Bassem K's Library tagged environment →  View Popular, Search in Google

So there was a reason for environmentalism’s shift to the left, just as there was a reason for its blinding obsession with carbon. Meanwhile, the fact of what humans are doing to the world became so obvious, even to those who were doing very well from it, that it became hard not to listen to the greens. Success duly arrived. You can’t open a newspaper now or visit a corporate website or listen to a politician or read the label on a packet of biscuits without being bombarded with propaganda about the importance of “saving the planet.” But there is a terrible hollowness to it all, a sense that society is going through the motions without understanding why. The shift, the pact, has come at a probably fatal price.

Today’s environmentalism is about people. It is a consolation prize for a gaggle of washed-up Trots and, at the same time, with an amusing irony, it is an adjunct to hypercapitalism: the catalytic converter on the silver SUV of the global economy. It is an engineering challenge: a problem-solving device for people to whom the sight of a wild Pennine hilltop on a clear winter day brings not feelings of transcendence but thoughts about the wasted potential for renewable energy. It is about saving civilization from the results of its own actions: a desperate attempt to prevent Gaia from hiccupping and wiping out our coffee shops and broadband connections. It is our last hope.

The left’s funders, on the other hand, have pursued high-profile national legislative wins. Their money is impatient and results-based. Institutions receiving the money are treated like untrustworthy employees, forced to submit endless progress reports and beg anew for money every year or two. The result is short-term thinking and number-pumping. Young people are treated like chattel, given unpaid internships and asked to accept poverty. Grassroots organizing and local politics are neglected in favor of D.C.-focused lobbying meant to influence elites.

 

When it comes to environmental philanthropy, this familiar critique is, at least in broad outlines, correct. What’s more, environmental funding tends to be extremely siloed; there’s little overlap with broader issues of social and economic justice. Basically, a few big D.C.-based green groups get the bulk of the money, to be spent effecting federal legislation and policy, while smaller community-organizing groups go hungry.

A new report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy puts some numbers behind these concerns. It finds that “in 2009, environmental organizations with budgets of more than $5 million received half of all contributions” in environmental philanthropy, though they represent “only 2 percent of the nearly 29,000 environment and climate public charities in the country.”

The average temperature around the globe in 2011 was 0.92°F (0.51°C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline.

The first 11 years of the 21st century experienced notably higher temperatures compared to the middle and late 20th century, Hansen said. The only year from the 20th century in the top 10 warmest years on record is 1998.

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency is telling you exactly that. In data released this month as part of the IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook report, he shows that in 2010 the world spent $409 billion on subsidizing the production and consumption of fossil fuels, dwarfing the word’s $66 billion or so of subsidies for renewable energy

In no case do these subsidies make sense.

what is needed now, according to Mohamed Nagi, executive director of the Habi Center for Environmental Rights, is to take things to the next level by passing  binding legislation regarding environmental human rights.

 

“As we discuss rewriting our constitution," Nagi says, "we need to make sure there are articles in the new constitution clearly stipulating the need to guarantee and protect environmental rights.” This, he adds, is essential for enforcing Egypt’s environmental laws, which have not been properly implemented, and also strengthen the role of civil society on the ground.

Kingsnorth declares he wants nothing of this "soulless" form of environmentalism.  "I can’t make my peace with people who cannibalize the land in the name of saving it. I can’t speak the language of science without a corresponding poetry. I can’t speak with a straight face about saving the planet when what I really mean is saving myself from what is coming."

Kingsnorth also has a more positive suggestion for us: to recast the environmental movement as "ecocentric” as opposed to its current androcentric fixation.