands management, wilderness protection.  A green wants a society where everyone has a chance to experience nature.  Also, good government/effective regulation -- at a minimum including effective enforcement of good laws, and maybe also extending to campaign finance reform.  

3.  Ending poverty is a worthy goal, and if it's done by helping the world's poor end up in societies consistent with the rest of the manifesto, then it's also a green goal.  But I'm skeptical that it can be accomplished for less than a year's worth of U.S. defense spending.  My hasty research suggests that annual U.S. defense spending is around $440 billion and about three billion people live in poverty.  We can solve poverty for $147 per poor person?  Or did you mean we can solve it if we spend that much every year?

4.  A couple of framing thoughts.  First, I hope that it's only remnant John Birchers who equate environmentalists with communists, but maybe "manifesto" isn't the best tag for this thing.  Second, point taken about the military spending, but aren't you setting up a dynamic where opponents of green goals will be able to paint the whole exercise as in opposition to national defense?  Not a way to win over the American electorate.  

I don't think this hierarchy of values is unique to the list above; I think it is common to our perspective as environmentalists.  But I also think that it may be the single most difficult conceptual obstacle we face in framing a workable future.

Hannah Arendt in On Violence makes the point that in politics we can never really know what the ends are going to be; all we have are means, and politics is the ongoing negotiation of those changing conditions.  Her point was to emphasize the political irrationality of warfare and violence in the wake of World War II.  I wonder if it doesn't also help environmentalists locate their processes a little better.

Our end is not a nature free of humans, is it?  Then why would we make that idea a part of our means?

Isn't it more encompassing to recognize something like: poverty is our environment and so, by extension, social justice should be a de facto cornerstone of sustainability?  

Rather than a trade-off (which is really their argument, not ours), we could imagine a continuum of healthy, vibrant habitats, including our own...?  And I'm not sure how we have a healthy human habitat without confronting the conditions of wealth and poverty extant today.

Kip

Let me repeat what I said above: I am in favor of ending poverty.  But I am also in favor of halting the ongoing crisis of extinction and habitat destruction.  I mean, really, if we can't even say we want to save the friggin' whales, then I don't think it's much of an environmental manifesto.

On Arendt: I'm sorry, you've lost me.  What processes are we trying to locate?  I gather that you have concerns about the whole idea of "wilderness."  But what are you saying -- that environmentalists should drop the term?  Stop trying to protect wild areas?  If so, you're going to lose a lot of potential allies.

I will grant that smart people have made good arguments about problems with the idea of wilderness.  I suspect you'd like William Cronon's essay "The Trouble With Wilderness."  In particular, although he takes it as a given that "nonhuman nature and large tracts of the natural world do deserve protection," he warns against a "dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural."  I disagree with him as to the extent of the problem caused by our idea of wilderness, but I agree with much of his vision for how we should think about these things:

When we visit a wilderness area, we find ourselves surrounded by plants and animals and physical landscapes whose otherness compels our attention. In forcing us to acknowledge that they are not of our making, that they have little or no need of our continued existence, they recall for us a creation far greater than our own. In the wilderness, we need no reminder that a tree has its own reasons for being, quite apart from us. The same is less true in the gardens we plant and tend ourselves: there it is far easier to forget the otherness of the tree. . . .

Wilderness gets us into trouble only if we imagine that this experience of wonder and otherness is limited to the remote corners of the planet, or that it somehow depends on pristine landscapes we ourselves do not inhabit. Nothing could be more misleading. The tree in the garden is in reality no less other, no less worthy of our wonder and respect, than the tree in an ancient forest that has never known an ax or a saw--even though the tree in the forest reflects a more intricate web of ecological relationships. The tree in the garden could easily have sprung from the same seed as the tree in the forest, and we can claim only its location and perhaps its form as our own. Both trees stand apart from us; both share our common world. The special power of the tree in the wilderness is to remind us of this fact. . . .

. . . Both trees in some ultimate sense are wild; both in a practical sense now depend on our management and care. We are responsible for both, even though we can claim credit for neither. Our challenge is to stop thinking of such things according to set of bipolar moral scales in which the human and the nonhuman, the unnatural and the natural, the fallen and the unfallen, serve as our conceptual map for understanding and valuing the world. Instead, we need to embrace the full continuum of a natural landscape that is also cultural, in which the city, the suburb, the pastoral, and the wild each has its proper place, which we permit ourselves to celebrate without needlessly denigrating the others.

"Technology is always just reconstructed nature from somewhere ..."

