January 17, 2005

1/17 - Enviro Critic Feeding Frenzy: Adam Werbach's unconvincing essay

Okay, I'm as eager as the next person when it comes to beating up on the poor old environmental movement, but Adam Werbach's essay, "Is Environmentalism Dead?" is inept and useless. Aside from the fact that Mark Dowie said all that needs to be said about enviro problems back in 1995 with "Losing Ground" (and he said it with a writing style that wins awards), Werbach's overly dramatic writing eventually leads to a bunch of silly, overly-simplistic "we need to start everything from scratch" suggestions that are no help at all.

And on page 23 of his essay he says, "The problem is not our failure to communicate." Say, what? Yes, it is. Effective communication results in persuasion. And this is the biggest problem of the environmental movement -- the failure to persuade anyone other than "them who art already persuaded" (i.e. the PBS crowd).

I suppose I should have read his essay before posting it a couple of days ago. Oh, well. What is so good about Mark Dowie's book is that he addresses the socio-economic elements at work in environmental conflicts. There are elements of basic class struggle, with affluent city folk trying to impose their will on working class country folk in many instances. This is a complex problem, and requires a lot more depth than Werbach's speech which he seems to feel was historic.

And for more on this whole issue, take a look at the article on Salon, titled, "Dead Movement Walking?" It's turning into a feeding frenzy of enviro critics. So much that it's no longer feeling cool to criticize the big organizations.


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Enviro criticus, the Common North American Environmental Critic

Posted by Randy Olson at January 17, 2005 12:17 AM