| Here's the DLC green group Environmental Defense.
Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner tomorrow will introduce comprehensive, bipartisan climate change legislation that would cap and cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions while protecting the economy and American consumers.
And here's the more progressive Friends of the Earth.
Global warming legislation expected to be introduced tomorrow could provide giveaways worth hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars to polluting industries, according to an analysis of a draft of the legislation conducted by Friends of the Earth.
Here's Grist's David Roberts.
This is, in a sense, the same old strategy question that comes up all the time. Do you, like FOE, act as an outside agitator, draw lines in the sand, and try to pressure the political process? Or do you, like ED, worm your way inside the process, schmooze the big players, and strive to insure that the final bill is as good as it possibly can be under the circumstances?
If you say "we need both," gold star for you.
I love David's writing, but I don't agree with this as a matter of politics. Insider-outsider strategies are critical to move policy, but what Roberts is describing is not an insider-outsider strategy. He is describing a parasite. Environmental Defense is justifying a large corporate give-away under the rubric of environmentalism, and the rest of the green community is letting ED get away with it.
In terms of the policy, Environmental Defense is alone here. The green groups are remarkably polite to each, as most of them started in the 1970s convinced that protecting the environment was a value system. At the time, it might have been. Today, the question is how to manage a commons, and these groups just don't agree with each other. There is no movement around the environment anymore, there are progressives, corporatists, and deniers, all fighting over a large multi-trillion dollar and rapidly shrinking commons. The lack of robust internal debate among green groups means that ED's Fred Krupp can nonetheless speak for 'the environmental movement', scoop up his corporate money, and throw everyone else to the curb.
A letter on carbon allowances implicitly protesting the bill came out in September from Clean Water Action, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, the League of Conservation Voters, the National Audubon Society, the National Environmental Trust, the National Tribal Environmental Council, the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana, Physicians for Social Responsibility, The Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and the Wilderness Society all agree, to a greater or lesser extent with Friends of the Earth. They don't like the bill, or the giveaway, but judging by tomorrow's coverage, you wouldn't know it.
ED is using its brand as an environmental group to push against progressive solutions to global warming. In prisoner's dilemma parlance, it is 'defecting' from the rest of the community to get what it wants, which is insider influence and corporate money. The argument from ED will be that corporations are part of the solution, which is of course true, though not in the way they mean.
We're long overdue for a real green fight. And if these groups won't do it, ED is going to win until there's an internal revolt from the progressive dissidents within and outside of the environmental community. |
