Isn't country music pretty popular with hipsters these days?
Sometimes 'satire' can clearly reveal attitudes.
'The Urban Archipelago' by the editors of The Stranger
http://www.thestranger.com/seatt...ntent?
oid=19813
"They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers. ...
... we need a new identity politics, an urban identity politics, one that argues for the cities, uses a rhetoric of urban values, and creates a tribal identity for liberals that's as powerful and attractive as the tribal identity Republicans have created for their constituents. ...
if West Virginia wants to elect politicians who allow mining companies to lop off the tops off mountains and dump the waste into valleys and streams, thus causing floods that destroy the homes of the yokels who vote for those politicians, it no longer matters to us. F___ the mountains in West Virginia--send us the power generated by cleanly burned coal, you rubes, and be sure to wear lifejackets to bed."
'Attention Liberals: Please Breed' by Mark Morford
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ar...&
type=printable
"I am open to more practical solutions. Pouring massive amounts of birth control into the water supply in Kentucky and Utah and Colorado?"
But those alliances have been few, rare, and fleeting -- mainly because environmentalists see fishing and hunting as, well, kinda icky things.
"Kinda icky"? This, I think, understates significantly the prevailing opinions in the hardcore enviro- warrior set. I think that it's more accurate to say that they find fishing and hunting and deforestation and denying global warming and {insert cause here} to be deeply reprehensible and morally outrageous. They are not motivated by a dispassionate utilitarian calculus - rather, they are compelled by the same sort of moral outrage that fueled movements as diverse as the Underground Railroad and the Right-To-Life crowd.
Of course, to those of us who don't share the same worldview, such passion might seem more like empathy run amok. But it seems like quite a bit to ask that someone who truly believes e.g. that trees have rights, or that "mother nature" is some sort of sentient agent that cares and hurts and grieves, should hold hands and sing songs with the deeply immoral infidels on the other side.
As much as I disagree with their position, I think it does a disservice to that viewpoint to characterized it as being comprised of "self-serving prejudices". The people with whom you would have them break bread are, in their view, perpetrating very real atrocities against very real ethical beings who desperately need their protection.
Provocative post, Dave. I was raised in a redneck town in rural northeastern PA. We were ex-urban outsiders having immigrated to the Poconos from Philadelphia. I was 4 at the time, so while I remember a transition from the city to the woods (mostly that it was damned dark outside in the woods) I grew up mostly "indigenous" to the area. I was hardly an outsider. But to people born there, I and my family always were outsiders. My mom still lives there, my brothers and I fled ASAP upon reaching age 18, and she is still considered by the "locals" as an outsider. It takes three generations before you're a local.
I read a blissful ignorance in Rebecca's piece (I subscribe to Orion too). I do not know of any outsider-eco-local alliances that have been successful, ever. I'd like to read about them if they exist. I would agree that mocking the locals is counterproductive. But it's a highly noble fantasy to imagine that liking country music and behaving like a redneck will ever win a redneck's trust or loyalty.
My father spent 20 years trying to convince "locals" to not poach out the local deer population because they'd lose their food supply. (where I grew up, that's how most folks ate, shoot a deer, live another week, shoot a squirrel, that's lunch and dinner). They poached and crashed the deer population four times in those twenty years. It didn't matter. If my Dad was advocating something, it was illegitimate because he was "Other" and outsider. Period.
Maybe it's because I was beatup every day for four years between ages 10 and 14 because I had Tourette's and was "other" to the "locals" by fiat of my parentage that I am so bitter against country music, Republikaanerism and the military (all local cultural features of that day). I have lived in cities and 'burbs ever since and hated every minute of it there too. I have no place to call "home" because of the "localism" phenomenon. Until I read some case histories detailing successful alliances with locals on issues, I'll keep reading Rebecca as just another naive city kid who wants to "come home" to a place she knows nothing about.
Maybe you should write more about this, Dave, you grew up among them like I did. Mebbe I'll listen and be able to hear your voice better.
As far as environmentalism and the anti-redneck crowd goes... that's just the other side of the same door that has smacked me in the ass all my life. It's a dead-end issue: you must be accountable for what you know or chose not to know about. If you insist on crashing your food supply because not doing so is urban or librul witchery, then you deserve to fracking starve. If you insist on looking down yer polished and surgically sculpted schnoz at poor folk, then you deserve the inevitable backlash when the mob shows up at your door to burn your furniture and toss it on the lawn.
Somewhere in the middle indeed is the path, but "self-serving prejudices" are rife on both sides and they are not so easily "shed" like a coat on a hot day, precisely beause they're rooted in the truth of lived experiences.
The anti-environmentalist right has shot itself in both feet in the past few years, losing credibility and constituency, and a smart and fast-moving left could make hay out of this, to mix a few fairly rural metaphors.
Rebecca or her supporters of this notion have an obligation to defend the claim that the "The anti-environmentalist right has shot itself in both feet in the past few years, losing credibility and constituency." What is the evidence or experience that supports such a view? From where I sit, and where my mom still lives, the "anti-environmentalist right" is still firmly in control and is a grassroots phenomenon.
If it were true, a smart left, yada yada yada. I'd agree, except for my own lived experience that demonstrates you cannot make hay when you cannot get into the field, a field defended ferociously by a cultural ethic that shuns outsiders, even when those outsiders are handing you a lifejacket in a flood.
"The anti-environmentalist right has shot itself in both feet in the past few years, losing credibility and constituency." What is the evidence or experience that supports such a view? From where I sit, and where my mom still lives, the "anti-environmentalist right" is still firmly in control and is a grassroots phenomenon.
I think the increased concern over global warming and interest in renewable energy is evidence that they are losing ground, and the constant denials of global warming, even as the public continues to accept that it's real, has damaged their credibility. Not to mention news of the scandals of the Bush administration censoring climate reports and trying to silence scientists working for the government who voice opinions contrary to the party line.
notherDave has another angle on what I am trying to get across.
I had to laugh when I read Rebecca's line: "We must also talk about class again, loudly and clearly, without backing down or forgetting about race. This is the back road down which lie stronger coalitions, genuine justice, a healthier environment, and maybe even a music that everyone can dance to." Look this is sweet sentence construction and nice evocative writing but it's pretty much bullshit.
I bet Rebecca's going to get far with my old H.S. bus driver and honey-wagon driver, Skeeter, talking about class and race. After he hit on her, or called her father to let him know his little city girl is where she shouldn't be, he'd just as soon slash her tires on his way home.
While we who are not still redneck may fully comprehend and grasp that we are all in this together, locals do not see that this is true. They are together and we are not with them. And in a localist culture that requires three generations for Other to become Us, to think we can get "them" to understand that we're all in this together is a road to foolishville indeed.
This is just the wrong way to think about finding that elusive middle path.