This is the same anti-environmental attitude that says that "everything is natural."  It's just an illegitimate excuse for causing ecological and environmental harm and destruction.  Technology as used by humans is, in fact, a perversion of nature, twisting science to produce short term benefits that kill other forms of life and pollute our planet.

"What are the 50% of the human population to make of a political philosophy that frames species loss as a 'crisis' in demand of immediate steps to "stop the bleeding," but describes their condition of poverty as a 'worthy goal,' 'if' we can afford it."

Because humans are grossly overopopulated and are also causing the sixth great extinction in the history of the Earth, non-human species are at risk while humans are thriving.  Sure, some individual humans are not doing well, but the loss of species always greatly outweighs the loss of individuals.  It is non-humans that need priority.

"Our end is not a nature free of humans, is it?  Then why would we make that idea a part of our means?"

First, a planet free of humans would be far better for all other species, unless we end our gross overpopulation and overconsumption.  However, I haven't seen anyone on this site advocate an end to the human race, so who's making it a part of our means?

"[P]overty is our environment and so, by extension, social justice should be a de facto cornerstone of sustainability ..."

Human poverty has virtually nothing to do with the natural environment, aside from peasants who've been forced out of their natural lifestyles destroying the natural environment when they can't earn a living in civilization.  This false conflation of the human environment with the natural one is a favorite of those who are trying to guilt trip conservationists into becoming leftists.  Don't fall for it!

These types of comments are exactly what I've come to expect from leftists who value humans above all else.  My opposite point of view is one of the main things that makes me an Earth First!er, even though I haven't worked with that group since 1987.  A humans first attitude is not an environmental attitude.  If you want to work for social and environmental justice, I fully support you and hope you're successful, as long as your success doesn't add to environemntal or ecological problems.  However, environmentalists need to concentrate on non-human problems, because it's the non-humans that are most at risk.

Jeff Hoffman

As for Jdhlax, I think by separating humanity and nature, you mimic traditional western thinking and reify human-based environmental destruction. Your thinking owes more to the likes of Exxon execs than you care to imagine. Environmentalists like you fixate on overpopulation as the greatest evil; yet it's always somebody else you wish would vanish without a trace.

Victual Reality

But no, as long as we have machines and energy to drive them, we do not need "Lots of people, somewhere, have to work real hard and real cheap, if we are going to have a small class of people who command huge resources."

As a mental model, consider the first guy with a water powered grain mill ... who was he exploiting?

Not sure. Maybe that feudal lord suddenly had some servants?


Victual Reality

I mean, when is a "feudal lord" a captialist and when is he a "maximum commander" of the people's army?

;-)

• I find it borderline-obscene to worry about "spreading the consumerist lifestyle" or whatnot when billions of people in the world don't have sufficient food or clean water; for them, I imagine our bourgeois worries about consuming too much are rather distant.
• The poverty connection is simple: The poor reproduce more and destroy more natural resources -- forests are dying to make simple heating fuel, not for luxury condo patios. The only way to slow and reverse population growth is through sustainable development.

I understand that poverty causes environmental destruction, but so does American-style wealth.  I don't know the relative balance of the numbers, but plenty of forests are dying to serve the needs of the rich as well as the poor.  For instance, as I read somewhere, "Enviros and even some government officials estimate that as much as 90 percent of the mahogany coming out of Peru is illegally logged. And much of it ends up in the U.S. in the form of furniture, decks, and even coffins."  

And on population growth, sustainable development isn't the only thing we can do.  We shouldn't, for example, ditch international family planning assistance.  And the Catholic Church could help out by reconsidering its opposition to birth control.  

In my opinion, chasing details only serves to highlight increasingly meaningless differences at increasingly smaller scales.

I agree poverty is a huge problem.  I could digress that "poverty" in one country is "wealth" in another ... but really to what point.

I don't believe "An index-card manifesto" should serve to highlight differences in what is potentially a working coalition.

"The poverty connection is simple: The poor reproduce more and destroy more natural resources -- forests are dying to make simple heating fuel, not for luxury condo patios. The only way to slow and reverse population growth is through sustainable development."

But perhaps you intended irony...?  I hope so.

Michael: I think "The Trouble With Wilderness" is a good place to start this kind of discussion.  Especially the heart of the quote from above:

"Wilderness gets us into trouble only if we imagine that this experience of wonder and otherness is limited to the remote corners of the planet, or that it somehow depends on pristine landscapes we ourselves do not inhabit. "

I do not agree with William Cronon's insistence throughout much of his recent writing on these topics, that what marks 'nature' is its profound 'otherness' - I for one find nature moments to be about profund sameness - but his point that we do not require pristine landscapes to have such experiences is valuable.

