Populism, Paternalism and the State of Environmentalism in the US

Environmental Politics

ISSN: 0964-4016 (Print) 1743-8934 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fenp20

Populism, paternalism and the state of environmentalism in the US

John M. Meyer

To cite this article: John M. Meyer (2008) Populism, paternalism and the state of environmentalism in the US, Environmental Politics, 17:2, 219-236, DOI: 10.1080/09644010801936149 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09644010801936149

Published online: 08 Apr 2008.

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Populism, paternalism and the state of environmentalism in the US John M. Meyer*

Department of Government and Politics, Humboldt State University, USA

This article examines the challenges and opportunities faced by US environmental movements, in light of contemporary efforts to address climate change. The author identifies and describes two discourses, which he terms paternalism and populism. These need not describe distinct movements, but reflect differing impulses and ways of engaging the public that are available to environmentalists of various stripes. Discourses are explored through their divergent notions of both environmentalist identity and the relation of environmental concern to the experiences of everyday life.

Introduction What is the present state of environmentalism in the US? What challenges and opportunities face the movement? These questions have been a recurrent source of debate among both scholars and activists. The debate originates with a point upon which virtually all US environmentalists and sympathetic observers agree: whatever their past and present successes, the efforts of contemporary environmentalism are not enough to meet the breadth and depth of existing challenges; they have proven particularly inadequate at addressing global climate change effectively (Pope 2005, Abbasi 2006). What is to be done? Any answer to this vital question, as well as the others posed in the preceding paragraph, will rely heavily upon how we make sense of environmentalism in the US. Key differences in interpretation and judgment can be illuminated by asking how environmentalists view the people and correspondingly how the people view environmentalists. In this essay, I characterise two divergent discourses and impulses that arise in response to these questions, which I label paternalism and populism. Yet upon posing these questions about the relationship of environmentalists to the people, one is

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ISSN 0964-4016 print/ISSN 1743-8934 online Ó 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09644010801936149 http://www.informaworld.com 220 J.M. Meyer quickly confronted with the ambiguous and contested character of both of these nouns. ‘The people’, as Margaret Canovan observes, is a term that ‘carries an assortment of meanings, many of them incompatible with one another’ (Canovan 2005, p. 2). One manifestation of this is whether it refers to the whole political community or only a part thereof.

Calls to ‘give politics back to the people’ exploit the ambiguity according to which ‘the people’ is ﬁrst understood by contrast with the power-holders (and therefore as something less than the population at large) and then expanded to wield the authority of the sovereign people as a whole. (Canovan 2005, p. 5)