I kind of agree with JustJack. I grew up in a suburb without an urb, halfway between rural and urban, and have transitioned to being an urban person almost completely. I lived for a while in a deeply rural part of this region, and hated every minute of it. The people there didn't know what to make of me, nor I of them. The rural world as I experienced it was so gender-segregated, I basically only ever associated with other women, and I had nothing in common with most of them. If they worked outside the home, they had unskilled jobs. I'm a professional by training and temperment. Most of them had only a high school education; I have a Master's degree. Their primary sphere of engagement with the world was the traditional, sex-segregated female sphere -- homemaking, children, and church. I didn't at the time have a home of my own, don't like and don't want children, and am an atheist (albeit with the sense to curb my tongue in that company). They're traditionalists (to put it kindly) and I'm a leaning-towards-radical feminist. They're deeply rooted with an attachment to place. I've lived in half a dozen different cities and don't have too much of a preference either way. I listen to country music and find it's intensely depressing, a sustained scream of pain and pining for lost male privilege.
Until and unless I or someone else comes up with some sort of common ground between people like the people I met then and people like me, there's practically no point in us talking, since we won't be talking to each other, we'll be talking past each other...
Most of these folks worked in the timber industry, but few of them trusted their corporate bosses much at all
Were they unionized? Unless they were, I disagree: their trust was going to go to the companies in the end, no matter how much they cussed along the way. They were always going to go with the devil they know, absent any pre-existing habit of looking at alternatives.
But it's not, KamatariSeta. The talk in local bars and taverns in the Poconos (which itself is hardly rural post 2000) is about the unfair criticisms and the unpatriotic blatherings of those "damned econuts and their global warming bullshit".
This is what I'm trying to tell y'all. People in the woods do NOT see the BushCo as discredited, they do NOT see science as a good thing, the do NOT believe global warming is real. And, for the record, renewable energy in places like the Poconos is the province of the rich, who are not US, not locals.
This "discrediting of the right" does NOT exist in rural America. It's an imaginative belief amongst the non-redneck left. Go into any bar in a rural town and listen. You won't hear any talk to support that view. I bet a beer on it.
When I hear urban and college town professional-class liberals disparaging poor rural whites, the disdain is usually based on these features, in descending order of importance: poor rural white 1) obesity, 2) aesthetic sensibilities, 3) religiosity, and last and least, 4) politics.
That tells me what the anti-rural prejudice is really based on.
Another observation: the same educated, urban/college town demographic that vilifies poor rural whites also tends to valorize poor rural natives of foreign countries. (Indeed, the latter are typically historically oppressed and hence sympathetic.) But if you want to encounter severe cultural conservatism, particularly on gender parity, ethnic relations, and religion, you will certainly find it in the Third World, particularly in rural areas.
Along the same lines, I could recommend "Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War" by Joe Bageant. It covers some of this territory and much more. It is a provocative read and while I do not agree with all his conclusions it does much to advance the conversation about the Red/Blue divide.
As for country music, an adverse reaction to it is often has less to do with the music than the mindless jingoism that it has come to represent. Music such as Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA", for example, has done much to poison the well. It would be foolish to deny that a certain category of country music does not represent a deep strain of anti-intellectualism that has been a feature of american culture for hundreds of years. It is obvious from my music collection that I genuinely like a lot of country music but when I hear the wailing chorus of "Ah'm prowd to be an 'Murkan, where at least ah know ah'm freeeee..." I just cringe.
Another brilliant post, this is exactly why I read orcinus.
The simple fact is that the fates of humanity and nature are intertwined. You can't save people without saving the planet, but you can't save the planet without saving people.
And yes, that means those real live people who live in the places environmentalists want to protect, even if they do have funny haircuts and listen to shitty music. If you want to save the earth you must have a vision that includes them in. There is no other way.
Joe Bageant is a kind of older brother to me. I get what he's saying, and I guess that's why I'm pinin gfor Dave to go furhter with this idea and do some of that "journalist shit" (I admit I saw "Top Gun" on late-night teevee) and write up some examples of successful eco-coalition work between outsider-enviros and rural locals. If this has ever happened, I want to know how it was done and how it can be replicated.
As much as I enjoy poking fun at the culture I grew up in (and admittedly the culture that caused me tremendous grief, fattening the wallets of many-a-shrink), I am more sympathetic to the rural poor guy that I am the wealthy city guy (aw hell, maybe just because I'm a poor city guy now). But I'm absolutely UN-sympathetic to my rural sibling's cultural craptasms, only their humanity and right to survive. From my experience those cultural stoopidities have been the root cause of much of their suffering, certainly it's been the cause of my own chaos.
I just want to know what a successful coalition of rural worker-urban enviro geeks for real change looks like. I know the rare comraderie of squirmin' under a house to fix a burst pipe in the middle of an ice storm, but I've never seen that when it comes to saving a water source or kicking Walmart outta town. And I seriously doubt the ability of noble imaginations like Rebecca Solnit to get such a job done simply by whirling around a dance floor to country tunes or supressing the sniggerin' of her urban pals. Those are just human polite things to do in the first place but that ain't gonna make you a local. And if you ain't local, 'you can just git in yer sissified car there and head on back to new york, [spit]' to quote a local.
I live in northern New Mexico, which is a bit unusual. The rural folks here are Hispanic (they've never heard the work Latino) and so solidly Democratic that no Republicans even bother running for office. You will run into a lot of opposition to, say, copper mines here, and the owner of the local quarry is the most unpopular person in the county.
But the hard-core environmentalists still manage to alienate people at every turn. My impression is that a lot of these environmentalists are ecologists or other biologists and consider anyone who without a degree in biology as not worth listening to. And, yes, they have alienated a lot of potential allies that way.
So I applaud what Dave is saying.
I grew up in a rural area in Missouri, and I see Dave and Rachel's point, but have experience-based concerns like JustJack. Where I'm from, "Christians" deeply distrust *Catholics*, you have to drive 90 minutes to find anything else, and you don't hear Social Gospels, either. Racism flourishes with only superficial challenge (the Civil War was about States' Rights ya know); homophobia and religious bigotry are positively normative. My father is relatively liberal for the area, and he thinks atheism is a religion, that government refusal to display religious symbols on public property thus constitutes oppression of Christians ('freedom of' requires 'freedom from' Dad, sorry), and that religious truths should be matter for science.
Since college I've been pretty urban, and I'd say to some extent urban liberalism is about a breadth of options and multiculturalism that just isn't there in rural areas. It's hard to be multicultural when you have to drive 30 minutes to find a black person or 90 minutes to find a mosque. The people there have often never seen a feminist; what they know about them they learned from Rush Limbaugh on the radio, and related right-wing and theocratic fear-mongers warning them not to risk their children's souls by sending them to godless liberal arts colleges. Indeed I'd say Rachel's piece missed a huge piece of the puzzle by not talking about rural religiosity.
I'm deeply conflicted about the place where I grew up; I love the land itself, and I personally have nothing against hunting and fishing and farming responsibly---living with the land doesn't mean sealing it in a glass bubble. But the culture there is often deeply oppressive. I'm not saying this as some snooty urbanite, but as someone who grew up there before college gave me the freedom to become my true multiculturalist social liberal self, and who knows what my rural origins had already done to me and what they could do to me now if I went back and let them.