It has logical implications, as well, does it not?  Non-pristine lands are non-pristine because...?  because they have been used and/or inhabited by humans.  I hear him saying, and I guess I agree, that any environmentalism that forgets about human habitat is going to walking around only partially prepared to deal effectively with the world it finds.

As for the Arendt reference, the "processes we are trying to locate" are the political processes that will achieve a sustainable society.  Arendt's caution is that as we develop, articulate, and engage these political processes (writing essays, engaging in activism, teaching sustainability, discussing issues on blogs, lobbying our political leaders, etc.) we don't sacrifice the present for an imagined future.  (e.g., If we want a just and democratic sustainable society, we must get there through justice and democracy.)

I put Cronon and Arendt together and I find a global environmental crisis that is rooted the question of wealth/poverty.  Humans are not the problem, in this view, human habitation is.  Further, the problem with human habitation is not the fault of the poor, the problem with human habitation is the responsibility of the wealthy.

The problem with human habitation is that a few million people control most of the resources and all of the markets of the world.  Most of the rest of us are powerless in our own landscapes.

To notice that there is a nature out there being abused and destroyed by the forces of this society should not lead us to despise human beings, because, in point of fact, we too are being abused and destroyed in the very same process by the very same society.  It should lead us to despise the forces that leave us, and the majority of our fellow human beings, living, as Henry Thoreau put it, "what is not life."

A sustainable future requires the immediate attention to unsustainable social problems, because they lie at the heart of the unsustainable ecological relationships we have constructed.  

Life itself will survive us, it is tenacious and has been challenged by bigger forces than the human imagination.  The question is, will we survive ourselves?

Kip

My poorly articulated point on poverty had to do with the fact the the poor tend to use more resources per unit of work (food, heat, etc.) created. Though our immense wealth makes the Western world, and particularly the U.S., by far the lead resource consumers, we are actually highly efficient relative to the rest of the world.

Anyway, there are two overlapping problems here: One, you've got, after years of progress, the number of people in severe poverty again expanding. So too with the number of failed states. Desperate people and failed states do not pay much heed to resource conservation. We need to stabilize those states and raise those people out of poverty.

Also, there are millions of people in stable-but-poor states like China and India whose incomes, quality of life, and of course resource consumption are rapidly rising. We need -- quickly -- to do everything we can to help those countries leapfrog to sustainable technologies and practices. If they follow the same path we followed ... well, they can't. The world will simply run out of resources first. But it will get very ugly long before then.

What's questionable, in re: the topic at hand, is whether it's wise to try to shoe-horn these points into the index-card manifesto.

grist.org

I didn't separate humaninty from nature; those who decided to do things like substitute agriculture for the hunter/gatherer lifestyle or kill trees or dig into the Earth did.  It is our actions that separated us from nature originally, but most humans are now so disconnected from the natural world that they don't even know where their food or water comes from.

"Your thinking owes more to the likes of Exxon execs than you care to imagine."

How so?  Without an explanation, this makes no sense.

"Environmentalists like you fixate on overpopulation as the greatest evil; yet it's always somebody else you wish would vanish without a trace."

I never said anyone should vanish.  I've said that all families should be limited to one child until the human population is greatly lowered from its current size.  People should not be everywhere on the planet; no species anywhere near our size occupies anywhere near the area that we do, not to mention that human destruction, often euphamistically called "development," is just about everywhere.

Jeff Hoffman

Green Architect William McDonough approaches all his projects with this guiding question:

"How do we love all the children, of all species, for all time?"

That is a question that, for me, has become like a pebble in my shoe. I don't come close to living the answer but it is working its way deeper into how I look at my choices.

Hip Hop artist and activist Rha Goddess says:

"The revolution is to be well."

A young species, some of us seem to be growing toward wellness but many of us are not. Without better understanding and skill working with this, our amazing self reflective mind, the tides of emotion, hormonal drivers, etc, we will continue crashing car after car(civilization after civilization). Be active, be passionate, but be well in mind, body and relations. Wiser choices come from healthy minds, bodies, and communities.

Native Californian elder Alvino Siva told us something like this:

"Watch what you're eating. You've got to pay attention to what you are eating. If you don't pay attention to what you are eating pretty soon you won't be eating."

All the best.

Two points:

1. Dave, I'm still not convinced by your description and demotion of of 'poverty.'  Notice how you used the machine metaphor ("efficiency") to represent the flaw of poor people? They are 'inefficient".  Isn't it possible that the value system informing you that our society (the one you yourself admit no one else can aspire to) is better in any way may be the source of the flaw?  What is 'efficiency,' after all?  Anyway, I refer back to my original post about this concept.  Efficiency is for machines, we are organic.  We require things like health, vigor, and sustencance to operate well.  In my opinion, the problem with poverty is that it denies people these fundamental qualities.

