On May 2, David Suzuki declared on rabble.ca that environmentalism had failed. His admission came after decades of work on environmental issues.
The environmental movement was launched in 1962, the year that Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in response to the introduction of DDT, an organochlorine insecticide.
Carson documented the terrible consequences of the pesticide that had been invented by Paul Mueller, who was awarded a Nobel Price in 1948 when he demonstrated what DDT could do. Suzuki says that we have made the environment another special interest, like education and health care.
We have separated it out. We have labelled it as “the environment.” What we neglected to do was to protect it, not realizing that our lives, health and livelihoods depend on a healthy biosphere: air, water, soil, sunlight and biodiversity.
Humans have gradually modified Earth according to their needs. They neglected to develop the critical understanding that everything is interconnected and that “Mother Earth” is the source of all that matters in their lives.
The predominant view of Earth is that it revolves around us – an “anthropocentric” view. We create departments that deal with the pieces of the whole and fail to look at the health and well being of the whole – the biodiversity that sustains all life.
We focus on the unlimited resources the Earth can provide and the economies that can be built with their extraction.
Suzuki says, “It’s almost a cliché to refer to a ‘paradigm shift’ but that is what we need to meet the challenge of the environmental crisis our species have created. That means adopting a ‘biocentric’ view that recognizes we are part and dependent on the web of life that keeps the planet habitable for a demanding animal like us.”
In response, Raffi Cavoukian, an ecology advocate as well as a songwriter and children’s entertainer, published an essay on May 23 on rabble.ca
Cavoukian asked, “What now? What caused the failure? What is to be learned? What do environmental organization supporters and concerned citizens do now? What do we say to our children, and to young advocates? Where’s the new strategy road ahead?”
The cause of the failure can be placed squarely on the growth of corporate concentration, power and dominance over the natural world and the human population.
The takeover has been embraced because it provided the jobs needed to support an extravagant way of life, particularly in the western world.
Nature became “the environment” and we became separated from it. Environmentalism became a divisive force. Groups scattered their energy as they worked to save a special habitat or protect a species, or save a special area.
Activist “environmentalists” were fiercely pitted against those who were not. Can environmental organizations reinvent themselves and adopt a new mandate, or do they close shop?
Doing nothing is not an option. Cavoukian suggests, “It’s time to be daring. Funders and supporters are seeking out transformation agents and catalyst ideas. They might look to those bold visions for social transformation. Organizationally, ‘less is more’ maybe the way ahead. Increasingly, people and groups are enjoying a partnering synergy made easy by social media.”
Children will be an important component of our future work. They must be encouraged to speak and they have a right to be heard because it is they who must live with what has been created for them.
Cavoukian suggests that humanity is in a survival crisis – a crisis of identity, conscience and spirit. “We need a lexicon for reframing global issues into a connected whole, a unified lens ‘for seeing the world anew,’ a language of waves not particles. One that connects and inspires, uplifts everyday life.”
– Roy Ronaghan is a columnist for the Grand Forks Gazette