DocScience has a great point too! Growing up there were two kinds of workers in the tourista Poconos: the union guys who never worked but got paid buttloads of money (and were always tellin' us how we were never gonna be good enough for the union) and the rest of us. The rest of us worked our asses off for minimum wage and only a few of us resented it. Most folks accepted this as the way it was and the ehtos of the Man was theirs as well. It was how you survived, that and sending cousin Nate out to bag a deer, cause the paycheck just got used on gas, beer and cigarettes and them new fangled pop tart things. That sounds like a snarky joke but that's lifted from real life where I grew up.
When they brought the casinos into the Poconos, we had family feuds and people at each others' throats, not because it was gamblin' but because it was jobs or unemployment, believe the casino's promise of jobs or those damned libruls from Atlantic City trying to sell their lies to us. turned out those evil libruls were right and the casinos brought in their own workers from outside, locals didn't get no jobs no-how.
The Nature Conservancy is one environmental organization that has successfully avoided the problem that Dave so clearly identifies. And I think that's one main reason that TNC has been and continues to be wildly successful at actually conserving habitat: hunters, fishermen, rural people, Republicans, are important parts of the membership, and support most of the organization's goals.
Excellent post - and comment stream! Keep up the good work!
I grew up in the mountains west of Denver - rural then, not so much any more (good highways make for longer commutes) - moved into town in High school and to Alaska days after HS graduation (to escape from suburbia). I've spent a couple decades exploring the Alaska wilderness and consider myself an Aldo Leopold conservationist.
But I have always known that the environmental movement had a deep contradiction. The very things that allow us to "Enjoy" the wilderness are products of natural resources removed from the wilderness - Try getting by without your gore-tex & fleece jacket, fiberglass kayak, etc. or try getting to the wilderness without fuel guzzling 737s, cars etc. How about a nice warm dry home to come back to after your trip - made possible by timber.
The "lock it up" philosophy of the modern environmental movement is profoundly disconnected from the reality of where things come from and how much people want to live a better (more comfortable) life. As an Alaskan who makes a living from tourism - which requires a decent environment for people to want to come to visit - I'm also concerned that my son (7 years old) has an economy that will allow him to live in Alaska if he wants. And that means a base of natural resource extraction. The key is to make sure that resources are extracted responsibly and don't wreck the environment in the process - it can be done if we're not too greedy.
Seen both types. I've sat around the wood stove in the local store/post office and listened to people bitch about how we need to re-zone that old ranch so that the developer can provide construction jobs for the locals, and I've sat in the zoning meeting and listened to the latest california transplant bemoan the plight of the prairie dogs if the re-zoning occurs.
Bottom line, if you're paycheck depends on it, you're for it. It takes an enlightened individual to see what they and their family have done for generations is slowly destroying their homeland, and they are few and far between. Fisherman who catch almost nothing will talk about how their parents used to have huge catches and then get pissed when anyone suggests the need to manage the fishery.
While the enviro-crazies might be a pain in the ass, they are generally on the right side of these decisions and before the sierra club, et al, the government and business raped the west with impunity... there is too much history here to write about, but you're post, while valid in a narrow sort of way, really struck the wrong chord with me.
Kind of like saying that if those crazy arabs would just leave Isreal alone things would be fine. There is an infinite regression of wrongs and justifications for each sides hopeless bigotries and retaliations.
As a lifelong birdwatcher and environmentalist (though in the East, where things are different) I've known a lot of fruitful, close cooperation between waterfowl hunters & environmentalists. Part of that, I think, is that waterfowl are migratory, so the hunters know they need a long chain of places to live, not just one spot. And because the birds are migratory, hunters in any one area don't feel as though the birds *belong* to them by right.
There are a lot of similarities between fisheries and waterfowl hunting, in that way, so theoretically fishers should similarly be able to work with environmentalists. But the cooperation between duck hunters and conservations only arose after commercial hunting had destroyed itself, and I see no sign that the world's fisheries won't destroy themselves, too.
As Alaska Dave said, it can be done if we're not too greedy -- but capitalism is bound to be too greedy, it has no choice.
Dave, I continue to be impressed with your thinking and insight into these issues and all the issues you cover. My great thanks for your efforts.
=eas=
What struck me about this was that most of these people, if they were to travel to another country, wouldn't walk into the local cantina and ask if they could listen to something other than those awful corridas or whatever the local music was. Because they'd understand that it was bigoted and arrogant of them to do so.
No, it would be because the natives of Mexico aren't their enemy. See, the snooty urban environmentalists and the noble savage rural folk understand something: they are locked in a battle in which there will be a winner and there will be a loser. Only one side wants "effective and real change." There isn't a middle ground.
The better analogy would be to the scene in Casablanca in which Rick allows the band to play "La Marseillaise" to drown out "Die Wacht am Rhein."
This is a fantastic post. As you note in the final paragraph, you can generalize your argument beyond the environmental movement. I’m not sure about Solnit’s optimism about the slow/local food movement (I’m assuming what he’s getting at by the “resurgent interest in where food actually comes from”). I’m all for it, but it seems like the middle & upper-class embrace of it might be just another way to be snooty, not a rejection of anti-rural bigotry per se.
The centrality of country music in the creation of cultural hierarchy is actually supported by sociological research. University of Virginia sociologist Bethany Bryson applied sophisticated statistical analysis to opinion data about music likes and dislikes correlated with social class. One of her findings is that *hatred* of country music is a marker of cultural capital among the middle and upper classes. Dislike of heavy metal and gospel music also a class marker. She also has some interesting things to say about race and music tastes. (“Anything But Heavy Metal: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Likes and Dislikes” American Sociological Review, Oct. 1996)
I think Rusty Shackleford goes too far with the music analogy; rural American country fans are not fascists (except in rare exceptional cases that David often writes about).
On the other hand I do agree that it's counterproductive to invalidate urban liberals' tastes as privelege and bigotry (it might be based in plenty of experience, perception of problematic content, etc.). "Hating it makes you a snob" doesn't play any better than "liking it makes you a hick", I daresay.
Am I the only one here so benighted as to actually like country and western?
I didn't mean to suggest that either side is fascist, Fox.
Enlightened Layperson -- I actually like C&W, even mainstream stuff that's far out-of-bounds for hip people. I'm a pretty decent two-stepper and I know several line dances. And yes, I've caught crap from my putatively cool California friends who equate line dancing with goose stepping.
mainly because environmentalists see fishing and hunting as, well, kinda icky things.
This is another area where it depends on what you mean by "environmentalists". I once asked around (while on a birding trip), and none of the serious birders were morally opposed to hunting, at all. We despise and fear the kind of people who "aren't hunting, they're drinking with guns" -- because we're out in the woods where we might get shot. But birders see a fair amount of natural, icky predation in progress, and we generally have no problems with humans doing similar things.
It's *commercial* hunting & fishing that are the problems, and it has nothing to do with the ickiness but everything to do with the sloppiness.
The only Country I really like is Johnny Cash, and I have plenty of admiration for Willie Nelson for some of his social work and the like, but I think we're getting a little far from the heart of Dave's post.