While some might be tempted to dismiss the term from serious political inquiry as a result, Canovan argues convincingly that ‘[t]he vagueness of ‘the people’ is a mark of its political usefulness’ (Canovan 2005, p. 3). In this essay, I identify populist appeals with this sort of contrast between the interests and identity of ‘the people’ and those of the power holders. Paternalism, by contrast, presumes a unitary conception of the people and their true interests. Where such interests go unrecognised, ignorance, apathy, or egoism are typically diagnosed as the reason. By delineating paternalist and populist impulses in this essay, I am also challenging the unity that is often suggested by the labels ‘environmentalism’ and ‘environmentalist’. I concur with David Schlosberg, who has argued that ‘‘‘environmentalism’’ is simply a convenience – a vague label for an amazingly diverse array of ideas that have grown around the contemplation of the relationship between human beings and their surroundings’ (Schlosberg 1999, p. 3). Contemporary US environmentalism is a big tent that houses national organisations such as Environmental Defense as well as Greenpeace; the Apollo Alliance as well as Nature Conservancy; and local ‘environmental justice’ and ‘collaborative conservation’ organisations, chapters of the Sierra Club, as well as the activists of Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front (Gottlieb 1993, Brick et al. 2001, Best and Nocella 2006, Schulz 2006). Scholars and other observers have sifted and sorted these diverse US movements and organisations many times before – into conservationists and preservationists, romantics and rationalists (Dryzek 1997, pp. 153–195), deep and shallow (or reformist) (Devall and Sessions 1985), environmental justice and mainstream (Bullard 1993, Gottlieb 1993, Dowie 1995), and into global and place-based movements (Somers Smith 2001). As a result, my effort to introduce a new distinction into this mix might be greeted with suspicion. Moreover, one might argue that a preoccupation with division among environmentalists understates the shared ends that can provide a basis for effective action (e.g. Norton 1991, p. 90). In differentiating paternalism from populism, however, my aim is not to draw bright lines between movements, but to accentuate the divergent assumptions and ways of engaging with a broader public that are available to all and can be manifest among environmentalists of various stripes. This way of accounting for environmental movements can cast Environmental Politics 221 new light on the challenges facing US environmentalism in the twenty-first century. Historian Michael Kazin describes ‘the populist persuasion’ as ‘more an impulse than an ideology’; ‘a flexible mode of persuasion . . . expressions, tropes, themes and images’ and ‘a persistent yet mutable style of political rhetoric’ (1995, pp. 3–5). I approach both populism and paternalism in a manner that echoes Kazin on this point. Many in the environmental community draw from both the paternalist and the populist persuasion. Doing so with greater self-awareness might lessen divisions and improve the salience of environmentalist arguments. Drawing out these strands of environmental argument here, I use them to make sense of two recent environmentalist interventions into broader public discourse in the US: the 2006 release of Al Gore’s documentary movie (and book), An inconvenient truth, and the debate over the proclaimed ‘death of environmentalism’.

Paternalism We – the informed, engaged, public spirited – wish to protect you – the uninformed, apathetic, or egoistic – from the consequences of your environmentally destructive ways. Those who exhibit this sort of paternalistic tendency do not necessarily do so self-consciously. Nonetheless, the identity of movement actors and the characterisation of their concerns have often led environmentalists to be perceived as paternalistic in this sense. This paternalistic tendency is more encompassing than the way philoso- phers and political theorists often understand the term. Gerald Dworkin (2005) has defined paternalism as ‘the interference of a state or an individual with another person, against their will, and justified by a claim that the person interfered with will be better off . . .’ The justification for this interference is often premised on the conviction that the people themselves are not – or not always – the best judge of their own interests (Weale 1987). Thus, it relies upon some sort of expert or elite decision-makers – aristocrats in the Aristotelian sense – with knowledge, skills, or objectivity superior to that of the masses. Of course, paternalism is often resisted because this interference fails to respect individual choices and liberties. Yet even the most adamant critics of paternalism deem the prevention of harm to others as a legitimate basis for governmental restriction of individual liberties (Mill 1978, p. 9, c.f. Nussbaum 2000). Still policy impact is only one manifestation of paternalism. By viewing paternalism as a more encompassing set of rhetorical assumptions, attitudes, and associations that underlies and defines the contours of public discourse, we can recognise that its presence may be less dependent upon the intentions or explicit justifications of particular environmentalists than Dworkin’s definition would suggest, and more upon the reception of a broader public. Here, the word’s etymology orients us: paternalism is to govern people as a father would his children. Adult citizens can resent or resist being treated as though they were children for its condescending (and gendered) 222 J.M. Meyer presumption, even if they concur that a particular policy could be beneficial. While the US movements for wilderness preservation and for utilitarian conservationism that emerged in the early twentieth century are often characterised as very different and even oppositional, they and their descendents can be viewed as sharing the paternalistic tendency that I have sketched here. The exclusivity of important elements of the preservationist movement of the early twentieth century manifests a paternalistic tendency. The movement sought to protect particular places of aesthetic grandeur and rugged beauty from the ravages of agriculture, urbanism, and industrialism (Gottlieb 1993, pp. 26–35). While this concern is place-based, it is focused upon places outside the scope of most Americans’ everyday experience. As a result, the discourse of preservationism has often relied upon accounts by the few who have had the opportunity to experience these remote places – most prominently, John Muir. These accounts have been embraced frequently by urban and often distant elites. As historian Roderick Nash asserts approvingly, ‘The appreciation of wilderness . . . appeared first in the minds of sophisticated Americans living in the more civilized East. Lumbermen, miners, and professional hunters . . . lived too close to nature to appreciate it for other than its economic value as raw material’ (Nash quoted in Jacoby 2001, pp. 2–3). Efforts to protect parks and other lands frequently outlawed or restricted the activities of these rural people, including American Indians. Disempowered local communities were often deeply angered by this paternalistic politics of preservation (Jacoby 2001). The salience of their concern – rooted in livelihood or even existence in a particular place – could rarely be matched by the ‘sophisticated Americans’ who came to support preservationist efforts. Yet their resistance was explained as the myopic consequence of living ‘too close to nature’ and the material relation- ships and dependencies that were part and parcel of this. The utilitarian calculus of Gifford Pinchot and other early conservationists manifests this paternalistic tendency in a different manner. Here environmental leaders exhibit a faith in the ability of science and rationalism to determine policy. This reliance on expert knowledge meant that policies with diverse stakeholders and evident effects on the landscape – such as forest management practices – were decided in a manner removed from public view (Hays 1959, Meyer 1997). Only those with the proper training and credentials had the standing to make these decisions and the process was opaque to those on the outside. This exclusionary process was said to promote the true interests of the public because its method was designed to transcend the ill-informed, partial, or self-interested views that would distort a more open political process. Aldo Leopold reinforces this justification for an expert driven process when he concludes that The concept of land as a community, of which we are only members, is limited to a few ecologists. Ninety nine percent of the world’s brains and votes have never heard of it. The mass mind is devoid of any notion that the integrity of the land community may depend on its wholeness, that this wholeness is needlessly destroyed by present Environmental Politics 223

