I think it was possible for the environmental movement to form alliances with politicians in both parties, and for environmentalism to have remained bipartisan.
Comparing different countries and comparing the same country at different times is not the same thing as a counterfactual, but it can be very helpful for understanding counterfactuals. In this case, the counterfactual US is taken to be similar to the US in the 1980s or to the UK, France, or South Korea today.
I think this is true of an environmentalist movement that wants there to be a healthy environment for humans; I’m not sure this is true of an environmentalist movement whose main goal is to dismantle capitalism. I don’t have a great sense of how this has changed over time (maybe the motivations for environmentalism are basically constant, and so it can’t explain the changes), but this feels like an important element of managing to maintain alliances with politicians in both parties.
(Thinking about the specifics, I think the world where Al Gore became a Republican (he was a moderate for much of his career) or simply wasn’t Clinton’s running mate (which he did in part because of HW Bush’s climate policies) maybe leads to less partisanship. I think that requires asking why those things happened, and whether there was any reasonable way for them to go the other way. The oil-republican link seems quite strong during the relevant timeframe, and you either need to have a strong oil-democrat link or somehow have a stronger climate-republican link, both of which seem hard.)
I think this is true of an environmentalist movement that wants there to be a healthy environment for humans; I’m not sure this is true of an environmentalist movement whose main goal is to dismantle capitalism.
I talk about mission creep in the report, section 6.6.
Part of ‘making alliances with Democrats’ involved environmental organizations adopting leftist positions on other issues.
Different environmental organizations have seen more or less mission creep. The examples I give in the report are the women’s issues for the World Wildlife Fund:
In many parts of the developing world, women of all ages play a critical role in managing natural resources, which they rely on for food, water, medicine, and fuel wood for their families. Yet they often are excluded from participating in decisions about resource use.[1]
and the Sierra Club:
The Sierra Club is a pro-choice organization that endorses comprehensive, voluntary reproductive health care for all. Sexual and reproductive health and rights are inalienable human rights that should be guaranteed for all people with no ulterior motive. A human rights-based approach to climate justice centers a person’s bodily autonomy and individual choice.[2]
It’s hard to date exactly when many of this positions were adopted by major environmental organizations, but my impression is sometime in the 1990s or 2000s. That’s when the Sierra Club started making presidential endorsements and when several major environmental organizations started promoting environmental justice.
This mission creep is part of the story. Allowing mission creep into controversial positions that are not directly related to the movement’s core goals makes it harder to build bipartisan coalitions.
The title for this page is not explicitly about gender, but to get to this page from the “People & Justice” page, you click on “Read more” in the section: “And our future depends on gender equity.”
Similarly for the Sierra Club, I think their transition from an anti-immigration org to a pro-immigration org seems like an interesting political turning point that could have failed to happen in another timeline.
I think this is true of an environmentalist movement that wants there to be a healthy environment for humans; I’m not sure this is true of an environmentalist movement whose main goal is to dismantle capitalism.
FWIW, the environmentalist movement that I’m most familiar with from Finland (which is somewhat partisan but much less so than the US one) is neither of these. There’s some element of “wants there to be a healthy environment for humans” but mostly it’s “wants to preserve the environment for its own sake”.
E.g. ecosystems being devastated is clearly depicted as being intrinsically bad, regardless of its effect on humans. When “this is how humans would be affected” arguments are brought in, they feel like they’re being used as a motte.
EDIT: I guess climate change stuff is much more human-focused; it being so big is a more recent development, so I didn’t happen to think of it when considering my prototypical sense of “environmentalism”. (It also feels like a more general concern, with “environmentalism” connoting a more narrowly-held concern to me.)
From the outside, Finnish environmentalism seems unusually good—my first check for this is whether or not environmentalist groups are pro-nuclear, since (until recently) it was a good check for numeracy.
Note that the ‘conservation’ sorts of environmentalism are less partisan in the US, or at least, are becoming partisan later. (Here’s an article in 2016 about a recent change of a handful of Republicans opposed to national parks, in the face of bipartisan popular support for them.) I think the thing where climate change is a global problem instead of a local problem, and a conflict between academia and the oil industry, make it particularly prone to partisanship in the US. [Norway also has significant oil revenues—how partisan is their environmentalism, and do they have a similar detachment between conservation and climate change concerns?]
Bill Frist, the former Republican Senate Majority Leader under Bush (even though he had a low score by the partisan/zero compromises LCV), is now chairman at the Nature Conservancy (it’s even his LinkedIn profile header) and frequently speaks out on environment and climate change issues. His kind of Republicanism is now way out of vogue.