I want to disagree with JustJack because I want to believe it's possible to work with everyone and include them in the Green Movement (maybe that's a better term than environmentalist movement, as Green is already seen as a largely positive term and lacks the baggage the right has attached to the E word.) but sometimes it's difficult.
I've had experiences with rural life and rural people, and they have differed with what Jack and others has described, but I think this may be an anomaly.
And yes, working with them is important, but ultimately, we may have to accept that, in some cases, we have to simply forge ahead without them. No progress was ever the result of simply convincing everyone it was a good idea and getting them on board. Dave is right that we can do counterproductive things, so I think it's important to emphasize the positive aspects of greening and saving the environment when we address these issues, and leave out the condescending, angry rhetoric about country music and rednecks. After all, those attitudes aren't why we're pursuing these goals anyway, and I think that if people see that we're doing this for a genuinely good cause, and we aren't tainted with suspicions of simply being "snobs", that may do more to win them over than simple arguments and discussion will. Actions speak louder than words, and all that.
Dave also brings up an important point here;
But if you talked to urban environmentalists at the time (and even now), their attitudes about working people in those small towns was strikingly uniform: Those people were just anachronisms, and they should just work up fresh resumes (maybe go back to school) and go get jobs elsewhere. Indeed, a surprising number of them believed that the world would be better off if there just were no timber cutting at all.
This is true, and it's also why we need to do a few things; first, work for a strong economy where people have far more options open to them if one job, timber cutting in this instance, becomes untenable, and make sure they know there are other options open for them. Then we approach Dave's next important statement;
Many people who live in rural areas do so because that's what their ancestors did, and they log because that's how daddy and granddaddy and great-granddaddy made their livings; their family homes are not just dwellings, and they can't and won't just up and move into another one as if it were a condo. People who live in rural areas are often deeply rooted.
This problem is twofold. First, people can be "rooted" to their current way of life, and many may be absolutely unwilling to give it up. There are "human costs" if we forge ahead without addressing this, but at times, much is at stake, and we can't always wait for every single person to catch up. One solution, perhaps the only truly ideal one, is greening in a manner that stimulates the LOCAL economies of small rural areas, so that, even if the loggers, in this instance, have to get new jobs, they don't have to pull up roots and relocate to a condo in the city, as Dave puts it. One of the best aspects about the modern Green movement is not just the insistence of saving the Earth, but on the economic benefits of doing so by creating green collar jobs, new industries, new ways of doing things, all in a way that will stimulate economic opportunity. This is certainly a huge step ahead of the old enviro-approach of simply eliminating non-green jobs and practices but not replacing them with anything at all.
Maybe this is the result of these concerns becoming more mainstream, in that more pragmatic approaches are now being put forth, rather than the previous party line of the true believers, many of whom were guilty of the things Dave writes of in his post.
Even if these positions are only being adopted by suburban and urban people, they are being adopted by people who are not ideologues at heart, which is a major improvement in the P.R. area. Sure, it may still largely be something the more affluent are concerned with, but seeing ordinary, moderate middle class people promoting this stuff and trying to live green lives might do more to win over rural people, since it changes the face of the movement to where it's no longer the stereotypical angry college hippie type from California. As interest in the green movement increases, this trend will probably increase.
Yes, the "localism" will continue to be a problem, and it's one that may be very difficult to overcome, which is why I think solutions that improve local economies, especially in poorer rural regions, have much potential.
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As for people who never accept any change, will never accept anything an "outsider" offers? First, the impacts of this attitude have to be measured by how widespread this is, and how inflexible people really are. If even the local solution I outline above is too much for them, I'm not sure what else can be done, other than to go ahead and accept that some "human costs" are unavoidable.
Dave outlines another potential approach as well;
A smart approach for the environmentalists would have been to win these people in the true "grassroots" to their side -- arguing for maintaining the long-term viability of working forests by not overcutting, keeping jobs permanent, and requiring better working conditions and pay in the mills, as well as retraining for the sake of modernization. Argue for preserving wildlife habitat because, among other things, it helps improve hunting.
This meshes well with the Local approach I suggest, and is probably the same thing worded slightly differently. We should work to make people in rural areas aware that there is much economic gain to be made in greening their operations. OF course, this still comes up against Jacks "localism", in which none of them would accept even this, but Jack, do you truly think this attitude is THAT widespread and inflexible?
I also think that a larger greening trend in urban and suburban areas could spread to rural areas on it's own, in some manner, if it simply becomes "the thing to do". In any case, some greening will catch up with them in time; hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel cells, low burning bulbs, energy saving methods, will eventually become the norm whether anyone likes it or not, and they will have little choice but to adopt those things, and maybe those could be a "wedge" to introduce other green topics to rural areas
Being a former so-called hipster, it's not just the environmentalists that suffer from this sort of attitude.
Granted I've been a "hipster" in an exceptionally unhip place (Lincoln, NE) at least in the eyes of the rest of the world.
The coastal and bigger city liberals aren't even especially nice to the liberal allies they might have in the "heartland".
I've experienced it firsthand. When people in places like Northampton, MA (where I lived for a while when I was younger) ask if Nebraska is "anywhere near California" that point gets driven home.
phat
I couldn't agree more with the post. My dissertation, to be defended next month, is an environmental history of loggers in the Northwest before WWII. I grew up in a logging family during the spotted owl crisis of the 80s and early 90s. Being environmentally minded, I was torn between both sides. Loggers are today (and were 100 years ago) quite environmentally minded. But they also have to make a living. They change the environment through their work, but that doesn't change their feelings toward it.
When urban environmentalists come along and disparage their lifestyle and their work, not only does it make loggers angry, but it also undermines the possibility of building connections between environmentalists and workers. As people on both sides realized after the fact, environmentalists and workers had a common enemy--the timber companies. Both the environmental community and loggers needed healthy forests for their dreams to be realized. Yet the timber companies, in conjunction with the federal government, took out trees at an unsustainable rate for decades. By the late 1980s, the old growth was almost gone. The timber companies needed to move to new forests. They could do without suffering political retribution because they told their workers the environmentalists were taking their jobs. Sadly, the environmental community was open to this kind of accusation because, as Dave points out, many of them could not care less what happened to the loggers.
One thing that I hope my work suggests, at least when the book comes out, is that there is a lot of common ground between workers and environmentalists and that building those bridges can lead to a more just and environmentally sustainable world.
Also, anyone dismissing country music out of hand clearly has poor taste in music. Or maybe a closed mind. His name is Merle Haggard and you need to go listen to him. Right now.
I like some country crossover tunes, folk music, and a good blue grass tune sometimes really hits the spot but I'm the slippery kind that also likes classical, Medieval chant, rock-n-roll, showtunes, etc...
Much of the rural resistance to the idea of environmental stewardship is religious in nature. Keep in mind, many of these people are not well educated and have little sense of time beyond the idea that creation, be it a social/sexual hierarchy or a carnivorous diet, is perfectly defined. Changing an eternally dominionist life-way, reinforced by Sunday sermons, and exploited by weekday radio jockeys and their vociferous listeners is one seriously big obstacle to overcome.