I still maintain - and would hold this instance as a representative example - that getting our language and metaphors right is crucial.

2. I would also ask you to re-examine the assumptions embedded in your explanation of the "poverty problem."  Your logic goes:

Poverty is growing world wide, the problem with poverty is that poor people and "failed states" don't care about the conservation of resources, therefore ... what?  We must impose ourselves upon them so that they recognize the truly universal value of nature in their midst?  What is the logical outcome of this train of reasoning?  I follow it every time to environmental authoritarianism...  Back to Arendt: if we construct authoritarian means, we will have authoritarian means in our midst.

Worse, this view pits the disempowered of the world against your very western notion of 'environmentalism' (e.g., land conservation).  In the larger international dialogue about sustainability, you won't get out of the starting gate with these assumptions.

The other problem with poverty you present, is that large masses of people in the world are at the cusp of becoming wealthy (They do so with our billions, I might add: we float the Chinese miracle).  We must prevent them from becoming like us, lest they ravage the earth as we did.

Ok, I know it was late, but can you now see how this is exactly the opposite argument as the first?  If we are the most efficient, why wouldn't we want them to be like us?  Ah ha!

Because at its heart, I think your manifesto still alienates people from nature.  I don't say this to make idle arguments, or simply to be contrary.  I say it because when I look carefully, that is what I find.

I am worried that you are unintentionally restating an environmentalism that does not take human habitat seriously, and that does not include human life as a valued part of its ethical obligations.  I think any successful environmentalism will have to.

I have been a dedicated environmentalist since the 1970s, which is only to say I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about environmental issues and working toward environmental goals.  I also happen to believe very strongly in the principles of justice and democracy.  These values and my experiences lead me to the views and criticisms I present here.

I, as much as anyone reading this, want us to get it right.  And I hope everyone can read and engage these questions and ideas in that light.

Dialogue is good.  We want it in our ideal society, do we not?  Let us practice it then.

Peace,
Kip

To Jdhlax,
By my comment about Exxon execs I meant this: Like an Exxon exec, you claim that "humanity" and "nature" occupy distinct positions. To the Exxon exec, that means, let's use, consume,  nature, for, though it is not us, it belongs to us. Nature is commodified as "property" and then sold to the highest bidder for consumption. You do something quite different with the same underlying assumption: humanity is distinct from the landscape, from "nature." If the Exxon ethic is explicitly anti-nature, yours is purely misanthropic. Yet you're playing with the same philosophical set of marbles as the Exxon exec. A more interesting, effective and radical approach is laid out above by Kip. We are part of nature, like it or not. So how should we live, how should we make our habitat? I think there are many answers to that question, and that's why I advocate the local over the universal.

Victual Reality

WHAT A GREEN WANTS: IMMEDIATE PRIORITIES

Educate, tax progressively, budget honestly, and nurture.

Hasn't it worked for you?

Kip

Nobody's gotten in right. It's something new -- to all of us -- that we're shooting for, which is why it's so important to have a relatively short, clear picture of it. Back later.

grist.org

Sustainability comes from knowledge on specific issues and not broad-scale sweeping assumptions regarding the 'entire' environment. In other words: 'think globally, act locally', in other words: 'S#!| ain't the same everywhere'. Water usage is an issue out West, yet in the Northeast, water shortages (at least in quantity) have never been a major issue. Forests grow back after being cut out around here, not so much in Brazil. Etc.

Poverty is an issue everywhere, but it is not something, see my last post in 'Walk this way', that is dependent on your purchasing power. It is, rather, effectively a 'harder' (physically and mentally) way of life, whether chosen or not, and some people choose a 'poor' lifestyle despite having money. There's another saying (a true one by the way) that some of you might have heard (and I do not mean to make this a racist thing, more in terms of Chris Rock explanation of what a N!33a# is): 'You can take a N!33a# out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the N!33a#'. No disrespect to blacks this applies to whiteys too, but that's why heads in the rap industry and pro sports get shot up in their limos, on the set, outside the casinos, rape girls, kill wives, smoke crack, whatever.

I digress: Stick to "think locally, act globally" and know the issues at hand. If you live in a poor neighborhood, get involved in the community outreach programs, teach the people about why they should worry about their environment and let them know how they can improve it. If you live in a rich one, explain to them why they should consume less (they are probably already in the know, sort of, on environmental issues: I like to live next to a beautiful clean lake, ahh). In a rural one, explain why organic is better and why they should hire a forestry consultant. But I am pessimistic on the effect that this will have in the long term on global sustainability (Bush is still in power). Please, prove me wrong.

