Paleo-environmentalists, reeling from their most recent political rejections and withering funding, are looking for clues about how to proceed. Alex "the poseur" Steffen, mentioned in the previous post, tries to grapple with real reality.

As the leader of a national coalition of environmental groups puts it, "we've lost quite a few steps on the opposition."

Polls suggest she's right: "the number of Americans who agree with the statement, “To preserve people’s jobs in this country, we must accept higher levels of pollution in the future,” increased from 17 percent in 1996 to 26 percent in 2000. The number of Americans who agreed that, “Most of the people actively involved in environmental groups are extremists, not reasonable people,” leapt from 32 percent in 1996 to 41 percent in 2000."...

When Americans think about the environmentalism now, research shows, they all too often think: elitist; anti-jobs, anti-business, anti-technology; more concerned with critters than people (willing, for instance to sacrifice loggers and their families for the sake of owls); against rising standards of living (wanting us to all "freeze in the dark") -- in general "doom and gloomers" who oppose progress and prosperity.

As a politician merely posing as someone concerned about the environment Steffen has a severe handicap. He sees everything as a struggle between opposing forces and thinks the struggle is prosecuted by stealth and persuasion. Polls are deities that require worship and sacrifice.

Americans support protecting the environment, but have been persuaded that protecting the environment too much may cost them their jobs, their hopes, their futures. The national environmental movement has done little to persuade them otherwise, and many environmental messages fall into the trap of actively reinforcing the frame that "environmentalism = decline."

Politics is largely a war of persuasion. If environmentalists want to stop losing so badly, they need better language; language that evokes different feelings and places environmental issues within new conceptual frameworks; language that makes people feel and think about "the environment" in a new and more effective way...

We must convince the American people that we have a better answer, a brighter future to offer. We need to present a vision of the that future which is deeply compelling to the majority of Americans while making clear that our current situation is unacceptable. We need, in short, to reclaim the cultural initiative.

It's all marketing. Ideas don't matter, policies don't matter, people don't matter and values don't matter. All that matters is the pitch, the spin, the hustle and grift. Put the same old wine in bright green bottles and no one will notice that it's plonk.

Another shell shocked poseur, David Roberts, occasionally tries to insert a weak note of sanity into the mumblings of the losers at Grist Magazine and has a new column trying to talk enviros down from the ledge they are threatening to jump from:

Look, I know it's depressing. Environmentalists, Democrats, repentant Naderites, foreigners, even some old-school (read: principled) conservatives said for months that a Bush election would mean disaster. The most important election of our lifetimes, we were told. An historic turning point. The very fate of the planet at stake. Small, defenseless kittens would be slaughtered if W. returned to the White House. Think of the kittens!...

Direct and sometimes violent (at least to property) activism is part of the cultural mythology of environmentalism and has a storied past, from Ed Abbey down through today's mysterious Earth Liberation Front.

But still, in the here and now, going all Monkey Wrench on their asses is exactly the wrong thing to do, for two reasons. First, things won't get that bad. And second, it won't work...

bomb-throwing radicalism is a political non-starter these days. It can be effective in specific times and places, for ruthlessly pragmatic reasons, but in a postmodern world, it eats itself. In our media-saturated environment, what matters is not old-fashioned institutional ties or personal allegiances, but perception -- and the meme jockeys on the right are experts at tagging the left with the actions of its most extreme members (a skill that continually eludes their counterparts on the left). An outbreak of lawlessness among enviros would be like Christmas for the wingers, their first opportunity in years to roll back public perception of environmental issues.

Clueless! It's puppies that are scheduled for the blender not kittens. They're part of the low carb, high protein diet revolution. A bracing puppy shake followed by a large expensive cigar is a right male bonding ritual even though some of the boys are girls.

Environmental preservation and remediation is not a partisan issue and politicizing it is counter productive, poisoning the issue and dividing society. Whipping cadres into a frenzy with visions of armageddon, and then telling them to hang fire after the election, is insane and destructive. True, it's better that they hold their fire than suicide right on the stage, but it was crushingly stupid to twist their naive little minds in the first place.

It's not a contest or a war. It's not a marketing competition. It's not about persuading, convincing, media attention, mind share, focus grouping, hustle, grift or any of the phony political nonsense. It's not a movement. It's governance.

Governance is formulating policies that reflect the desires of society about how they wish to live. When information is shorn of spin and persuasion and communicated widely and well society can decide how it wishes to govern and hire politicians and bureaucrats who agree to the terms and conditions. In nearly every case the information is partial, disputed and subject to ongoing correction. The desires are varied and conflict to some extent. That's fine because societies are very good at making sensible decisions when the members have information and independence. Environmental management is just another governance task, one that has always been with us and that will always be with us.

The politicized wackos of the environmental movement make this harder. Some are simply insane, taken by the wind in quasi-religious rapture; some are merely politicians seeking wedges and mud to sling; and some are hustlers looking to make a buck. None are admirable humans seeking to govern well.

Most of society cares about good environmental governance but lacks the time or interest to become experts on the subject. They benefit greatly from an unpolluted information stream. When information is honestly presented with both hands - not just the left or the right - and when doubts and missing pieces are clearly noted, they can more easily make a mapping to their desires and values.

All that has happened is that the politicized environmental movement has been rejected and the Democrats lost an election they never had any hope of winning. They chose not to lose gracefully and build strength this time to pay dividends next time - a foolish political decision that leaves them worse off now than before the election with the same tasks to do only more so. The alignment of the politicized environmental movement with the Democrats guarantees them diminished influence in society and long periods wandering in what's left of the wilderness.

They don't matter, don't have the best interests of the environment or society in mind, and their defeat does not signal environmental decline or reduced rate of improvement. In many ways it's a great good thing because they have no useful ideas about environmental governance. All they have are criticisms. Their minds are frazzled by the demons that terrorize their gloomy, doomy dreams.

The task remains. Those who hold power now require our input and support as well as our judgements and decisions. They seem to be listening and have already done some sensible things, tossing dumb ideas out, ending pointless bureaucracies and taking new steps to do effective environmental governance.

What is needed now, as ever, is cooperation. It isn't about cooperating with the state, making and obeying rules, it's about cooperating with one another to accomplish shared objectives. We have shared problems, we all breathe the same air and otherwise inhabit and depend on the environment, so it's up to us to work out ways to live well and long together. When we agree to limits and protocols we are willing to observe for the good of all we can hire the state to do some of the paper work, but we can't expect them to come up with the plan. What do they know? What can they know? We're the ones on the ground in possession of the relevant information. We are in direct contact with other folks everywhere, both practitioners and academics, so there is nothing we need from politicians or bureaucrats except their labor. That's what we hired them for - frog, jump etc.