Home > Politics, News & Issues > Environmental Issues > Environment (Other)
Environmentalists: Do they do more good or more harm?
Results so far:
| Good | 54% | 98 votes | Total: 180 votes | |
| Harm | 46% | 82 votes |
Good
by Lisa Pearce
Created on: January 26, 2009
I am an environmentalist. These days it's almost a career-limiting statement to make, especially in the company of engineers or business owners, but I make it with conviction anyway. Don't get me wrong: I am no greenie. Instead, I am a realist and although my training is in botany, geography, environmental law and conservation biology, I find increasingly that my work makes the biggest difference in policy, politics and finance. If you as an environmentalist can't relate to the real world in real world terms, you don't accomplish much.
I believe strongly in doing things right. Not purely or exclusively (or in fact at all) for the sake of the environment, but because doing things right translates into respecting people and place and nine times out of ten means making better business decisions. "Environmental management is everything management", in my view.
As with any group of people, there are always different shades of grey within the collective. Some environmentalists I've met are very good at propaganda and fighting a cause merely for the sake of having a cause to fight for. Much like so many politicians. Then there are individuals for who I have a tremendous amount of respect: those who actually know what they're talking about and are able to not only understand the implications of what they're lobbying for in terms of political, social or economic terms, but are able to bring that message across in a sane, non-emotional way. I take my hat off to those people.
Once I had the opportunity to motivate a significant financial investment purely on safety and environmental terms: an industrial installation belonging to the company I worked for was polluting a local dam because it was located in a wetland area too close to the dam. The flooding was getting so bad that it endangered the safety of employees working there. In days gone by, engineers viewed wetland areas as non-valuable' and it made short- to medium- term financial sense to drain such areas and construct these industrial installations there. However, nature has a way of returning to its original state and the wetlands started healing themselves over a period of about two and a half decades. By that time workers were refusing to enter the installation because their lives were threatened, and we were called in to find a solution. The engineers had tried in vain by then to find a way to divert the water away from the installation.
After assessing the situation, we found that pollution from the installation was significant enough to attract legal action from other users of the dam. To cut a long story short: a significant financial investment was made to move the installation to another, more environmentally appropriate site. The positive spin-off that sold the project was that the company would avoid litigation and save money in future from delays due to the flooding. It would also be a positive image-booster to the company since they voluntarily removed a source of pollution from the local area. We did the right thing for the right reasons. No emotional hogwash, no manipulation, only good sense.
Yes, environmental sentiments can be a little fuzzy sometimes. Maybe because people from all walks of life pick up on the wrongs of corporate rationale and do their best to try and fight the rollercoaster. It's the voice of the common people that constitutes many NGOs, not always those of intellectuals or savvy business people. And for those people who choose to stand up for what they believe, even if they don't quite grasp the full global context, I also have much respect.
But let's take a look at the bigger reality: environmentalists fought and won the case for the environment to be considered a legal entity. Yes, we need economic progress, but how short sighted can one be to think that short-term economic gains are justified in the face of long-term eradication of (free) environmental services such as clean water, clean air and healthy land? Think of it in monetary terms: does it really make sense to line the corporate pocket by dumping untreated effluent in a water source, only having to spend exorbitant amounts of money to treat that same water source in years to come because, either, people are dying, crops are failing or the Green Scorpions are closing the plant down? Does it really make sense to operate a plant at a lower cost margin, but at the same time hazard the loss of employees to disease or forced closure?
I once worked with a shrewd contractor who was awarded a contract because he accepted the terms of the environmental management plan assigned to the project. One condition of the EMP was that work would not continue if it was raining, due to the risk of soil pollution from an old industrial oil spill which they were attempting to clean while demolishing old plant. Yet when the time came, this contractor instructed his subcontractor to continue work in the rain. Needless to say, the activities resulted in a major spread of industrial oil, necessitated a costly six-month delay in work while the soil was treated and rehabilitated, and the subcontractor losing his income during that time. So much for progress'.
Another business owner I once met was able to turn his failing business around after implementing a number of environmentally friendly' practices: using less water and less hazardous chemicals in the production process meant reduced cost for the actual water, as well as in penalties from discharging high concentrations of toxic waste into the municipal sewerage system. Environmental management made good business sense.