I think this statement is racist without a discussion of the history of the ghetto. What is the ghetto? Where did it come from? Who has benefited from its existence historically? Whose ends did it serve? Whose ends does it serve now? I think it's a bit much to talk about "ghetto mentality" as if it sprang up in a rap video in 2001. And the blanket statement about "heads in the rap industry and pro sports," which at first glance looks intended to serve as a proxy for black folks in general, just makes you sound ignorant.

Victual Reality

Furthermore, people choose to live 'poor' outside of the context of the above. Like I said, poorness is a lifestyle, not monetary income, and while you may choose to live below the poverty line, it does not make you 'poor' per se. Please look at the meaning behind the words not at the words.

I think that you are right, a socio-economic background is obviously required to talk about the 'ghetto mentality'. I apologize for somewhat reactionary post, but there are plenty of people out there who do not appreciate the tension that occurs due to that mentality. I have been robbed more than four times and while I escaped with all my possessions (as a kid $20 is a hell of a lot of money) and without harm (and sometimes it was just plain comical), I have heard of numerous people that have not been so lucky.

For example, just yesterday I heard about some guy on the south side of Syracuse who got surrounded by some people and got stabbed several times and is now fighting for his life with a collapsed lung. They took $12. While that may not be representative of every person that lives in the 'ghetto', that is the mentality that I am talking about.

And I still think it's absurd, ahistorical, and useless to declare poverty  or the ghetto a "lifestyle," like something you might try out after reading a fashion magazine or watching Yo! MTV Raps.

And that's all I have to say about it. Just wanted to go on record so people know not everyone on Gristmill countenances such garbage.  

Victual Reality

But you still have not gotten to the MEANING of my words: 'poorness' is not a monetary issue fully, it is a mentality, at least partially. It applies just as much to redneck assholes as it does to a Crip or a King from Brooklyn or a Rap mogul that orders a hit on another crew or a Mobster that does the same, whatever color, race or creed they are.

P.S.: From what I know, Austin is a sweet city to be in: I've visited for about a month and it is fun, albeit overdeveloped and I haven't heard too much about the crime or poverty rate, but it is definitely not as large as it is in many of the large cities in the nation.

P.P.S.: I am honestly not racist, I fully and truly believe that everyone is born with equitable abilities and equal rights, and I am sorry to any black reader for restating THAT statement. I realize that any white person's interpretation of a black person's culture is going to be offensive and thus generally should be avoided. But, I was using THAT to refer to any violent behavior, which I have experienced from all races and trying to make a point about the mentality of a 'poor' person vs. someone who lives below the poverty line.

Speaking of which:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060221/ap_on_go_ot/poverty_politics

"The result is that a single parent making $13,000 a year is living above the poverty line, while someone with a $1 million house who takes a year off work to travel the world could be below it."

Which is BS.

"Getting there means very different things for us in the Western world than it does for those in poverty and failed states..."  And "we need to help them...because if we don't, their numbers will expand."

This way of understanding it is the problem, in my opinon:  I believe that this statement is the same kind of binary construction that pits people against nature (to no useful end).  We need to deal with poverty, David, because it denies fellow human beings the right to flourish.  There's no us or them here; your ability to live (relatively) luxuriously is part of the same package that renders more than half the human population radically alienated from place.  Systemic, entrenched poverty (the denial of the basic necessities of life: food, shelter, clothing, education, and health) is immoral and unethical by any standard.  But your construction of the problem here renders these wrongs a problem of mathematics; another mechanical metaphor to describe organic life...  And another residual of the latent mysanthropy embedded in our environemntalist constructions.

Attacking this problem (poverty and human suffering) as part and parcel of our manifesto  strikes me as the only moral and ethical way toward sustainability.  Anything else is paternalistic imperialism.  How can it be otherwise?  Without the full participation of impacted populations, your are not describing a democratic process.  Whether or not you feel it in your heart, it is there in your expressions.  That's why language is so important: it exposes our unexamined assumptions we carry.  

Let me say it plain: I think poverty and the human condition has to be the central problem of environmentalism today or environmentalism will fail.  Right now, your manifesto doesn't effectively do this. (But I know you  are revising...)

This is not about race or racism or political correctness or shifting the long term goals of environmentalism.  It is about finding a way to honestly and truly understand and confront the problems we face.  It won't be easy, but I think it is our only sane choice.

Peace,
Kip

The question is how to exactly go about it?