modes of land-use, or that the land-sciences have not yet examined the possibilities for preserving more of it. (quoted in Freyfogle 2003, p. 143)

So long as the people – the ‘mass mind’ – are diagnosed as an obstacle to effective environmental action, paternalism of some sort will likely hold sway. For good and ill, the paternalistic tendencies of both preservationism and conservationism have carried forward into the contemporary environmental movement. The preservationist’s exclusivity finds echoes in deep ecology’s call for a radical rupture from the west’s ‘dominant paradigm’ – a paradigm which, by definition, shapes the self-understanding of most citizens living within it (Devall and Sessions 1985; I discuss this in more detail in Meyer 2001, pp. 21–34; also Sagoff 1992, p. 1). By implication, this discourse suggests that most people exhibit some sort of ‘false consciousness’, which only those few who have achieved a deep ecological consciousness – via reflection or experience – have overcome. Environmental advocates influenced by deep ecology often seek to speak for non-humans in order to incorporate their concerns into social and political decision-making. In this sense, while they are acting paternalistically toward non-humans, it seems unavoidable. Moreover, the non-human subjects of this paternalism are not able to take offence. Yet in speaking for non-humans as a part of their enlarged sense of self, there is also an implicit paternalism toward those humans who speak only for their own narrow sense of self. So long as the ‘deep’ experiences that are said to shape this discourse are not widely shared by citizens, the paternalistic tone would seem unavoidable. When deep ecologists apply their arguments in a third world context, similar charges of paternalism (and ethnocentrism) have been raised (e.g. Guha 1989). The conservationists’ reliance upon scientific rationalism and administrative expertise has also carried forward to the present, embodied within the contemporary institutional presence of environmental agencies in the US political system (Dryzek 1997, pp. 63–83, Torgerson 1999, pp. 65–82, Fischer 2000). Similarly, prominent national environmental organisations aggregate large numbers of sympathetic but largely unengaged citizen members – individuals who have made a modest financial contribution in response to a direct mailing or other appeal – and use such numbers to pressure policymakers for change. The organisations themselves have placed increasing emphasis upon professionalism and managerial expertise and it is these experts who are primarily responsible for crafting policy proposals (Bosso 2005, pp. 91–92). As notable as this gap between members and leaders is, critics have characterised the values of both leaders and members as distinct from, and at odds with, those of the broader American public (Wildavsky and Douglas 1982, Ellis and Thompson 1997). Some proponents appear to agree. Environmental lawyer David Hunter captures this view well in his advocacy of a strong role for the judiciary in establishing ecological protections in property law:

