By Jeff Buckett on Tuesday, June 12, 2001 - 08:55 pm:
There is an interesting article at Keweenaw Today debating possible funding options for a purchase of land around the mouth of the Gratiot River, so I thought I would post a short article published recently by Tom Paine.com on who(locals or feds)should have more control over environmental decisions relating to Land Use. I can't agree with the particular example of local action this writer offers regarding a mock-ticketing of SUV's in parking lots, or even all of his particular environmental priorities, some of which seem more applicable to metropolitan areas than the Keweenaw, but I think the larger general point of this article is in pointing out the current political trend toward more local control with regard to environmental decision-making as well as developing such alternate energy sources like wind.
All italics are mine.
ALL ENVIRONMENTALISM IS LOCAL
A TomPaine.commentary
Bill Shutkin is an attorney who heads New Ecology, Inc., a non-profit group promoting sustainable development, and teaches at MIT and Boston College Law School. He authored The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the 21st Century.
A group of socially concerned artists recently decorated the windshields of hundreds of sport utility vehicles in the Boston area with mock traffic tickets. They were handing out citations of shame for drivers of what has become the premier symbol of Americans' in-your-face flouting of environmental responsibility.
The same thing's afoot in California. Stealthy citizens wielding anti-SUV bumper stickers are roving shopping mall parking lots, affixing the stickers to offending vehicles.
These creative strategies are being deployed in dozens of communities across the country. They reveal the frustration many Americans feel over the nation's inability to get over our infatuation with fossil fuels. And in a general sense, this local activism reveals an important emerging trend in environmentalism -- away from traditional, inside-the-beltway approaches, and toward more creative, community-based actions.
What brought on this micro-environmentalism? Several factors.
First, people are responding to the failure of our federal environmental protection system to significantly change the way Americans -- whether governments, firms, or individuals -- consume.
Consider, for example, the Bush administration's time-warped energy plan. Its unabashed call for full-scale development of fossil fuels, from coal to oil to natural gas, harkens back to the nineteenth century and the birth of the petroleum age. It's as if modern environmental laws, born of the oil spills, mining disasters, and soot-belching smoke stacks of the 1960s, didn't even exist.
Which brings us to the second reason we see action from the grassroots. Modern environmentalism has been defined by high-powered national groups of lawyers and scientists headquartered in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and New York. For 30 years, we've been committed to the notion that reform begins in the nation's capitol and spreads out from there.
The problem here, as the Bush administration illustrates all too well, depending on who's in the White House, environmental reform is not necessarily a good thing. What one election cycle may give, another can just as easily take away.
Nonetheless, private foundations have overwhelmingly supported national environmental groups at the expense of local, grassroots efforts. Of the roughly half-billion dollars given each year to environmental organizations, 70 percent goes to fewer than 50 national groups. That leaves just 30 percent to be dispersed to some 20,000 local, largely volunteer efforts, notoriously short-staffed and with few resources.
What's the alternative? If the ratio of charitable monies were tilted even slightly in favor of the grassroots, local initiatives would flourish. It doesn't take much seed money to empower communities to fight the oil drilling, coal mining and power plant construction called for by the Bush plan. A little money would go a long way in unleashing communities' NIMBY -- Not In My Back Yard -- tendencies. Such local efforts could radically shift national energy policy, forcing a reconsideration of conservation measures and alternative technologies as energy priorities.
If the Bush energy plan offers environmentalists anything, it is the unfortunate lesson that thirty years and billions of dollars spent doing battle in Washington have yet to pay significant dividends or alter the terms of the debate.
With more attention, and more philanthropic dollars directed to local and regional efforts, the situation can change.
Ticket by ticket, sticker by sticker, citizens are demonstrating that all environmentalism is local. It's time for the national groups and national funders to recognize this, and get more dollars flowing to the grassroots people who will make a difference.
This is Bill Shutkin for TomPaine.com.
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