Say what you will about organized religion (I might agree) but the only way to get around the political gate-keepers are strong, Christian voices speaking from the church pulpit.
The real enemy is stupid people everywhere - with this caveat: everyone is stupid about something. The trick is to know what that thing is.
Am I the only one here so benighted as to actually like country and western?
No, but then again I'm a hillbilly.
FWIW, I was one of those kids who grew up hating country because it was everyfuckingwhere. It was the music my parents and grandparents and the Mormons who dominated the cultural landscape all listened to. Ugh. I, on the other hand, was intent on escape.
So in high school, I was strictly a rock n' roll guy, and when I got to college, I eventually became a punkster, largely because I had a radio show on the student station at UI and that was what I played (this was between '77-84). If you've ever seen SLC Punk you sort of get the idea.
But I also made friends with a bunch of bluegrass people in Moscow -- used to hang out and play music with them -- and developed a strong taste for good country.
Nowadays, my sole criteria in music is that it has to be genuine music, not prefab crap.
The religious element of this resistance certainly can't be underestimated, but this gets in to a more general problem of modern political discussions, in that the religious connections to many beliefs, even conservative ones obviously rooted in religion, is overlooked. I think part of that problem is that there is still a general "hands off" attitude when it comes to critical discussions and religion.
Of course, criticizing religion doesn't really have much impact in this discussion, I don't think. There is the religious element, but there is just as much an element of the wacko right, like Limbaugh, etc. simply demonizing and caricaturing environmentalism nonstop, and many people unfortunately decide to put themselves in an echo chamber and not only never hear contrary views, but intentionally avoid them.
At my Southern California high school (mid/late ‘80s) they would play the popular pop music radio station at lunch, but if the kids failed to clean up after themselves they would play the country station the following day as punishment. Serious. It happened a dozen or so time during the school year.
I think civilian/military relations are another area where your general argument is totally applicable. My wife worked as a waitress near a major military base during the first Gulf War, and had developed friendships with some of the regulars. She never preached her politics but, by developing these friendships and having these small routine interactions with them, I’m sure she influenced them (just like they influenced her out of thinking that soldiers are mindless baby killers). One of her hippy friends paid her a visit and totally embarrassed her by going all “you’re killing people for oil, man” on one of the regulars. I think these micro-interactions are important for macro-social change
RE: music – “The only Country I really like is Johnny Cash” -- Yes, Johnny Cash is the only C&W cool people are allowed to consume. Many voice the Johnny Cash exception. It’s like a law or something.
I'm a pretty decent two-stepper and I know several line dances. And yes, I've caught crap from my putatively cool California friends who equate line dancing with goose stepping.
Amazing! I do international folk dancing, much of which is line dancing, i.e., getting in a line and all doing the same step together. I bet your California friends would think that was cool, so long as it was from some other country. And, yes, I know a lot of international folk dancers who love the dances of every other country, but turn up their noses at American country dances as "corny." Sigh.
Temperance is right about Cash--it's all about the image. Cash is great--but those who set him apart from other country music take him totally out of context and ignore the massive amount of horrible music he put out over the years. Truth be told, only a small percentage of what Cash released is good at all, though what is good is really amazing. But because of the image, it's OK for the cool kids to like him.
I think it might be a reasonable counterlaw to say that anyone who says that "The only Country I like is Johnny Cash" doesn't know very much about music. Or at least is willfully ignorant.
Well, if it's any consolation, I don't try to base what I like on genre to begin with.
I'm going to like what I like, and I certainly won't pose as liking the more "unhip" forms of country just to make a political statement about how I don't look down on rural life.
KamatariSeta reminded me of something when quoting Dave's statement, "But if you talked to urban environmentalists at the time (and even now), their attitudes about working people in those small towns was strikingly uniform: Those people were just anachronisms, and they should just work up fresh resumes (maybe go back to school) and go get jobs elsewhere. Indeed, a surprising number of them believed that the world would be better off if there just were no timber cutting at all."
I very much agree with Dave that such attitudes by environmentalists would be problematic. hell, I'd hestitate to call myself an environmentalist too if that was the case.
But I've never witnessed that kind of attitude outside of ignorant college freshmen or sophomores or people "new" to the movement. Certainly on the east coast, in activist groups I was part of before moving west myself, this attitude was not present. Everyone has been talking sustainable rural economy upshifts as long as guys like Wendell Berry have been around. There are some angry types in the East coast groups (Ithaca, NY) but I always kept my distance from them because it just seemed pretentious and the luxury of being too young and overprivileged.
It's totally understandable for logging towns in the west to be resistant to mistreatment by activists. But I know some of the tree-sitter people and it's hard to imagine that attitude in them. I've never seen it among those that I know in Arcata or other towns in Humboldt. I certainly don't know all of them either so I'll guess that there are some who may have or still harbor such stupidity.
To answer KamatariSeta's question (thanks for making me think, I'm much obliged), "OF course, this still comes up against Jacks "localism", in which none of them would accept even this, but Jack, do you truly think this attitude is THAT widespread and inflexible?"
I can't speak for every rural area in the country only the one that I grew up in and mom still lives in. that localism attitude of being resistant to outsiders just because they're outsiders is the dominant and prevailing attitude. Based on conversations I've had today, thanks to Dave's post, with friends who live in other places: rural PA (western), NY, MO, KY, OH, and CO, those attitudes are also dominant and widespread there too.
Maybe it's a class thing... or maybe class is an element that tweaks this localism attitude. I never saw much different but then I was raised among working class people (mostly trailers and shacks in the woods) and localism is the dominant paradigm there. My mom works with middle and owning class people and that localism is dominant among them, at least in that part of PA. My rural contacts elsewhere are all straddlers class-wise so they may be noting what they experience... I'll have to ask around. But that'd still be less than subtantial in terms of percentage of nationwide rural territory. So please, have hope if it helps ya.' Your mileage may vary...
I've driven across the continent a dozen times in the last two decades and rural folk seemed to me pretty much the same everywhere, in terms of localism, so I feel fairly safe in assuming, but I acknowledge assuming can spell...well, ya' know.
Well said, Dave. My wife and I are both environmentalists in the same sense as you are, not wanting to use the term because of the negative connotations.
The hipster-type activists cause a lot of PR harm in all liberal causes; the one that my wife cites a lot is the animal-rights activists, since her college work was in biology/ecology and she knew a lot of well-meaning and passionate but grating and tactically inept activists. I spent my own college years at a very hippie school which was overflowing with the same sort aligned to every thinkable cause. I was branded The Enemy for suggesting that they go about spreading the word in a friendly manner instead of screaming at their opponents, and kept hearing "Screaming is the only thing those people understand."
I call that strategy Asshole Activism, and it gets you pretty much nowhere.
