Remember Earth Day 1970? Remember the joy, the unity, the sense of mutual purpose? Remember the outcome? The passage of monumental federal laws on clean air, clean water,endangered species, workplace safety, toxics...followed by the establishment of state and local-level regulatory agencies and statutes to protect wildlife habitat, rivers, wetlands, endangered species and to enforce federal laws? Remember the explosion of national, regional and local environmental groups to lobby, educate, and enforce the new laws?

As of the 1970s, it was estimated that over 20 million people belonged to these new organizations, with millions more who supported their efforts but didn't donate. Congress and Pres. Richard Nixon could not ignore this blossoming of concern, commitment and activism. It is arguable that environmentalism became the most significant social justice movement of the 20th century. Even now, in retrospect, looking at its accomplishments, that argument is still valid.

Now, things are quite different, because of external and internal factors and pressures. Externally, the Reagan era that began in 1980 signalled a strong backlash from big business, developers, industry, and their cronies in congress, a backlash echoed in conservative journals and in the mass media. On the surface, this backlash could be seen as a response to the necessity for business to absorb the higher costs of environmental compliance, thus cutting into its profits.

But this is probably not the fundamental reason for the backlash, given that environmental regulations are not only a tiny part of business expenses, but are more or less welcomed by business because regulation legitimizes business and industry by setting the parameters for their operations. And since the parameters, such as health and safety standards, were always set loosely and thinly, so as not to disrupt or inconvenience business, regulation actually worked in its favor, contrary to popular belief.

No, the fundamental reason for the backlash against environmentalism was that industry and business recognized early on - as the left and liberals did NOT - that environmentalism, when carried to its logical conclusion, was antithetical to economic growth and capitalism, and if embraced by too many Americans would seriously impair industrial expansion and just about every other kind of development, large or small. In the end, the public would be awakened to the full impact of uncontrolled economic growth and development, as it impinged on their communities as well as on the wilderness and natural resources owned by the public. This awakening may be starting now; whether it is too late is a reasonable question.

All you have to do is look at the effect of high oil prices: on private cars, commercial trucks, power boats, recreation and tourism, exurban and suburban housing, food supply, electricity, consumer goods, to realize that anything that constrains consumption and growth is bad for business, that is, for a system addicted to and wholly dependent on growth for its survival. This is the capitalist system and it is now being threatened by its own weapons.

In the 1970s this long-term impact could not be predicted. The laws passed to protect air, water and wilderness were not enough to drastically shrink consumption, because oil and energy were cheap, too cheap, and thus did not provide signals to the public that economic growth was not sustainable and that society needed to go in a different direction, towards conserving, not spending. The failure of the system to implement full cost pricing is now brutally obvious.

Two reports that came out in 1972, however, did tell a different story. The Limits to Growth (now updated twice) said clearly that a finite planet could not sustain infinite growth. The Blueprint for Survival, published by The Ecologist in the UK, was far more important because it extended the analysis of the limits to growth to all the parameters of society and proposed a radical new model for humanity of conservation, frugality, political decentralization, regionalization of economies, and creation of a small-scale conserver society based on a steady-state model rather than one of economic expansion.

Not many environmentalists, much less elected officials or governments, took either report seriously. They faded into oblivion, at least in the United States. After the 1970s, with the onset of Reaganism, economic expansion as well as globalization dictated by industry, government elites, technocrats and financiers, all notions of conservation were thrown to the wind. Materialism and prosperity ruled the day. Even today technocrats like Nordhaus & Shellenberger (in their absurd book, Break Through) preach Prosperity as the answer to our environmental and social problems...a thesis being warmly embraced by deniers and doubters who don't want to hear the bad news being brought to them by climate scientists. This is like curing smallpox by spreading the virus more widely and hoping enough people survive. Come think of it, isn't this what the free market guys have always proposed? Survival of the fittest?

A few glitches appeared here and there: the Santa Barbara oil spill, the Arab oil embargo, a few wars, but little impeded the mad rush of consumers to buy, consume and build. Rampant real estate development with low interest rates, cheap land, government-financed roads and infrastructure, cheap imports, and above all cheap energy, became the American Way of Life.