This discussion has become very complicated and convoluted.  Of course we are part of nature, what isn't?  Everything in the universe came from something natural at some point.  The fact that we're a part of nature is thus meaningless but, it does serve to make a very anti-environmental point: because humans are part of nature, everything we do is natural and therefore OK.  I couldn't disagree more.

As I said earlier, by their actions humans have separated themselves from the natural world.  There's nothing natural about being able to overpopulate without some natural controls lowering the population (starvation, lack of water, disease).  There's nothing natural about killing trees, digging into the Earth, or any other aspect of industrial society.  There not even anything natural about agriculture -- no other animal lives that way.  There's nothing natural about paving over the Earth.  I could go on till I starve.  Humans have used their grossly overdeveloped intellect -- compared to their grossly underdeveloped sense of wisdom -- to manipulate the natural world.  This would be OK, except that doing it has caused massive ecological and environmental harm.  Judging by many of the comments here, I wonder if the commenters even know how bad things are and the fact that humans are the cause of the problems.

The fact that it's clear to many of us that humans have separated themselves from the natural world does not mean that my ideology has anything significant in common with that of an Exxon exec, or any other exec for that matter.  We all believe that the Earth is round and orbits the sun, but so what?  The fact that people have purposely acted unnaturally in order to make things easier for themselves is uncontestable; the issue is how we need to change so that we can stop destroying the Earth.  And BTW, a misanthropic attitude comes from a love of life, which we misanthropes see humans destroying.

I find nothing interesting, effective, or radical about Kip's approach.  It's the same leftist crap that the Death of Environmentalism jerks were spewing.  The basic premise is that humans are better and/or more important than everything else, so we need to concentrate on helping out the less well off ones, and this somehow is supposed to pass as a new type of environmentalism.  For those of us who constantly strive to help those in the greatest need, non-humans clearly deserve our attention far more than humans.  Watering down the environmental movement by concentrating on things like poverty is no way to protect the non-humans.  I understand and agree that desperately poor people will do desperate things, including destroying the environment, but that's only one small cause of environmental destruction and doesn't get anywhere near the roots of the problems, which are overpopulation and overconsumption, the latter also being consuming anything we have no business consuming, like oil.

Finally, I agree that we need to find a much better way to live, because our current lifestyles, even those of non-wealthy people, are neither sustainable (a very low standard that allows as much destruction as you feel you can get away with) or in harmony with nature or the Earth (a much better standard).  I agree with the poster who advocates bioregionalism, but notice the "bio" portion of the word.  It doesn't mean that people in a certain area should be allowed to cause a certain type of environmental harm just because doing so is traditional in that area or because they can't figure out another way to earn little green pieces of paper.  It means that people have to learn to live within the constraints of their particular ecosystems and sub-ecosystems.  We still need universal prevention of things like pollution, destruction of ecosystems, and harm to wildlife.

Jeff Hoffman

Judging by many of the comments here, I wonder if the commenters even know how bad things are and the fact that humans are the cause of the problems.

I'd like to think many commenters do realize that humans are the cause of the problems. And I'm sure many would also agree that overconsumption and overpopulation are roots of those problems.

However, disagreements seem to arise over solutions. Jeff, you constantly argue that people need to begin respecting wildlife and wilderness, but don't offer any concrete solutions of your own. Instead you criticize other ideas as being human-centric, which is often true. However, when dealing with a species that is so obviously self centered, how else do you expect to motivate them so that they change their behavior?

Put aside for a moment the very real concern that some people will not join our cause if saving humans is not first on our list- I won't argue with that. The question is not how to enlist the most folks to our cause, but to state our cause succinctly. There are many things that could be done to end poverty and human suffering around the world- but if you ask a conservative, a liberal, and an independent what is the best way to do it, you will get very different answers, and I believe every one of them would do little or nothing to help the global environment. If fact, it is likely that most people's solutions would end up doing more harm to the Earth's ecosystems than good.

So is it really true that ending poverty will ease the strain on the environment? Maybe I missed it- tell me again how ending poverty is necessary to saving the Earth from man's selfish and destructive behavoirs? Poor lifestyles do not tax the Earth the way luxury does. So let's say we've done it- we've ended poverty for all humans on Earth- how does it follow that the Earth can relax and begin to heal itself?

It might suit our cause better to propose an end to luxury, (which is the real cause of both poverty and environmental destruction) than to include an end to poverty (which might hurt the environment more than it helps).

a liberal in redsville

1.  End poverty and achieve social justice.

Because that's not too useful, and doesn't say much about what makes green values different from more general humanitarian values.  

So again, I'll plead for specifically including the need to protect large areas of land and water, and the need to arrest the ongoing extinction crisis. I don't think these goals inherently conflict with ending poverty, nor do they automatically result from ending poverty.  

