One thing that concerns me about anti-racism/feminism is that people who support them don’t seem to have a vision of what success would be like.
This is connected to a more general issue: Institutions and movements very rarely acknowledge when the issue they’ve dealt with is essentially solved. You see this in other examples as well organizations to prevent animal cruelty would be one example. When an organization goes completely away it is more often because they were on the losing side of political and social discourse (e.g. pro-prohibition groups, anti-miscegenation organizations). The only example I’m aware of where the organizations simply died out after essentially a success is organizations to help deal with polio, and even that still exists in limited forms.
Ideally, an organization which has achieved a definitive win would find a new goal.
Yes, but this seems to happen extremely rarely. The only example I’m aware of is how some abolitionist groups helped transition into pro-black rights groups in the post Civil War era.
That’s a reasonable point—but are there lessons to be learned from organizations that continued to be disproportionally powerful even after their problem was solved?
I’m thinking of groups like the Sierra Club. My impression is the group is less powerful than it once was—and the problem is more solved than it was.
I’m thinking of groups like the Sierra Club. My impression is the group is less powerful than it once was—and the problem is more solved than it was.
Global warming might suggest otherwise. As to political power- if one is judging by amount of discussion in political discourse, in many ways, the environmental movement has substantially lost power in the last 40 years, at least in the US. It used to have broad, bipartisan support, whereas now it is primarily an issue only supported on the contemporary left. But yes, the general situation in many respects is much better (we don’t have rivers catching on fire obviously.)
I think it would be more accurate to say that environmentalism is a broad label; the facets that used to have bipartisan support still do, generally, but new issues have arisen under the label that are supported by a much smaller group.
That’s probably true to some extent, but not universally. For example, in the early 1970s, having fuel efficient cars was a bipartisan issue, whereas now attempts to minimize gasoline consumption are more decidedly on the left.
Due to the law of diminishing marginal returns, fuel efficiency itself is a broad issue. You could, if you were charitable, see the parties a representing a search for absolute improvements in all areas, vs searching for the current most efficient improvements; such that when technology improved so that improving fuel efficiency was cheaper & safer then it would again be bi-partisan.
Most likely, neither is that rational about the matter, but there is an inkling of truth to it.
Diminishing marginal returns may have something to do with it. Fuel efficiency for passenger cars has increased by about a third, and larger increases have occurred in vans and small trucks.Relevant graph. But, compared to the maximum efficiency for their types, efficiency is still extremely low. And efficiency for large trucks is essentially unchanged. So I’m not sure we’ve really hit that point that substantially.
This is connected to a more general issue: Institutions and movements very rarely acknowledge when the issue they’ve dealt with is essentially solved. You see this in other examples as well organizations to prevent animal cruelty would be one example. When an organization goes completely away it is more often because they were on the losing side of political and social discourse (e.g. pro-prohibition groups, anti-miscegenation organizations). The only example I’m aware of where the organizations simply died out after essentially a success is organizations to help deal with polio, and even that still exists in limited forms.
I’ve got some sympathy for people who don’t want to shut down organizations merely because they’ve succeeded.
Stable organizations are hard to create, and people apt to have a lot of valuable social relationships in them.
Ideally, an organization which has achieved a definitive win would find a new goal.
Yes, but this seems to happen extremely rarely. The only example I’m aware of is how some abolitionist groups helped transition into pro-black rights groups in the post Civil War era.
That’s a reasonable point—but are there lessons to be learned from organizations that continued to be disproportionally powerful even after their problem was solved?
I’m thinking of groups like the Sierra Club. My impression is the group is less powerful than it once was—and the problem is more solved than it was.
Global warming might suggest otherwise. As to political power- if one is judging by amount of discussion in political discourse, in many ways, the environmental movement has substantially lost power in the last 40 years, at least in the US. It used to have broad, bipartisan support, whereas now it is primarily an issue only supported on the contemporary left. But yes, the general situation in many respects is much better (we don’t have rivers catching on fire obviously.)
I think it would be more accurate to say that environmentalism is a broad label; the facets that used to have bipartisan support still do, generally, but new issues have arisen under the label that are supported by a much smaller group.
That’s probably true to some extent, but not universally. For example, in the early 1970s, having fuel efficient cars was a bipartisan issue, whereas now attempts to minimize gasoline consumption are more decidedly on the left.
Due to the law of diminishing marginal returns, fuel efficiency itself is a broad issue. You could, if you were charitable, see the parties a representing a search for absolute improvements in all areas, vs searching for the current most efficient improvements; such that when technology improved so that improving fuel efficiency was cheaper & safer then it would again be bi-partisan.
Most likely, neither is that rational about the matter, but there is an inkling of truth to it.
Diminishing marginal returns may have something to do with it. Fuel efficiency for passenger cars has increased by about a third, and larger increases have occurred in vans and small trucks.Relevant graph. But, compared to the maximum efficiency for their types, efficiency is still extremely low. And efficiency for large trucks is essentially unchanged. So I’m not sure we’ve really hit that point that substantially.
Yes, fuel efficiency can be increased at the expanse of something else, e.g., cost, safety, etc.