Sometimes I really hate the environmental movement. I do. I sincerely hate it and think it is biased and depressing. I hate it to the point that my idea of guilty pleasure is littering on sidewalks and deliberately never recycling. Not that I act on these fantasies, but oh yes, it would feel so very good. I often want revenge on the tree huggers of the world.
I am getting my degree in environmental policy, which would lead one to think that I have at least a remote endorsement for the environment. Always accused of being a “light green” and being a little too business about everything, I often feel rejected by the environmental world, which led me to take a hiatus from my cause.
In one last desperate attempt to stick to my organic-inspired roots, I decided to attend The Climate Campaign’s Northeast Climate Conference last weekend at the Elysian Fields of Harvard Yard, where I could attend a workshop and scope out what was going on in the world of the Greens.
The event reminded me why tree and me had taken a break. My first qualm with the environmental world is that it is very, very unorganized. Call me obsessive-compulsive, but I have not met many anal-retentive, peace-loving hippies, scatterbrained scientists and vegans.
Example: It took the lad who checked us into the conference 10 minutes to figure out what the sign-up sheet was and even longer to find our names on the sign-up sheet, not to mention our nametags from the clutter on his desk. He asked if we were vegan and then sent us on our way, scowling at my proud declaration of being a carnivore.
We then come to my second problem with the environmental movement. Stereotypical environmentalists are highly judgmental. A boy caring for a booth within the conference accosted me and asked if I was graduating soon. He began rambling about jobs for the environment with public interest groups. I politely declined, but the booth boy said I needed to try and work for these people. He refused to believe I already had experience working with the environment just from looking at me, and it took many tree-hugging acronyms to shut him up. I snatched a decal featuring a big green maple leaf that said “save our maple syrup” and made my exit.
Being lowly Boston University and not Harvard students, and the hippies, of course, failing to give us a map to the workshops, my roommate and I decided to follow a flock of boys clad in Birkenstocks and knit caps, ignoring their “What are you, oh evil urbanite city dweller, doing here?” glares. We ended up at a workshop entitled “The Energy Bill.”
This workshop tore down the Bush/Cheney energy plan. As much as I learned about the plan, I also learned that even do-gooders still have their snide jokes and prejudices towards other groups. Bush and Cheney need to get a clue, but environmentalists need to stop alienating people who would otherwise care and stop making them think we are a bunch of scatterbrained idiots.
The whole talk focused on the negative, merely exaggerating all the flaws of the plan rather than analyzing the little good in it, or even offering alternatives for change. I fully agree that if the Bush/Cheney energy plan is approved by Congress, we should all move somewhere far so the filth of American pollution cannot suffocate and poison us, but a differing opinion should at least be more educated than the one we are rejecting. The presenter shot down some of the positive aspects of the plan, especially where alternative energy was concerned. The speaker was biased and did not acknowledge that as environmentalists, we need to realize that an argument is only as strong as its ability to refute its opponent, while offering valid criticism of our own. By not having our own energy bill in Congress, we are merely delaying the inevitable and maintaining a negative status quo where nothing changes.
The environment is a business, albeit non-profit, and should be run with efficiency and aggression. Environmentalists need to get over their holier-than-thou complex and get to work, operating through the government rather than against it and letting voters know that it’s really about the health of children, or even the ability to take a vacation to Fiji and not see sewage coating the non-touristy part of Nadi Bay. That ugly beach almost spoiled my vacation. We’ve spent all our press time on Artic National Wildlife Refuge, won that battle and are now losing a war.
To my delight, by the end of the workshop, a couple of people in the crowd spoke up and said something had to be changed, and it wasn’t just the Republican government. Maybe I wasn’t alone after all.
Leaving the conference, my environmental spirit was rekindled. I may never fit into the whisker-clad, tofu-pup craving, grassroots-working group of most environmentalists, but I do believe in the cause, and within my own world of well-tailored outfits and urban-dwelling consumers, maybe I can reach someone who cares about this little green planet for the same reasons I do. Call it vanity, but maybe someday, I can be part of an environmental movement that I can actually like, and our world will be a little bit better because I tried.