Please permit me to comment humbly on the article from a fellow writer in the no' section: wildfires in themselves are not polluting or devastating. Those fires allow regeneration of the forests, not destruction, their smoke and ashes feed new life, it is not pollution in the natural scheme of things. It is precisely the incorrect notion that land management is able to contain fires that has created unnatural conditions where wildfires become too hot, too fast. The natural carbon sequestration resulting from wildfires in fact curb pollution. Granted, no sane person can argue that people's lives shouldn't be protected from raging wildfires. Should we not consider, rather, alternative geographic settlement and development patterns instead of exposing people to that risk? If our land management practices (and this goes for the South African context of burning grasslands particularly) actually create unbalanced situations where fires become a real threat to life, we should take a broader view to find ways of dealing with it more responsibly.
On nuclear power: I am still of two minds on the subject. Nuclear power generation creates virtually no pollution, yes. BUT... are we really sure that we can handle the nuclear waste? O yes, the corporates tell us, of course we can guarantee long-term safety of nuclear waste sites. And they're even working on technology that will make it possible to recycle spent nuclear cells. But in my heart of hearts I can't still that quiet the whisper that bias can be bought. That's only my opinion of course and I will gladly be proved wrong one day.
Environmentalists can and do bring about positive change. Provided that environmental lobbying is sound and makes good sense, it brings depth to business decisions and long-term financial strategy. Environmentalists must be able to relate to economic, social and political realities in order to be heard and affect the quality of change that is needed. The biggest challenge facing any environmentalist is not global warming or the mass of plastic swirling around in the ocean it is changing peoples' minds about the way we live on our planet. Progress must be for all, today and tomorrow. Let good sense prevail.
Learn more about this author, Lisa Pearce.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Harm
by Steve Lemaster
Created on: June 16, 2009 Last Updated: June 23, 2009
How Environmentalism Is Doing More Harm Than Good
"Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."- David Brower First Executive Director, Sierra Club
John Muir founded The Sierra Club to Make the mountains glad in 1892 and is probably the most powerful environmental group in the nation. Originally founded to better the future enjoyment of the wilderness, it has become more radical by promoting anti-growth, anti-technology and espousing populationism. Their priorities now are best illustrated by the animal rights activist and extremist, Paul Watson who was elected to the Sierra Club's board of directors in 2003.
If you don't know who Paul Watson is, then a brief history is in order. Paul Watson was a co-founder of Greenpeace and founded the ultra-radical Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) in 1977, after being ousted from the former, for condoning violence in the name of the environment. He quoted to Access Energy in 1982, "I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds." Watson and his merry band of sea pirates sail the high seas, harassing and sinking fishing boats and endangering people's lives.
In 2003, he announced that he was overtly advocating the takeover of the Sierra Club, claiming to be 3 votes shy of controlling a majority of the 15 member board. When the 2004 election season came around, he made allies with candidates endorsing strict limits to legal immigration. Even though he made promises of using the club's revenue to address both immigration policy and animal-rights issues, he lost in a record turnout. Despite the loss, he remained on the board until 2006.
"A vegetarian lifestyle as a way to counter the alleged abuse animals endure to feed a hungry and growing global population."- Broward Sierra News 2002
The American people are a technologically linear progressive society; meaning that we are always striving to invent and reward those with innovative ideas, not punish them. The Sierra Club, on the other hand, despises this and goes out of their way to stymie technological innovation, such as biotechnology. They are a well coordinated group, which pushes the animal rights agenda through campaigns against, what it labels as, the growing menace of modern farms.
Florida, 2002. A Case study
Sierra Club extremists endorsed PETA's logo "that eating meat is animal abuse and is what's contributing to world hunger." It was at this time that the Broward Sierra News championed the quotation above and used PETA and their message that meat eating and livestock farms, in particular, are what's causing world hunger and animal abuse. Meanwhile, the New York and Michigan Sierra Club chapters promoted and distributed their Vegetarian Starter Kit, by the deliberately misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which is a well known PETA front group. These two groups also encouraged people to sign the VegPledge campaign sponsored by EarthSave International, as a way to save the earth by going vegetarian. During this time, the New York group cosponsored the Behind Closed Doors event with the People for Animal Rights, with the sole purpose of vilifying livestock farms and featuring none other than Gene Bauston of Farm Sanctuary.
