by Toby Webb, cross-posted from the Smarter Business blog
US environmental NGOs, along with other, more globally minded ‘green’ and conservation-minded NGOs, have been poorly led in recent years.
They’ve blown a series of chances to help businesses change using a nuanced approach. Their approach been too cut and dried, too ‘with you not against you’ in ideology. It was never as simple as that.
That’s fairly clear to most people I know. I’m condensing quite a few other opinions here.
Now a new generation of green group leaders is emerging.
This new set of leaders may have learned from Greenpeace’s brilliant ‘stick and carrot’ approach that has proven so effective with business.
That’s if this New York Times article is correct:
“Roger Ballentine, a climate adviser to the Clinton White House who now advises businesses on green strategies, suggests that the movement has grown impatient with coaxing incremental change by engaging with policy makers and corporations.
The old way was the Sierra Club putting its seal on “green” Clorox products; the new way is suggested by a Greenpeace Internet campaign that wrung a promise from Facebook last week to use less coal for its data centers.
“The failure to address climate is catastrophic, and young people are justifiably outraged,” Mr. Ballentine said, pointing to the next generation in the movement. “What we have now is an antagonized grass roots calling for a radicalized approach.”
This could mean that in 2012 the big, well-funded US green NGOs may begin to copy Greenpeace’s tactics.
However, the NY Times suggests that:
“A three-prong approach is emerging: fight global warming by focusing on immediate, local concerns; reinvigorate the grass roots through social media and street protests; and renew an emphasis on influencing elections.”
This approach does not specifically mention business, but my guess is that business will be covered by the ‘immediate concerns’ element.
For the sake of the environment, I hope these NGOs can raise their game and engage business as Greenpeace has been.
It’s embarrassing how far out on their own GP has been when it comes to business and sustainability encouragement/campaigning for the last few years.
I’ve seen so many examples in the last half-decade of how they have helped companies move beyond the status quo with clever campaigning and encouragement.
So why does having the other green groups act like Greenpeace matter?
I believe it’s fairly simple:
Once all large companies, outside the ‘backs to the wall’ utilities and oil/coal companies, have raised their game on climate change and the environment as far as possible, and reaped the benefits, government will have even less excuse to underperform on the environment.
That really matters.
The only way we’ll get our politicians to stand up and be counted is when better business lobbying defeats the dinosaur companies (oil, coal, some others) who lobby against progressive frameworks.
There are of course other barriers to environmental stabilisation, many in number and in importance.
But the principal role of business in the period 2012-2020 and likely beyond, is going to be to showcase better practice that works, whilst standing up against the damaging lobbying that goes on in major global power centers.
Toby Webb is the founder/chairman of Ethical Corporation. This piece was originally published at his Smarter Business blog.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Great!
Remember a few years back when environmental groups would post how we could all do our part doing 10 things — which would not do much at all — including keeping the right pressure in automobile tires to saving a whopping 1% energy; equivalent to driving 100 minutes and being stopped at a light for 1.
The sooner the better: we keep hearing that it’s bad to make people feel bad, but what we’ve (mostly) been doing is the equivalent of whispering and murmuring. The campaign against Keystone began to show the very beginnings of something different.
Most of the Big Green organizations have been penetrated by corporations, in straightforward and subtle ways. They then become addicted to the nice salaries and kabuki outrage rituals.
What’s missing are principled stands and organized boycotts, which were so effective that they have been abandoned. Consumers would be better off anyway if they avoided products such as toxic building materials, plastic, and bank credit cards.
OT, this might be a seminal study:
https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/134727d36c022ee6
This is the link, not the one above:
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0401-hance_revolutionarytheory.html
Three Steps and Twenty Years Behind, and Habitually Too Late: Will we always be?
My goodness: We measure value and costs in a way that doesn’t recognize the value and limits of natural resources, of “ecosystem services”, and so forth. We aspire to consumptive growth in real terms in a way that doesn’t recognize the limits of a finite planet and the fact that there are seven billion of us. We refuse to seriously consider the population issue. And so forth.
The “push harder” carrot-and-stick approach to corporations is better than the present “say please” approach, but it is still far from sufficient because it (for the most part) still ignores the underlying problems mentioned above: it leaves deep problematic aspects of “the system” fully in place, unreformed.