The Wildlands Project has the vision here for North America.

If you're strictly discussing strategies regarding recruiting people into a cause, I don't disagree.  However, I'm concerned about not watering down the conservation movement by getting people to move from that to social issues, which will, at best, do very little for wilderness and wildlife.  To strike a middle position between Chris and Birdboy, we need to recruit more people while not compromising our ideals.  I think one of the best ways to do that is by example, though I don't have any magical answers.

Jeff Hoffman

Great questions and vital concerns!  Please believe me when I say I share entirely your goals for healthy vibrant, wild, and free ecosystems around the globe.  A few quick responses:

1. "So is it really true that ending poverty will ease the strain on the environment?"

Yes.  Give people active and meaningful control over what they eat, how they live, what they learn, and what happens to their local landscape and I believe that they will oppose most of the worst ravages worldwide - they already do, but are presently powerless to stop it.  As a historian, I can see that the history of environmental destruction doesn't source from the first plow or from the ascendancy of human imagination in the abstract, it comes from the activities of the past 200+ years, from the industrial revolution - a radical change in the institutional presence of humans on earth.  Poverty and wealth as we know them are also part of this package.

Ask yourself this: why am I (the idealistic environmentalist who wants more than anything to protect 'nature' from greedy ravenous people) specially situated to understand this problem?  In part, I would answer, because you had food, education, and the freedom to engage these issues in a concrete way.  By assuming that most people would not come to your (our) conclusions about the importance of the earth, given the right context, you diminish your own basis for caring about nature (it is one that must be imposed on others).

2.  Name calling is usually a guise for dismissal without consideration.  I hear your pain, Jeff, but both me and the death of environemntalism 'jerks' didn't fall out of the sky yesterday; we are active concerned reformers who have been reflecting on these problems and issues for a number of years.  We have asked, and I encourage you to ask yourself the same:  What kind of environmentalism is it that patently ignores the world's most prevalant species?

3.  Even the idea of blanket land conservation and wilderness protection has been evolving the past couple of years.  Michael your plea makes it sound like the only solution is locking up lands...who decides which lands and how do they decide?  That's my concern.  Check out Wildlands and Woodlands published recently by Harvard Forest and embraced by most of the Massachusetts conservation community, for a more democratic approach to land conservation and wildlands protection - you'll notice among other things, that it accounts for human use.

Peace,
Kip

The people that are suffering from being poor in some communities (I'm thinking rural mostly, but urban also: fast food, incinerators, etc.) are the ones who are attacked by corporations (both metaphorically and physically) in order to provide for the rich. Nothing new there. But what in effect has to happen is that there should not be any rich (monetary terms), and all should be poor (monetary terms) in order to reduce consumption, which is both destroying the natural capital and the poor's (monetarily poor) quality of life. In other words by not addressing the issue of poverty from different angles (including a more succinct definition of poverty), we are ignoring the effects of impoverishment on life on earth in general. How can we convince all people that this is a legitimate goal?

I do not think it is possible. And that is why we need some sort of a paradigm shift in governmental policy (or something, I don't even know) regarding that. In the meantime, we have to live with the system the way it is and be selfish within the system in order to progress the punishments to the ones who are too selfish in order to achieve any level of control on environment/poverty issues. I am basing this off David Wilson's and Omar Eldakar's work on empirical and theoretical models of social control, which I do not think has been published yet, except for O.E.'s M.S. thesis, but there are more ways to interpret D.S. Wilson's work.

How to define the selfish control on a movement scale level (except that we are all sort of doing it, see digression at the bottom)? Hard to say, but maybe it should be defined by individual involvement (which is something that I have been saying) with the section of culture that we are most familiar with. Ironically, most environmentalists are in the middle-class/white category, a demographic that benefits the most (total, not per capita) from our economy. I've run out of gas here, pun intended.

This is another digression:

With real poverty come other more important things: violence, crime, etc.
I am not fully sure how to address violence, since on one hand it reduces the human population and is quite natural to our species, but on the other there is something inherently wrong with it (at least that's what I have been taught all my life).

Another thing to remember: Life and diversity of life on earth will rebound in one way or another, it has done so before and will continue doing it again. Will the human species? Probably not, so in effect when you are concerned with the environment, you are concerned with human species survival and the way that you remember things (selfish control). Great example of that: clearcuts -> everyone thinks of them in terms of what was there once, but maybe the focus should shift to what can be there in a few years (referring to NE US mostly, but other temperate forests also). I can go on about this, but this is just another digression.