On the whole country-music lovin' thing... never liked it, still don't. It's the steel guitar thing (though I like what Steve Hackett and Steve Howe have done with that demon-tool) and the twang thing and yeah, like Dave said, where I grew up it was just "everyfuckingwhere." I'm a long time bass player and before that, every kind of keyboard, woodwind and percussion instrument, and if there's no groove or funk to somethin' I ain't interested in playin' it. Most country music (even most of the crossover stuff) is as monotonous and tedious, bassline wise, as kletzmer. When I converted, I had to learn kletzmer but the oom-pah schtick still pretty much sucks and I don't like it any better as a genre and I pretty much grit my teeth if I have to play that crap.
Now, Geddy Lee, Chris Squires, Tony Levin, yeah, that. Country, bluegrass, kletzmer, no. Just no.
And that musical taste has nothing to do with my ability to be polite to people back where I grew up, nor does it have anything to do with some corrosive exposure to college or urban locales. Country was the parental units' music (not mine but everyone else's) so for us it was Kansas, Blue Oyster Cult, Zepplin, AC/DC, Yes, and that lot--although too much Yes could get you branded a brainiac and thus a good poundin' to keep you in line. I know enough to smile and nod when in a rural bar but I ain't gonna fork over a quarter for a country tune on the jukebox myself, though I'll happily lend one if someone local has such a need. I'm glad Solnit has found some insight in Country music but it's not a universal remedy for manners and it sure isn't the path to universal harmony between urban and rural, red vs. blue, etc. At least not in my cynical mind.
There are a lot of great insights in this comment thread and the things I'm picking up on are: good manners are necessary, cultural sensitivity is critical, small influence is more likely to succeed, localism is a brutal barrier still, optimism is no substitute for grounded relationships, economics as always must be locally framed, and there may well be something related to class along the path to successful alliances.
The Nature Conservancy is seen as a success, but I'm guessing that's really just a class thing: an owner is an owner regardless of musical preference or residential locale. Ranchers are cited by Solnit in her piece as an example of successful coalitions between blue and red but no specifics are cited. (In the comments on Orion's site, a rancher says "nobody likes to be talked down to," but in my experience, all you have to do to be seen as talking down to someone "local" is not talk in a southern drawl or use big words, that marks you instantly and the wall goes up and guns come out). This says to me that I still want to see specific journalistic or narrative accounts from people on both sides who actually worked through things in order to see where potential actually lies.
This is totally great stuff and I'm all amped up about it.
LOL, Erik, I think it might be a reasonable counterlaw to say that anyone who says that "The only Country I like is Johnny Cash" doesn't know very much about music. Or at least is willfully ignorant.
That's just silly. Funny but silly.
I'd say "like" is totally unrelated from "know" in this case. I can name 100 professional musicians who dislike Country music, including Johnny Cash, but can play the pants off all of it just the same. After twenty years studying Mozart and that kind of Euro-crap I never want to hear another Mozart line as long as I live, but I know every damned melody and variation he ever wrote. Knowing a thing musically has just nothing to do with liking it.
JAck, I thank you for actually giving me a substantive response and not focusing on the music discussion which I think has distracted from what can, and has been, an otherwise good dialogue.
So, if the localism is that dominant, what can we do about it? If it really is as hostile to outsiders, as you say, solely on principle, it seems that tactics may be somewhat immaterial and irrelevant, since a nice respectful outsider is no better than a shrill annoying one.
As for this;
But I've never witnessed that kind of attitude outside of ignorant college freshmen or sophomores or people "new" to the movement. Certainly on the east coast, in activist groups I was part of before moving west myself, this attitude was not present. Everyone has been talking sustainable rural economy upshifts as long as guys like Wendell Berry have been around. There are some angry types in the East coast groups (Ithaca, NY) but I always kept my distance from them because it just seemed pretentious and the luxury of being too young and overprivileged.
These types do exist, and the amount of exposure to them probably varies a lot in the circles you travel. CErtainly someone college age, in college, and involved in "youth" activism will encounter a lot of it, as these attitudes, as you point out, seem to be most common among the young. While some of it is simply the result of them being overprivelged, there is also the effects of what is sometimes called New Convert Syndrome, which is most often applied to religion but can be applied to almost anything, really.
As you can imagine, it's an attitude where the new convert is both enthusiastic and extreme, willing to "share" their beliefs with anyone and everyone whether they want to listen or not. Not everyone who adopts an ideology suffers from this, though I think more serious followers of a cause often tend to come in to it slowly, over time, and those are the ones who really care about it and stick with it. The new converts, especially the young college age ones, are very prone, in my experience, to being gung-ho and militant for about a year, give or take, and then they either mellow out and get more serious as they learn about the cause, OR they just drop it altogether, often moving on to something else entirely. This is certainly at play with many of the younger eco-activists, and I'm sure many of us who are liberals and spend time in lefty circles have seen it from nearly every cause under the sun.
Here's another idea I've not seen promoted as much, though; I think some of the VERY, VEEEEEERY extreme people in the eco movement, especially the deep ecologist types, the "antihuman" types, and the more malthusian extremist types, are simply misanthropes who find the cause to be something where they can vent their general nastiness and dissatisfaction in an acceptable, "respectable" framework. It may sound odd, but consider these misanthropes and their counterparts on the right. Sure, there are some nasty conservatives who mean every bit of what they say, but with the increasingly angry, eliminationist rhetoric from the right in the past 8 or 9 years, I think there are just as many, if not more, people who don't really give a damn about politics, and are just in it for the fun of being a nasty prick.
After all, what else is someone like Ann Coulter but a hateful person gripped with misanthropy and anger, who is using that hatred in a political context to make a fortune with her ghostwritten diatribes against liberals?
I've met many people who claim to be "conservatives", but who really don't seem to care about the ideology, it's implications, or anything of substance, and are just espousing conservatism for the fun of making "liberals" mad.
Political causes and movements infected with a great deal of anger tend to attract misanthropes and rabble rousers who just want a socially acceptable means of expressing their hatred and dissatisfaction with the world. They know that if they cloak it in terms of hating the treasonous liberals, or in the more rare cases of the eco-movment, hating the evil wicked human cancer, they can get away with being a jerk more readily than they could if they just stood on a street corner yelling random insults to strangers.
Sure, this may be in the minority, especially in the environmentalist movement, but sometimes these angry minorities can be loud and shrill, and it can be hard to tell them apart from those who are sincere. How many of the eco activists who are guilty of this bad PR behavior are really just passionate but foolish, and how many others are in it just for the sake of a fight, for the sake of yelling, or for some other less than legit reason?
Of course, there are extremists, rabble rousers, and wackos in ANY movement, but the problem with the ones in the eco movement is that the right wing has managed to convince the public that these people are the norm, and are the face of the ENTIRE movement, and even the well meaning sincere, non extreme members who are guilty of disastrous attempts to save the earth, like the anti logging crowd Dave uses for and example, are often turned in to something else entirely.
It's simple. The right will focus on the very few over eager but naive college kids, and the general human hating extremist crowd, and then tell people that this is what environmentalism is all about. Then, they take the efforts of something like the anti logging crowd, even if it was the work of sincere, non extreme people that mishandled it, and ASSOCIATE it with the extremists, so they end up with a narrative like this;
""The extreme doped up college kids and the people who want all humans to go extinct are doing all they can to take control of your communities and drive you from your jobs and your family homes in the name of saving birds, twigs, and bugs!!""
