The Death of Environmentalism?
August 12th, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
I was surprised to see the data that I’ve graphed below reported in an ABC News et al. poll (PDF) showing that people are less likely to describe themselves as “environmentalists”. The specific question asked was, “Do you consider yourself an environmentalist or not?”
If we were in one of my environmental policy classes, an obvious question to ask of this data would be, does this trend reflect a failure of the environmental movement? A failure of the public? Something else?
August 12th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I think that there is a distinction to make between the term environmentalist and caring for the environment.
Environmentalist is a term that with time, it seems, became more pejorative and associated with the extremist of the environmental movement.
Yet, even though the poll shows that people have disassociated from the term does not mean that they are less preoccupied by the environment. They just don’t want to be labeled as extremist.
August 14th, 2008 at 6:03 am
Ditto Sylvain’s comment. Environmentalists have given the word a bad name and it is now synonymous with extremist. I believe conservationist would have polled better.
August 14th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Interesting. I really hadn’t considered that “Environmentalist” was becoming synonomous w/ extremist. I just started letting my memberships drop about 15 years ago – the near-constant apocalyptic fear-mongering, the money begging, the Alar debacle; it just got to be too much.
And this from a guy who proudly wore the Environmentalist label since his early 20’s (which was the early 70’s). Now that you mention it, I have gotten to prefer conservationist.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Are We All Still Environmentalists?…
Roger Pielke Jr. cites some interesting polling data purporting to show the percentage of Americans considering themselves to be “envir……
August 15th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
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August 18th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
dogwood writes: “Environmentalists have given the word a bad name and it is now synonymous with extremist.”
Why should environmentalists be blamed? The problem with the term “environmentalist” is that beginning with the rise of the far-right media (Fox News and right-wing radio) in the 1990s, this rise was accompanied by smearing environmentalists by taking the most extreme elements (who have very little to do with environmentalism, and are much closer to just general anarchist ideology) and portraying them as some sort of spokesmen for environmentalism. Those crazy people burning SUVs and whatnot have nothing to do with conservation and environmentalism, but if you flip on the TV you’d think the opposite. They do not define environmentalism any more so than the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas (whose anti-gay members protest by cheering at the funerals of iraq war soldier victims) define christianity.
Those idiots who climb into, then pout in, trees to prevent logging have no power in this country except that they are nominated by partisan media to represent the environmentalist movement.
Just look at the graph on this blog – it is the early 1990s when people start reacting badly to the environmentalist label. That is the same time when partisan media began gradually gaining influence. Consider Rush Limbaugh and the like shrieking about some idiots burning down homes under construction, etc.
These days, “environmentalist” means different things to different people, which makes this graph uninformative, since it is just varied, subjective labeling. To some, the label means anyone who likes the environment, and to another it means hairy Berkeley students with anarchist tendencies. The only thing this graph demonstrates is that beginning in the the early 1990s, people started to less highly of environmentalists. In that sense, it demonstrates the power and success of partisan media, and the reason it has grown into a position of considerable power in this country.
August 18th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I’m an environmental engineer, with more than 20 years of experience, mostly in environmental research.
About 20 years ago, I joined what I recall as the Sierra Club, in Roanoke, VA. I only attended a couple of meetings. The participants seemed to be very anti-industry. At my company, I did a fair amount of consulting for local companies. I thought they basically were decent people, trying to be decent neighbors. So I quit the club.
Maybe 5-10 years ago, I subscribed to Worldwatch magazine for a year or two. Again, they seemed very anti-industry. Also, all gloom and doom.
Finally, I subscribed to the Audobon Society’s magazine for a year or two. They were very much anti-Republican. (I’m not a Republican, but it just got annoying.)
So I’m an environmental engineer. But I don’t consider myself to have much in common with the people in those groups. So I guess I’m not an environmentalist.
August 18th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I think it’s prettty clear that environmentalism is not at all dead. Rather, it was very successful in cleaning up the environment in the 70s and 80s, and the environment has continued to improve – so in part, their own success at home has made environmentalism seem less relevant to voters – even as problems outside the US and globally have worsened.
Further, my own view is that we have too much environmental regulation, with the result that environmental protection is much more costly than it need be. Even though this is not a situation created by the enviros – legislators and industry are much more responsible – the right has successfully blamed enviros (who are more prominent for dilatory lawsuits) while ignoring how industry has protected itself with the aid of law makers. So the enviros have been getting more blame than they deserve.
However, enviros have failed to respond to some attacks, which do have a fair point – that government command and control is often an overly expensive and fractious way to protect the environment, and that many environmentalists fail to understand basic principles – which is that environmental problems arise when resources (streams, lakes, the air, wildlife) have no clear owners (who can’t invest in or defend the resources), and that socialized ownership and regulation may often make environmental problems more difficult to solve, by shifting them from private fora to zero-sum conflicts before politicians and bureaucrats.
FWIW, I remain a misanthropic enviro-Nazi.
August 29th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
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