At the same time this was happening, various social movements were expanding, against racial discrimination, poverty, and conflict in Latin America, and for gay and women's rights, abortion and social justice in general. Abroad the dissolution of the Soviet Union reconfigured the map of Europe. New opportunities arose for liberals to organize, mobilize and protest. Amidst the clamor for peace and social justice, concern for the environment and nature was essentially forgotten; worse, those who were still concerned about it were directly attacked for purportedly not caring about the needs of minorities and the poor. Radical minority leaders and groups accused the environmental organizations of elitism, exclusionism and even racism. Concerns for nature and habitat were derided as distractions from the "real" problems of society, as merely hobbies of the middle and upper classes.

Meanwhile, the large national organizations based in Washington DC, who had had growing membership and influence on all levels of government, were becoming heavily dependent not on member dues and support but on large "liberal" funders. Multimillion dollar grants from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, to groups like Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund and others, enabled them to expand their staff, pay high salaries, move to larger cushier offices, and put prominent corporate executives and attorneys on their boards of directors so as to secure a direct line to corporate money.

At the same time this enabled them to cultivate the mass media and present themselves as spokesmen for the environmental movement, a role they still hold today. Gaining access to congressional committees as well as the White House was also a key part of their success. Once all of these links had been put in place, based on a continuing influx of foundation and donor money, it became evident that they were no longer in a position to rock the boat or challenge industry and corporations, much less promote radical change.

Funders, media and congress alike would not accept radical divergence from traditional reformism, much less any serious questioning of economic growth and the capitalist system. These national groups were now an accepted part of The Establishment, and their credibility and very existence depended on their compliance and support of the system that they had been challenging in a piecemeal and "reasonable" fashion since 1970. Their loyalty now lay to their funders, not their members, and to solidifying their status and credibility with congress and the media.

This is the situation today, and anyone who doubts it need only look at the knee-jerk support of the major DC-based groups of the useless diluted energy legislation (Boxer, Lieberman, Sanders) under consideration, the continued energy subsidies to fossil and nuclear utilities, the support of carbon trading (something welcomed by coal utilities as a way to continue reliance on coal), the refusal to impose carbon taxes or stringent mandatory efficiency standards, etc.

But wait a minute. There are missing pieces...and they are the same pieces that were missing in the 1970s: the peace groups, minority groups, unions, leftists, women's rights groups, civil liberties groups...not the groups per se but rather their MEMBERS, which presumably constitute the liberal segment of American society. And we must not leave out the kneejerk supporters of the Democratic Party, who have consistently refused to hold their elected officials (or president) accountable on major issues like war, health care, and energy.

Here we find tens of millions of LIBERAL Americans who have studiously placed "Environment" at the bottom (if at all) of their laundry list of important issues. One could argue that prior to the global warming issue there was not such a sense of urgency and that there "other people" as well as a large, well organized environmental movement to take care of such secondary matters.

Of course the urgency was always there but no one took it seriously, not even after the Arab oil embargo of 1972-3, because the price of oil was still low. Today it is ONLY the high price of oil that is riling Americans. As for global warming, most people believe what they read in their newspaper or see on TV or the internet, or are told by their friends and colleagues (who know no more than they do). They don't believe it, or they think technology will rescue us. Or the politicians.

Today Americans remain in serious denial about energy and global warming. They really believe that oil prices will and SHOULD come down, thus revealing their ignorance about the underlying cause of global warming: cheap energy. They get angry at personal inconvenience and the notion that solving the global warming problem will necessarily involve hardship. As their homes get incinerated, flooded and blown away, they demand that the government help them rebuild in the same place. They demand and get subsidized federal flood insurance. They demand the right to cheap gasoline and blame the oil companies for the high prices. They pressure their representatives to tax windfall profits of oil companies, and in response the legislators promote offshore oil drilling (which would not only add to global warming but would not make any oil available for at least a decade).