Re the origin of environmental destruction:

I guess the veracity of this statement depends on one's point of view.  From the point of view of anything non-human, the problem began at least 10-12,000 years ago, when humans discovered agriculture and began overpopulating.  (I will ignore human overhunting of animals to extinction before that.)  At that time there were only 10 MILLION people on the entire planet!  Adding to this number caused overconsumption by definition, because the 10 million people were living in equilibrium with the natural environment.  By manipulating nature with agriculture, humans circumvented a natural population control and were thus able to overconsume without immediate consequences to themselves, even though, by definition, they had to destroy natural ecosystems in order to practice agriculture. Overpopluation also caused a lack of space for other species.  My sense of ecological morality, for lack of a better term tells me that large mammals like homo sapiens should not cover the entire planet.  To put it intellectually, ecosystems need large areas of wilderness in order to be healthy, and need wildlife corridors between those areas of wilderness.  These large areas and corridors are not possible with anywhere near the numbers we now have.  Humans can live in wilderness, but only as pre-industrial hunter/gatherers.

Re wealth, education, and freedom creating an environemental ethic:

This is utterly untrue.  When I worked with Earth First!, I also worked with the American Indian Movement and the International Indian Treaty Council.  My friends in those groups had the same Earth First! attitude re human destruction of nature that I did, though some had less misanthropy.  These people were very poor by American standards.  On the other side of the coin, I have discussed these matters with rich people, and they have what I consider to be a very anti-environmental attitude.

My environmental ethics began when I rode my first horse around the woods in northern Illinois.  (Before you go off on wealthy horse owners, the horse cost me $365 and I paid $60/month board.  None of the people I knew from horses were rich as far as I knew.)  I was never formally educated about environmental matters, aside from the first Earth Day, for which we had an assebly in our high school.  Empathy for others comes from within, along with from some experience in natural areas, not from being wealthy or educated.  I've always identified with those most in need, first working on civil rights and poverty, then moving on to non-humans when I realized that they are in much greater need of help than humans.

"By assuming that most people would not come to your (our) conclusions about the importance of the earth, given the right context, you diminish your own basis for caring about nature (it is one that must be imposed on others)."

Well, most people have not come to our conclusions.  What's your solution, just let them continue to destroy the Earth and hope that they get it before they destroy life as we know it?  Just as society regulates other behavior, we should prohibit ecological destruction.  That said, of course it would be ideal for humans as a whole mentally and spiritually to evolve to at least the point of traditional indigenous hunter/gatherers, who love and respect all life, and who consider other forms of life to be relatives, not "resources" to exploit.

"What kind of environmentalism is it that patently ignores the world's most prevalant species?"

Humans shouldn't be ignored.  Instead, they need to reigned in.  I assume you meant ignoring human problems.  The reason I don't give priority to those problems is precisely because humans are the most prevalent species.  Humans are thriving.  It's everything else that's suffering and needs our help.

Jeff Hoffman

In order to be entitled to a right, people have to fulfill the attendant responsibilities.  Because humans as a whole have been totally irresponsible in their use of land, they don't deserve the right to unfettered us of it.  Creating large wilderness areas is not "locking up" land, it is preventing its destruction.  Human use is only compatible with wilderness if people live there as pre-industrial hunter/gatherers and without any manipulation of the land, which even many hunter/gatherers practiced.  Otherwise, their mere presence will destroy the wilderness qualities of the land.  Let's create large areas of wilderness that exclude humans and see what evolves there over the next million years or so!

Jeff Hoffman

Regarding the issue of poverty, isn't it odd that plenty of folks who are not poor, in fact wealthy folks who own lots of land, do not support conservation efforts? They have time and food and education, yet wish to consume the Earth for personal gain. I'm pretty sure that means that eliminating poverty does not necessarily result in an environmental conscience.

  "Give people active and meaningful control over what they eat, how they live, what they learn, and what happens to their local landscape and I believe that they will oppose most of the worst ravages worldwide - they already do, but are presently powerless to stop it."

This is totally unsupported by evidence, in fact, evidence abounds to contradict your 'belief'. Most poor people would love to consume mass quantities, and if they should decide to restrain themselves in order to aid the Earth it will be because they became enlightened through experience or education that focused on that goal.

You are right about the need for education- public schools should be teaching children (too late for adults) to respect the Earth and all her creatures, and that human life depends on a healthy ecosystem. This might help as much as anything else in the current manifesto.

I'm still waiting to hear how eliminating poverty necessarily helps the Earth. It may be easier to argue that our methods which focus on saving the Earth from humans will necessarily help reduce the suffering of 'poor' humans around the world. Instead of a specific 'goal', it may be a direct 'result'.

a liberal in redsville