Republicans from Utah seem to disproportionately form the Republican climate change caucus—they tend to be somewhat more open-minded than Republicans elsewhere, and some of the current representatives have been outspoken on the need to combine conservation with conservatism (though this also means making some compromises with federal land ownership which has become an unusually partisan “don’t compromise” issue).
I think it was possible for the environmental movement to form alliances with politicians in both parties, and for environmentalism to have remained bipartisan.
Comparing different countries and comparing the same country at different times is not the same thing as a counterfactual, but it can be very helpful for understanding counterfactuals. In this case, the counterfactual US is taken to be similar to the US in the 1980s or to the UK, France, or South Korea today.
I think this is true of an environmentalist movement that wants there to be a healthy environment for humans; I’m not sure this is true of an environmentalist movement whose main goal is to dismantle capitalism. I don’t have a great sense of how this has changed over time (maybe the motivations for environmentalism are basically constant, and so it can’t explain the changes), but this feels like an important element of managing to maintain alliances with politicians in both parties.
(Thinking about the specifics, I think the world where Al Gore became a Republican (he was a moderate for much of his career) or simply wasn’t Clinton’s running mate (which he did in part because of HW Bush’s climate policies) maybe leads to less partisanship. I think that requires asking why those things happened, and whether there was any reasonable way for them to go the other way. The oil-republican link seems quite strong during the relevant timeframe, and you either need to have a strong oil-democrat link or somehow have a stronger climate-republican link, both of which seem hard.)
I talk about mission creep in the report, section 6.6.
Part of ‘making alliances with Democrats’ involved environmental organizations adopting leftist positions on other issues.
Different environmental organizations have seen more or less mission creep. The examples I give in the report are the women’s issues for the World Wildlife Fund:
and the Sierra Club:
It’s hard to date exactly when many of this positions were adopted by major environmental organizations, but my impression is sometime in the 1990s or 2000s. That’s when the Sierra Club started making presidential endorsements and when several major environmental organizations started promoting environmental justice.
This mission creep is part of the story. Allowing mission creep into controversial positions that are not directly related to the movement’s core goals makes it harder to build bipartisan coalitions.
“Women and girls,” World Wildlife Fund, Accessed: March 28, 2024. https://www.worldwildlife.
org/initiatives/women-and-girls.
The Sierra Club and population issues,” Sierra Club, Accessed: March 28, 2024. https://www.sier
raclub.org/sierra-club-and-population-issues.
The title for this page is not explicitly about gender, but to get to this page from the “People & Justice” page, you click on “Read more” in the section: “And our future depends on gender equity.”
Similarly for the Sierra Club, I think their transition from an anti-immigration org to a pro-immigration org seems like an interesting political turning point that could have failed to happen in another timeline.
FWIW, the environmentalist movement that I’m most familiar with from Finland (which is somewhat partisan but much less so than the US one) is neither of these. There’s some element of “wants there to be a healthy environment for humans” but mostly it’s “wants to preserve the environment for its own sake”.
E.g. ecosystems being devastated is clearly depicted as being intrinsically bad, regardless of its effect on humans. When “this is how humans would be affected” arguments are brought in, they feel like they’re being used as a motte.
EDIT: I guess climate change stuff is much more human-focused; it being so big is a more recent development, so I didn’t happen to think of it when considering my prototypical sense of “environmentalism”. (It also feels like a more general concern, with “environmentalism” connoting a more narrowly-held concern to me.)
From the outside, Finnish environmentalism seems unusually good—my first check for this is whether or not environmentalist groups are pro-nuclear, since (until recently) it was a good check for numeracy.
Note that the ‘conservation’ sorts of environmentalism are less partisan in the US, or at least, are becoming partisan later. (Here’s an article in 2016 about a recent change of a handful of Republicans opposed to national parks, in the face of bipartisan popular support for them.) I think the thing where climate change is a global problem instead of a local problem, and a conflict between academia and the oil industry, make it particularly prone to partisanship in the US. [Norway also has significant oil revenues—how partisan is their environmentalism, and do they have a similar detachment between conservation and climate change concerns?]
Bill Frist, the former Republican Senate Majority Leader under Bush (even though he had a low score by the partisan/zero compromises LCV), is now chairman at the Nature Conservancy (it’s even his LinkedIn profile header) and frequently speaks out on environment and climate change issues. His kind of Republicanism is now way out of vogue.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2022/08/16/tenneessee-former-senator-bill-frist-elected-chair-nonprofit-nature-conservancy/10328455002/
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/billfristmd_nature-conservation-activity-7114961629628227585-C5BY?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android
Republicans from Utah seem to disproportionately form the Republican climate change caucus—they tend to be somewhat more open-minded than Republicans elsewhere, and some of the current representatives have been outspoken on the need to combine conservation with conservatism (though this also means making some compromises with federal land ownership which has become an unusually partisan “don’t compromise” issue).