And too many people, never hearing any contrary opinion, buy it. The 'mainstream' media, supposed bastion of liberalism, is of no help, because quotes from people advocating voluntary human extinction and close ups of eager but ignorant college kids screaming at the top of their lungs at loggers just trying to make a living, makes for better ratings and sells more papers than an interview with a temperate, calm, middled aged guy or gal who wants to educate people on the dangers of over fishing or slash and burn logging.
Thus, the public never gets an entirely accurate picture.
While we'll never convince the right wingers of the world to lay off on us, we can try to calm down the more extreme elements and, if that fails, distance ourselves from them, making it clear that the condescending attitudes and extremely wacky ideas are NOT what the entire green movement is about, and these people are a minority and do not represent the views of responsible, intelligent people in the movement.
As paternalistic as it may sound, perhaps those who have been in the movement longer, especially those with some P.R. savvy and a good deal of emotional restraint, should do more to mentor and guide the new convert college kids, tell them what is and is not a good idea, and what are good tactics, and how to win a public relations battle.
Another peril in leaving the younger, more naive ones that you speak of, Jack, and I think we've all had less than pleasant encounters with them, is that if they aren't given more wise guidance, they will also end up repeating fallacious arguments, quoting unrealistic extreme scenarios, making ridiculous demands, and putting forth absurd, wrongheaded ideas. This just gives the right plenty of flimsy arguments and ideas to knock down, so some Limbaugh-esque talk show host can just defeat the arguments of a well meaning but uninformed youngster, claim he's disproven the "dogma" of the environmentalists, and never have to content with the more serious, solid arguments of the movement.
Sorry, I've gone off on a real tangent here, but I've been wanting to vent about these issues for some time now.
I don't want to seem like I despise young, eager kids getting involved in this or any other important issue, but so often they become a liability with both their behavior and their lack of knowledge and experience, and make no mistake, the right wing WILL exploit those weaknesses for all they are worth.
(In the comments on Orion's site, a rancher says "nobody likes to be talked down to," but in my experience, all you have to do to be seen as talking down to someone "local" is not talk in a southern drawl or use big words, that marks you instantly and the wall goes up and guns come out)
One thing I've noticed in recent years, or at least the past decade or so, is that when conservatives in general speak of things like "talking down" to them by snobby liberals, sometimes all it takes to get that response is simply disagreeing with them, even on a completely minor point of some sort.
I attribute part of that to the urge on the right in general to enforce a rigid party line, an urge that has become so strained and extreme that it sometimes sends conservatives in to near hysteria.
Back to the music thing, if you want to think I know nothing about music, then go ahead. I never said I did know anything. I know that I like what I like, and that's just that.
I think if we're ever going to work with rural people on anything, or build bridges with anyone at all, we have to look to issues of more substance, and not get bogged down in things like who likes what music, what movies, tv shows, and the typical David Brooks Rev Vs Blue nonissues. As an aside, this is one reason why I think Brooks is one of the most clownish writers on the right, as he used his place at the New York Times to try and reduce a very real and problematic divide in the country to being about things like thai restaurants, and whether or not you know how to shingle your own roof.
I grew up liking Cash, but others came along to draw me in. I liked a lot of bluegrass by my late teens, esp.
But that's a small subset of David's point here, which I generally agree with. I recall some alliances that did come to pass, down in Humboldt County, when a sustainable family operation was sold to Wall Street junk bond traders and clearcutting followed. The loggers saw quickly it would drive them out of a job in a few short years.
OTOH, some of the commenters have raised valid points. 'Redneck' is a broad class that runs from complete ignorance to a thought out, intentional conservatism. In many western states, it leans towards an individualism laced with Libertarianism. In the Deep South, it often is more authoritarian-worshipping, badly educated, hateful of anyone not on the kool-aid.
All of it can't be transcended and accomodated, in any region. But extreme environmentalism does build walls where bdoors could exist.
I don't think there's one perfect way to always be. Just as MLK was necessary, the more extreme Malcolm X helped to drive the moderates to broader ideas and made the moderates seem more acceptable, as well.
Thus, Greenpeace had its essential moments, as has Earth First. But when either gets its followers so in love with their rogue image that they persist on fulfilling a role instead of advancing a goal, they lose the capacity to impact the agenda at all.
Middle ground is important and useful and the fastest way to achieve change. Extremism is like pepper sauce. It can add flavors nothing else can, but overused, it just burns going in and leaves behind a lot of burned assholes as well.
Dave, thanks for your thoughtful post - but I don't think you've quite nailed it.
Yes, environmentalists need to be building coalitions to achieve many of their goals, and this requires sensitivity to how they come across to others who have differing backgrounds but also care about the relevant resource, species, ecosystem etc. And yes, we should be aware of our "built-in bigotry" and "self-serving prejudices" that are part and parcel of being human and identifying with a group.
But resolving environmental issues requires more than that - it requires understanding the differences between institutional frameworks that encourage people to engage in political, PR and physical conflict over resources that are not clearly or effectively owned - or are "publicly" owned - and institutions that encourage the resolution of disputes by providing those who have concerns the way to express those concerns meaningfully.
In particular, we should recognize that a tremendous amount of friction arises simply because certain important resources (atmosphere, oceans, 3rd world resources) are simply not effectively owned or because the resources are "publicly" owned - which invites corruption, mismanagement and political/moral grandstanding.
It is in these types of situations that parties naturally fall into groups, group-think and adversarial positions - and have become endemic to modern life, as burgeoning human economic activty further stresses ineffectively owned/defended resources and government itself becomes a commons over which we fight (but elites have the inside edge).
As you imply, solutions lie in consciously working to build bridges and common ground, mutual recognition that all those who have preferences have a right to them (and that no groups like others to tell them how to run their lives), and in finding ways that allow people a meaningful economic voice in matters that concern them. The "free market" environmentalists like Terry Anderson have been very productive and successful in this field.
TT
Kevin:
I recall some alliances that did come to pass, down in Humboldt County, when a sustainable family operation was sold to Wall Street junk bond traders and clearcutting followed. The loggers saw quickly it would drive them out of a job in a few short years.
This is almost the exception that proves the rule, though: in this case the corporation, too, was new and had no local ties, so the loggers had no loyalty to blind them to what was going on.
What success stories there are having involved locals who can be persuaded to think of themselves as stewards. I don't know if that's possible in industries like logging, where they're technically much closer to serfs.
May I suggest people who are down on rural folks read both Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Mineral Vegetable, which is about living in the rural mountains of Virginia, and Michael Perry's Truck: A love story, about living in small town, backwoods Wisconsin sometime?
If you painted someone of a non-white ethnic persuasion with the same broad brush you're painting rural white folks, you'd be accused of racism.
Maybe it's because I have rural white folks in my family, but , as Dave points out, there's lots of shades of gray in humanity. And the environmental movement hasn't helped itself, ironically, with people who also distrust corporations and love nature.
