Environmental activism often becomes a frustratingly circular struggle; during the past decade, environmentalists have set goal after goal for reducing pollution and other waste only to see emissions rise worldwide. This week’s Massachusetts Power Shift conference on global warming — much of which took place at Boston University’s Charles River campus — did a good job of pushing for a concrete goal to reduce pollution. Still, these events alone will not do much to reverse the trend of increasing pollution until environmental coalitions like this one reach out to a broader section of American society.
Like any successful grassroots campaign, the weekend conference seems to have struck the right balance between powerful interests and volunteers working outside of the establishment. The conference boasted the support of clean energy sponsors like the Cape Wind project as well as speeches from congressional heavyweights like U.S. Sen. John Kerry and U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, yet countless college volunteers from BU and beyond also did their part to promote cleaner energy.
Still, environmental activists will have to go much further to recruit broad support from every American — not just the lobbyists and academics who already agree that global warming is a dire problem — to effect real change. Former Vice President Al Gore has raised awareness of global warming among those who will listen him, yet far too many Americans still view environmentalism as a pet cause for wealthy liberals. Some have yet to even learn the man-made causes of global warming.
Still, the victims of sudden global warming are very real; often it is the poor who bear the brunt of droughts, flooding and larger tropical zones where malaria can spread. Millions of people in low-lying countries like Bangladesh are in danger of losing everything if sea levels rise significantly within the next few decades, as most scientists have predicted. Ordinary American citizens will become as angry and involved with this topic as they have with other grassroots campaigns if they understand this. All they need is a powerful organization to put a human face on the effects of complex changes in climate.
A truly grassroots campaign goes beyond a conference accessible to at most a few thousand people to sponsor events at the community level. Activism does not come from widely-publicized concerts on a Sunday afternoon. It comes from constant urging — even rabble rousing — at public schools, churches and focal points of community life. More importantly, the effort needs a more charismatic leader — someone ambitious and contentious enough to catapult environmental problems into the public consciousness. Until then, environmental efforts will remain mired in an endless cycle of pyrrhic victories that do nothing to stop the disastrous course our economy is taking.