Legal Muscle Worthy of Al Capone
As you can see, the Sierra Club, as well as PETA are well funded and well coordinated. They are also well funded on the legal front. The Sierra Club has a long hit list of farms that they have targeted for legal action and in the May 2000 issue of their periodical, Sierra, they announced their intentions to sue large livestock farms from coast to coast. No one court case will be a magic bullet. You have to fight on multiple legal fronts. On February 28, 2001, The Club allied itself with the ultra radical Waterkeeper Alliance's trial lawyer, Robert Kennedy Jr., as a full partner in litigation against pork companies. On the very same day, The Club announced that it had filed lawsuits targeting Smithfield Farms across the nation, one of the lawsuits alleged that they were involved in mafia-style racketeering, which was summarily bounced out of court.
This has become The Club's primary tactic by suing farms, such as construction of multiple dairy farms between 1998-2003, because it's cheap and bogs down those farms in litigation.
The Sierra Legal Defense Fund was founded in 1971, as a non-profit law firm to act as a legal arm for its self proclaimed grassroots, mafia style tactics. In 1998, the name was changed to EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund or just EarthJustice, who's sole purpose is to bully, threaten and intimidate businesses and public agencies through frivolous lawsuits. And the military isn't even immune to the terrorist style tactics of The Club, when it filed a lawsuit in 2004 against the Marines to stop a training exercise on Makua Valley, Hawaii, citing concern for supposed endangered species habitats. A response was issued to EarthJustice's bullying tactics. To win the war against terrorism and get ready for future battles, the U.S. military must be prepared. The conduct of realistic live-fire training in Makua is part of that preparation. Four years prior to that, EarthJustice made an attempt to stop the military from training on a small, uninhabited island called, Farallon de Medinill, citing concern for migratory birds.
"If I knew I had a fatal disease, I would definitely do something like strap dynamite to myself and take out Grand Canyon Dam, or maybe the Maxxam Building in Los Angeles after it's closed up for the night."- Darryl Cherney, Earth First!
Profiteering Through Lawsuits
In 1986, California voters approved Proposition 65, which was coauthored by the current Sierra Club executive director, Carl Pope. Proposition 65 Requires businesses to notify Californians about significant amounts of chemicals in the products they purchase, in their homes or workplaces, or that are released into the environment. By providing this information, Proposition 65 enables Californians to make informed decisions about protecting themselves from exposure to these chemicals. Proposition 65 also prohibits California businesses from knowingly discharging significant amounts of listed chemicals into sources of drinking water.
What many don't know is that prop 65 contains a bounty hunter clause that encourages trial lawyers to file frivolous lawsuits and cash in on any product that contains a carcinogen, no matter how small, that's listed in the proposition. Violators of prop 65 can be fined up to $2,500 per day and per violation, while the plaintiffs can make bank by collecting up to 25% of the total fines collected. The radical group, As You Sow (AYS), now get this, made a whopping $1.5 million by playing the lawsuit game between 2000-2002. The president of The Sierra Club and executive director of AYS, Larry Fahn has made hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, by suing anyone and everyone that will kowtow to their tactics.
The reprobates at AYS take their ill gotten gains from prop 65 and disperses it to other radical groups, such as Robert Kennedy's Waterkeeper Alliance, David Brower's Earth Island Institute and Mike Roselle's Rainforest Action Network and Ruckus Society.
As with many well intentioned organizations, they tend to go radical with time and The Sierra Club is no different. When it was founded, it promoted environmentalism through conservationism, however, greed almost always plays the fundamental role with radicalism. Since conservationism doesn't have much monetary return, like the current Go Green slogan these days, it's likely to get worse.
Learn more about this author, Steve Lemaster.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Write and get published
Share with other writers
Polish your freelancing skills
Quality articles from proven freelancers
Exclusive rights, fast turnaround
Brand engagement, business blogging -- our writers do it all
INFORMATION
Copyright © 2002-2012 Helium, Inc. All rights reserved.
Helium.com: A Service of RR Donnelley