Incidentally, I've been a little perplexed about the idolization of Johnny Cash as a kewl guy. Jaysus, the guy drove me insane in the 1960s; if I heard "Ring of Fire" one more time I was gonna jump outta the backseat of the car where I was forced to endure my dad's radio selection.
Me, I'm a big Emmylou Harris fan as far as country goes.
Pick any genre of commercially popular music, and 95% of it is unlistenable.
I'm with Dick. I grew up in Texas and around CW music. I know individuals in TX who like CW music and who are not as he described, but they are definitely in the minority. I detest country music. That said, though, if I'm a guest and CW is being played, I keep my cringing on the inside, tell myself I won't have to listen forever, and try to ignore it. It is very much harder to ignore the culture described by Dick, and believe me it is rampant in the south -- in Texas at least. I'm thankful to have been able to move away. I still have friends in TX and plan to visit them, but I hope I never have to live there again.
Dave, I had the same reaction -- though I find the songs are wearing a whole lot better now than they did when I was a kid.
Except for "Boy Named Sue," which Mr. R has decided is his Pick 'o The Month. I want to hurl his fancy video iPod out the window of the Prius every time it comes on.
All this reminds me of a long-ago incident when the enviro-local partnership worked exactly right, with stunningly important consequences. Stand by for the post.
Until we have a shared vision of how to protect and harvest our natural resources we're going to have conflict.
I hope that, in my lifetime, we see a national dialog on what is required to sustain (and perhaps restore) the ecological health of America - and perhaps an understanding that without ecological health, American civilization is in for a rocky future.
EO Wilson and others were doing this type of thing in S America - how many acres, and in what configuration, are required to preserve a functioning rain forest flora and fauna.
So :
step 1 - recognize the need for a national policy on restoration/preservation (something akin to Leopold's "land ethic").
step 2 - hold a national, science based debate to set parameters, goals, etc.
step 3 - determine what level of resource use is compatible.
Jared Diamond, in "Collapse", has some clear pointers on how to make a civilization sustainable, the first one being a shared vision of resource management.
Marty Robbins. Enough said.
a few years ago we read about some awards given by Sunset Magazine. One of them was given to a guy who wanted to save a forest: he, as he says, "kept finding myself being arrested with the same six hippies". He decided there must be a better way, and formed a coalition of locals, hippies, NRA people, hunters, etc. They all got together and put on a big rock concert (several?) and made enough money to buy the forest from the loggers to save it.
Unfortunately, I don't remember his name or the organizations name. It was somewhere in the Northwest. I have the article somewhere....
That was for those of you who asked if it's ever been done. Sorry I don't have the names handy.
Dave, how about a comment on those out there and elsewhere who think torching homes is the best way to resolve environmental problems?
I saw that story about the home torching in the paper today. I couldn't help but think of this conversation and how relevant it was, and I also couldn't help but think how easy the right wing might try to make political hay out of this. I'm sure there are probably already a few of the more extreme right bloggers preparing to make the leap that buying CFL low burning bulbs and arson are only different in degree, not kind.
Maybe Dave should have a new entry specifically about this more extreme activity? This one has mostly been about arrogance, and there's probably plenty of ground to cover and I imagine, Dave, that being based in the northwest where a lot of this stuff has happened, you probably know a lot more about the issue than most of us do.
Dave, further, I wonder whether this means you're reconsidering any part of your "Standing Up to Japan" post?
http://mises.com/blogs/tokyotom/...he-
commons.aspx
Regards,
Tom
Sara, perhaps it may help you to put up with the "Boy Named Sue" song if you appreciate that its songwriter also wrote the book "The Giving Tree".
TT
Kim C above raises a good point. In fights to save certain types of environments, hunters and fishermen are great allies. Case in point would be Ducks Unlimited's efforts to preserve wetlands.
Really? Shel wrote that?
I didn't like "The Giving Tree" all that much when I was reading it to my kids. It wore on me. Quickly.
But I can listen to his epic comedy poems ("Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout" and "The Great Smoke-Off," for two) all day long. The language play is just irresistible.
Are you talking about Shel Silverstein? My mother knew him.
Really? He wrote "Boy Named Sue"? Wadda ya know?
This website offers a good take on the phenomenon being described in this post:
Class Matters: Class and Community Organizing
http://www.classmatters.org/
This is an issue of classes talking past each other, not "liberalism" and "conservatism."
This website offers a good take on the phenomenon being described in this post:
Class Matters: Class and Community Organizing
http://www.classmatters.org/
This is an issue of classes talking past each other, not "liberalism" and "conservatism."
I think there's an intersection of complexity in this, but yeah, class comes up for me. That Rebecca's original source piece makes no mention of class, beyond its presence in the descriptions, speaks volumes... middle-ruling classers often speak as if there's no such thing.
In my long winded posts, I think I elude or actually mention class as part of what's going on. Another great site is Class Action's site:
http://www.classism.org
Yeah, it was Shel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
A_B...A_Boy_Named_Sue
Yep, Shel Silverstein wrote "A Boy Named Sue" --- won a Grammy for it in 1969.
Great post, Dave. When my husband was in graduate school a couple of decades ago, there were faculty members who would talk about driving hours out of Paris to experience rural French culture who in the next breath would claim that there was no decent food in the state of Georgia and that people outside the confines of metropolitan Atlanta were not worth bothering with.
When I was first involved in the environmental movement, some twenty years ago, there was also an insistence on wilderness issues while ignoring the environmental problems of the inner city. That has changed over the years, but did lead to perceptions that the movement was made up of middle to upper class white people. Since I originally was an environmentalist as an offshoot of an interest in (urban) historic preservation, I found this annoying.
The "if they didn't unionize, they deserved what they got" attitude, absent actual information about the situation at hand, is close to the "all military are baby-killers."
Well, it takes all types.
Out here in Mason County (Washington) we have lots of trees. So many that I don't worry about the trees anymore when I see a big clearcut. Now I worry about the flooding.
Maybe you heard about that. Leadbelly even sang about it- We're in the same boat, Brother. Getting cut of by flooding will really help you hear those Backwater Blues.
Poor people out here don't live in a hundred year old family home. They live in a prefab home that was trucked in from Georgia. I've been here ten years and have never heard anyone other than myself comment on this.
Local Dems around here are pretty staunch, but the fish rots from the head. For some reason the state Democrats allowed our local rightwing Christian (sic) bamboozler, Brad Owen, to become the Democratic (sic) Lieutenant Governor. Thanks a bunch, Mr. And Mrs. Seattle Democrat.
So, the big news recently is the arson of the Street of Dreams. As though it takes an extreme environmentalist to hate the guy who builds a million-dollar home in your rural neighborhood. I'm guessing whoever did it could have mis-spelled "ELF" and the FBI would still be blaming the environmentalists.
Apparently a lot depends on the socio-economic structure of your rural county. In Florida some of the big farms still hold people as slaves. Around here the Indian casino has the brightest lights, best $7 dinner, and touring country music and boxing acts.
I guess we might all learn something if we spent a year learning history, sociology, and ecology. It's not just the rural areas that flood these days.
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