Have these recently enlightened, “get tough” environmental NGOs and their new leaders read E.F. Schumacher’s ‘Small Is Beautiful’? Have they read Raj Patel’s ‘The Value Of Nothing’? Indeed, have they read anything that begins to get close to identifying the deep roots of the problems we have? I would hope so. But the present post doesn’t seem to make that clear?
Sometimes I wonder whether the publicized (i.e., those that get into the media) announcements of a new advancement or enlightenment — of ideas that still miss the underlying problems and are forever twenty years behind the growth of the real problems — are actually meant to serve the purpose of causing us to think (incorrectly) that, “Great, things will be OK now, we’ve figured it out” and thus distract us from actually seeing and facing the deeper underlying problems and taking the necessary steps to reform?
As far as I can tell — sadly — the larger environmental NGOs seem very far from being enlightened, direct and honest about the deeper issues and from being effective in taking actions to draw attention to them and prompt society to address them sufficiently. Perhaps the real question of 2012 will be, Will the environmental organizations actually “get it” and show they “get it”?
Be Well,
Jeff
Jeff, the apporach taken by the ‘big greens’ is all a function of their marketing approach. It has long been their view that the AGW issue must be pitched as a renewable energy challenge. They put green jobs ahead of anything approaching direct action…sit ins, boycotts, suing the “Hell and High Water” approach.
I asked a friend at World Wildlife Fund, a man who really gets it, why WWF is not able to tell the world we are facing chaos and eventual extinction. He said that conversation comes up in their staff meetings but the marketers shoot down such talk because revenues might suffer if the public is turned off by an alarmist message. Go figure.
In the last year, with their anti nuclear fixation Greenpeace has done far more to advance climate change than mitigate it.
Thats the unfortunate bottom line.
Also with the increase in renewable awareness and equipment manufacture, with respect to this recession, there has been an incredible increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Are these related or coincidental with huge infrastructure projects and the recovery of the larger manufacturing sector? (is anyone even thinking about this?)
Is focusing on the delivery of the message above the technical issues and science actually making things worse ??
Glossing everything over to triangulated slogans, populist approaches, easy answers and feel good truisms is how we got here. I doubt more of the same will be an effective emergency exit strategy.
Also I am worried about the inflexibility of populist positions – people should change their opinions routinely as the become more technically proficient within a topic. It is critical with climate science that new information be assimilated rapidly. (e.g. the Biofuels situation).
In science logic virtually mirrors the process to truth that causality executes in the real world.
Populist positions are arrived at by a process of convincing a majority of the validly of a previously defined static state. It has a lag, a resistance to maneuverability built in as part of the process. (of course modern media has changed that somewhat – but that is with respect to efforts of persuasion – not reasoning).
Added to this, via post-modernism, all of our populist political processes and social justice reasonings and responses are built on a foundation of conspiracy. A situation that creates a firewall to openness and a perceived vulnerability in accepting new ideas.
(thoughts? – and yes, that gave me a headache just putting it in words)
I tend to agree with the point on nuclear. Nuclear is a very dense baseload source. From a theoretical scientific point of view, this is very attractive. But we need innovation on nuclear to deal with the issues of 1) cost, 2) saftey, 3) proliferation, and 4) waste. Here I’m rooting for Bill Gates (Terrapower), Kirk Sorensen (Flibe), and the Thorium (LFTR) advocates. (At least, these options should be given a good try, to see if they live up to the hype. They don’t need to be “perfect’, but they do need to be significantly better than the current nuclear, and better than coal in waste.) But these may be 10 years away in prototype, 20 years in widespread deployment. Shorter term, it will have to be deployment of renewables, driving down the cost of solar, supplemented by natural gas, and of course, efficiency.
I’m very sympathetic to RMI, but I worry that their time frame is too long (till 2050), requires too much coordination, too much redesign, lots of transmission lines (which is huge cost itself in a budget deficit environment). In agreement with Vinod Khosla, it will take decades for electric cars to make a dent, assuming there are enough rare earths and other commodities, to replace today’s auto stock, along with a low/no carbon electric power source. If anything is going to happen quick with scale, it will have to be “plug and play” close to the current infrastructure, along with a good dose of efficiency. Perhaps IT, “transportation services”, Google’s self driving cars married to an “intelligent assistant” (ala Siri) along with GPS, can play a role (?) (It would also be a great boon to my elderly mother who no longer can drive. Just tell the car where to go, and all the other times, the car can optimize it’s routes for others to maximize efficiency.)