Is ANYONE minding the store? Except for the re-insurance companies, who wake nights in cold sweats over global warming, no one is. What few people will come out and say, even if they know it, is that we are now in a rapid and likely irreversible convergence of global crises, all sparked and exacerbated by the global economic growth model of capitalism:

diminishing energy and mineral resources and the accompanying increase in cost of exploitation;

huge industrialization and energy consumption expansion in China, India and elsewhere;

global-warming induced loss of of freshwater supplies, plus more severe droughts, flooding, fires, heat waves, hurricanes, crop failures and food shortages;

irreversible disruption of ecosystems, their natural services and their component species, including important pollinators of food crops;

spread of insect-carrying diseases like West Nile virus;

rising sea level, from melting ice sheets and glaciers, that will envelop coastal areas, destroy settlements, fresh water and croplands, and create a human exodus of hundreds of millions of refugees, as well as threatening infrastructure in urban coastal areas (roads, power plants, drinking water supplies, public transportation, sewage plants) thereby endangering all sectors of the economy and social stability and committing us to huge outlays of public funds to defend ourselves and our habitation, as witness New Orleans and flooded communities along the Mississippi River flood plain.

unchecked population growth, especially in Africa and the middle east. The June 29th NY Times has a scary article on child marriage in Yemen, and one man is interviewed...a man with 16 children by 2 wives. One cannot help but recognize that China's position today as the second largest world economy would not have been possible without its one-child policy, which was long derided as authoritarian. Population growth forces people to overexploit and deplete their local resources, such as wood, wild animals and freshwater supplies, and resort to unecological agricultural and harvesting practices.

We can blame our politicians for not wanting to stick out their necks on things like carbon taxes or shutdown of coal plants. But in the end we have to blame ourselves. And this includes those members of the public who one would expect to be in the forefront of radical restructuring of the economy: liberals. But where were they all since 1970? Where are they today?

They are dreaming on, of that joyful day when Barack Obama and the Democrats take control in Washington and save us from disaster. These are the people that might have been, were they so inclined and a bit more educated on nature and the environment, directly involved in the REAL survival issues of our day. Not in the usual fist-shaking anti-war demonstrations. Not in heated and pointless attacks on Israel. Not in the wishy-washy pages of The Nation and In These Times. Not in the effort to purge the white man's psyche of racism (presumed to be in the gene pool of all whites if you believe radical black rhetoric).

One hates to say to someone: drop what you are doing and do what I tell you to do. But any objective analysis of the global warming crisis would completely justify this. In addition, the resolution of most social justice problems will in fact be SUBSUMED by an appropriate (and appropriately radical) energy and economic agenda.

Such an agenda will, by decentralizing energy, take away power and profits from the oil and nuke companies. Such an agenda will relocalize economies so they can feed themselves and rehabilitate their communities. Such an agenda will reclaim the vast tracts of exurbia so they can revert to nature (and we might help this along by ripping up lots of highways, thus allowing greater absorption of CO2 by soils). Such an agenda will shut down the malls and theme parks and shopping centers out in the sticks and assist the revival of downtowns which are accessible by foot or bicycle.

Such an agenda will create jobs not only in renewable energy but through massive recycling of materials and, above all, in public transportation, arguably our most important challenge along with renewable energy. Such an agenda would move people and development back from the coasts and away from flood plains and fire-prone chapparal and dry deserts, thus saving the public billions of dollars to protect and rebuild these communities, and allowing these areas to revert to nature.

It will facilitate preservation of small farms that serve local communities and regions instead of mass markets (thus providing tasty healthy food that our supermarkets are incapable of providing). Such an agenda will lead to renovation and rehabilitation of older buildings and reduce the use of virgin wood and metals as well as carbon-intensive cement production. Such an agenda will move towards an end to the era of plastics which are killing our oceans and marine species, filling our landfills, and lining the pockets of beverage companies.

But a cautionary note for those who focus only on technological solutions, such as "green growth". That era will never emerge unless and until we definitively kill off fossil fuels and succeed in reducing the threat of global warming through massive and quick reductions in energy consumption. Those promoting green jobs and growth need to first align themselves unconditionally with those calling for a return to the 350 ppm CO2 urged by Jim Hansen and others, setting a target of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020, not 2050. By 2050 the game is over not only for green growth but the planet. There is no smiley face of renewable energy. It can only emerge and thrive AFTER we end the age of carbon, not simultaneously.

The liberals need to get on board fast. It is time to stop blaming the oil companies and look at ourselves. The responsibility for reducing energy use - the BASIC one - lies with the consumer. High energy prices, hopefully higher ones in the near future, have started the ball rolling. Now all citizens have to roll it faster, by demanding a carbon-free economy. Time for them to understand that curbing global warming is the fastest, fairest way towards a socially just AND sustainable planet.

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June 30, 2008 By Lorna Salzman http://www.lornasalzman.com