Environmental Movements: Can They Work?

Last week I mentioned 350.org and the 10/10/10 Day of Work in this space. On Sunday, I went to a small rally on the steps of the Statehouse in Boston. Activists from Greenpeace and a smattering of local groups had gathered on Beacon Hill to rally for environmental change. A microphone was set up on the steps in front of the Bulfinch entrance, and various speakers delivered short messages about their work and their hopes for environmental progress.
I arrived later than I would have liked and left earlier than I should have. Fall sunsets in New England have an alluring quality, and the late afternoon light that had enveloped Boston Common was more attractive than listening to speeches on issues with sobering statistics and a dearth of solutions. As I rode back to Cambridge on the T, I couldn’t help but ponder the efficacy of events like 10/10/10. The rhetoric of the 350.org movement is powerful and so is the symbolism of 10/10/10 – thousands of events in nearly every country on this planet – but I had the distinct feeling that it is one massive vain attempt to sway a brutal path of industrialization that is wreaking havoc on our planet by means of environmental destruction.
I thought about the meetings of various sustainability committees I’ve sat in on, meetings characterized by endless discussion of how to encourage people to turn lights out in classrooms and use less paper, when I’ve wanted to shout. I’ve wanted to remind people that the sum total of “cute” environmental measures, like recycling and not printing emails, can have a tangible impact that will always be outweighed by environmental harm created by the things that we avoid discussing. The environmental toll from the consumption of meat, our reliance on cars, and the production of energy that fuels comfortable Western lives is absolutely unsustainable.
This fact is, of course, well known to the people who fight for environmental change. I felt discouraged after the 10/10/10 rally because the biggest environmental problems aren’t easy to plaster on a bumper sticker. Then I remembered that I became interested in the environmental movement not because of a powerful experience at summer camp or a childhood home near the woods, but because of a high school teacher who opened my eyes to the multifaceted nature of environmental problems.
If you’ve taken high school level American government recently, you learned the term “political socialization.” It encapsulates the process by which children and adolescents acquire their political beliefs, typically at home. Environmental socialization is a whole different matter. Progressive environmental beliefs are not fully embedded in the current crop of parents, and moving adolescents to environmental activism will be a difficult transition. It’s this aspect of the environmental movement – the process by which people who were not raised to be environmentalists become conscious of environmental problem – that is uniquely fascinating and oft unexplored.
The strength of movements like 10/10/10 lies in their potential to facilitate this environmental socialization in an untraditional manor. The community spirit of global workdays can create the conditions that allow for environmental socialization, even for adults and adolescents who are far beyond the age when the foundations of political belief are put in place.
It is my hope that in the next few weeks of blogging, I’ll be able to target issues that highlight the varying response to the same environmental challenges. HPR is known for emphasizing that “everything is politics,” and the politics of energy are particularly strong. Communities worldwide have tackled global problems in the manner that is most efficient for their economies and lifestyle. That’s an obvious statement, but its underestimated in practice. The bold rhetoric of climate conferences and accords will not be met with action when each party holds such disparate interests.
And that’s why global environmental workdays and small events cannot be underestimated. It takes a new form of socialization, a near-conversion, for many people to see outside of the environmental norms they’re accustomed to.