Lastly, while it’s not good depend on “miracles”, I play the following game with myself. What is more likely? A political miracle or technological miracle to massively deal with the climate crisis? Right now, I tend to think a “technological miracle” is more likely than a political miricle to deal with the problem. There are pockets of progressivism such as California, Western Climate Initiative, Europe, … but overall most of the world is still dominated by short term economic interest. (Perhaps ubiquitous, dirt cheap distributed solar, analogous to the cell phone, may be a good part of the solution someday.) Of course, my first preference is an honest price on carbon. (It can even be revenue neutral to make it appeal to the GOP.) But I don’t see this happening soon.
So where does the populist and marketing strategies fit in? It helps in “shaping the cultural environment”. However, the real heavy lifting should “nothing special”, just a part of ordinary life, habits taken for granted, ingrained either through laws/policies, or technologies taken for granted. There is no “green”. “Green” is the new normal. In the meantime, the more likely drivers to massive change are economic, if it happens at all. Cost and scale are the major levers enabled by technological innovation. Legislation, of course, can be a great help. But this is not guaranteed.
Nuclear technology is viable now. There has not been a catastrophic accident in a above generation 2+ reactor. The three “spectacular” events in old technology power reactors (>30 years old), Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima Daiichi involved significantly less casualties and pollution than fossil fuel use over a very, very short period.
No significant permanent environmental impacts or extinctions have occurred due to reactor use that I know of.
Safe long term storage options, although unpopular exist for wastes.
Obviously reactors are not the best option in all cases. Renewables are frequently pushed as the only viable solution but I doubt the truth of that conclusion.
I have been unable to find any thorough literature on the impact of the use of Developing world/Chinese produced renewables. I tend to assume that as land is cleared and industrial complexes and even cities are built on fossil fuel infrastructures they may not be such a wonderful option in some cases. For example rooftop PV Solar is attractive but again not paying attention how it is manufactured and pushing it in far northern climates is questionable at best. (I understand there are other deployment factors I am glossing over, I am not talking about responsibly manufactured and deployed renewable technology before anyone blows a gasket)
I know. Objectively, it has a better record than coal. But after Fukushima, the public has backed away from it. So subjective perceptions dominate. It’s unfortunate that Germany has backed away from of their major sources for fighting greenhouse gases by dropping nuclear. To the extent they have to offset this with fossil fuels, this is a loss. To the extent they can make renewables work, bravo for them.
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Amory Lovins also raises some very valid questions about the cost competitiveness of today’s nuclear technology. (He’s also skeptical of claims of future nuclear such as thorium.) Also, I’ve read that solar is now cheaper than nuclear. (This may be a little like comparing apples and oranges since solar is not “baseload”, short of a revolution in cheap storage. It may help in “peak shaving”. It can be rapidly deployed. It can be attractive economically for utilities as a way of avoiding having to sink more capital into building expensive new plants just to deal with peak load. But still, it’s qualitatively a different kind of energy.)
Offshore wind/hydro is rather efficient but seems to have some environmental issues and impacts that need to be carefully monitored, and again, how it is made does matter.
Other pragmatic approaches probably are good in specific situations.
Carbon capture and sequestration is about as popular as nuclear, but this may be somewhat misguided too. A recent study released around the 29 of November (with questionable conflict of interest perhaps but good scientific credentials) was completed that should reduce fears of problems with leakage but I notice as yet no one is discussing it. ( http://tinyurl.com/cyu4avg ) – as a matter of fact I have to shorten the URL because I think the site may block it.
Although it makes me uncomfortable With existing hydrocarbon reserves nature proves this strategy most effective. Accepting it for reasonable review involves ditching a lot of skepticism for sure.
I dont believe a populist politically based movement will ever be able to resolve or convey a correct course, much less be able to adjust that course as the science advances.
But I think that is what this author wanted by opening up the discussion.
The big environmental organisations sold out years ago. It’s hardly surprising. The rulers of societies in capitalist economies are the controllers of capital, of the money power. They make and break politicians and their MSM specialise in vilification and abuse. ‘Good’ environmentalists, ones who pose with some business thug when a new ‘development’ is announced and boast that it will be ‘environmentally friendly’ (most often an outright lie)get rewarded. Often pecuniarily. Those that stand for principle are sidelined, vilified, abused, and in much of the world, ‘disappeared’ or murdered openly.
There follows the familiar capitalist process of ‘unnatural selection’ where the best are driven out, and the opportunists, sell-outs, prevaricators and egotists are promoted. A variation of Gresham’s Law in human affairs. The very concept of environmentalism attempting to influence capitalist business is nonsense, two more antithetical concepts not existing. Business is legally obliged to maximise profits. A businessman who sacrifices one cent of profit to save an ecosystem will be replaced. Control in capitalism is not in the hands of the management, no matter how enlightened. Control is in the hands of the shareholders, which gets down to the great concentrations of financial wealth, inter-connected throughout the capitalist world. They demand profit for capital accumulation, and I have yet to see a sign that this gilded elite give a stuff what happens to the natural world, particularly once they are dead. Green groups who are not ferociously anti-capitalist, are, in my opinion, wasting everybody’s time, and I believe the evidence for that assertion is absolutely irrefutable.
I’m not crazy about capitalism either. But the question is replace it with what? And how feasible would this be? Capitalism can be a very powerful motive force for innovation and change. The current problem is that society now services capitalistic ideology and goals. It should be the other way around. Capitalism serves society’s needs and goals, which of course, includes addressing climate change. Capitalism should be servant, not master. Here, I very much side with Paul Gilding, and the “triple bottom line” (people, planet, profit). (I know this makes things more complicated. But life is complicated. It’s seldom one thing or the other.)
Innovation and change are human attributes, not capitalist ones. A steady-state economy, where growth has been abjured, must be one where wealth is radically redistributed, otherwise 90% will stagnate in squalor. It is fair and just, as the over-wealthy will suffer no material suffering from giving up 99% of their often malevolently acquired wealth. A society with radical wealth equality will be one where the laws of supply and demand are not perverted by the great concentration of wealth in few hands seen in capitalism. This will increase efficiency and equity. More will be done with less, and people will be freed from work and the tread-mill of over-consumption, because the economy will not be growing to satisfy the insatiable avarice of the rich or to pay back ever compounding interest on debt. I am, of course, talking of some form of socialism based on the aphorism, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’. In fact capitalism has been an incubus on mankind, holding back our individual and collective spiritual growth, raising the basest and most destructive impulses, such as greed and the lust to dominate, to the highest eminence, and devaluing community, collective action, group solidarity, satisfaction with a basic sufficiency and real social justice. Of course, the process of transformation from one system to the other would, in the best of times, given the 1%’s homicidal inclinations and love of violence, be fraught with hideous danger, but attempted amongst ecological and socio-economic collapse it is truly a miracle which we must confidently expect. ‘The situation is hopeless-we must take the next step’.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gernot-wagner/climate-change-capitalism-_b_1126290.html
This is a discussion worth having. Part of it may be the definitions, e.g. “monopoly capitalism”, or “savage capitalism” as the French describes the US system. My sense is, at least for the United States, if you suggest abandoning this system, most people will think it’s too radical a change, get bent out of shape, call it “socialist” (meant pejoratively), and run for the hills. I believe Joe will do a piece on this topic next week.
Ernest, a definition of insanity is to keep on doing something that has been proven to be a failure. As for the thoroughly brainwashed US populace ‘heading for the hills’ when they hear the bogey-word ‘socialism’-well, they’ll be heading for the hills, to seek refuge if capitalist ‘business-as-usual’ goes on much longer. Capitalism puts capital first and last-everything else is ‘externality’ ie non-important. Socialism puts society, ie humanity first. Socialism is the only system that guarantees ‘freedom’, but it is freedom for all, not just for the gilded elite.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/young-people-socialism_n_1175218.html?ref=occupy-wall-street
You may get your wish. (This is the next generation.) But I wonder if people really understand what these words mean …
A Request: Climate Ethics, Durban, ClimateProgress, Next Steps, and Etc.
Dear Joe:
I just read an excellent analysis by Donald Brown, of Penn State and the blog ‘Climate Ethics’, regarding Durban and the present state of affairs, titled:
‘Going Deeper On What Happened In Durban: An Ethical Critique of Durban Outcomes’
(by Donald Brown, on Climate Ethics, Dec. 25)
I’m writing this to ask, please, that you feature Don’s post here on ClimateProgress, giving it access to the broad ClimateProgress audience, and doing your audience a service by making them aware of Don’s assessment and arguments. The reason for this request should become clear when you read Donald’s comments and appreciate the importance of the points he raises.
I’m also hoping that Donald himself will write to you, offering his post.
Be Well, and Thanks,
Jeff