. . . [The] reason justifying a move towards an environmentally sound property law is that we cannot aﬀord to wait for social value changes to be reﬂected more 224 J.M. Meyer

boldly in the political process. Ecologists see the scientiﬁc imperative of their view as legitimating the imposition of new laws on a society that perhaps has not yet been steeped in the environmental sciences. (Hunter 1988, pp. 316–317)

Imposing new laws in accord with a ‘scientific imperative’ because ‘we cannot afford to wait for social value changes’ captures the paternalist tendency at its starkest. Here, environmentalism’s reliance upon expert scientific knowledge reinforces a belief that environmental problems remain esoteric to the uninitiated masses. Only those with new values are deemed receptive to the insights of environmental science. Another interpretation of the relationship of environmental problems to public opinion is increasingly in evidence, however, and it is to that which I now wish to turn.

Populism Populism can be understood as the counterpoint to the rhetoric of paternalism in American politics. Yet the meaning of the term is elusive and often serves as a Rorschach test for those propounding it. First emergent with the US agrarian movement of the late 1800s, historians have characterised it alternately as an anti-intellectual, reactionary neurosis (Hofstadter 1955) and a bottom–up process of popular education, mobilisation and action that held enormous ‘democratic promise’ (Goodwyn 1978; see also Canovan 1981, pp. 47–51). The term has transcended agrarianism to describe political movements identified with both the left and right. It has remained a term of both approbation and reproach (Kazin 1995). Despite this diversity, it is fair to say that ‘what those who talk of ‘‘populism’’ have in mind is a particular kind of political phenomenon where the tensions between the elite and the grass roots loom large’ (Canovan 1981, p. 9). With faith in the ‘grassroots’ as a basis for overcoming environmental inaction, populist environmentalism does not demand the transformation of widely shared values or the overcoming of people’s false consciousness or identity. Rather than diagnose the problem as ignorance or apathy to be corrected by knowledgeable professionals, the problem is attributed to remote decision-makers unable or unwilling to account for local knowledge and everyday experience. Rather than diagnose the problem as egoism or self- interest – reflected by popular resistance to giving up amenities or resource dependent lifestyles – here the problem is identified as powerful elites and corporations whose greed and self-interest is at odds with most people’s extant preoccupations with family, health, and livelihood. These already salient, materially grounded concerns are, as Mark Sagoff has noted, ‘religiously and ethically based’, rather than scientific or managerial, and build upon this to make judgments about fairness and justice and so distinguish between ‘law- abiding people and criminals’ (Sagoff 1992, p. 6 of 7). At stake, then, is whether, on balance, people’s everyday lives and experiences are the foundation for the requisite movement for change or Environmental Politics 225 conversely, popular ignorance, apathy, or egoism are the obstacle to be overcome. From the latter vantage point, populism will look decidedly problematic and some form of paternalism necessary. But if one’s cause appears to receive wide support from the people, yet encounter obstacles in the corridors of power, then a populist movement appears far more attractive. The anxieties among, and conflicts between, US environmentalists often reflect ambiguity over which of these characterisations comes closer to an accurate description of contemporary environmental politics. To date, populist rhetoric and strategies have been most commonly focused upon problems at the local level and for this reason, my examples in this section emphasise localist and place-based movements. Movements and organisations with this focus have criticised many of the large national organisations and agencies. They have also called attention to the differences of culture and identity that separate them from the members and leaders of these organisations; this leads many to resist the moniker ‘environmentalist’ for themselves. Yet it is burden of the later sections of this essay to demonstrate that the distinction between populist and paternalist tendencies need not be based upon the scale of the problem being confronted and hence need not divide global (or national) from local initiatives. The environmental justice movement in the US can be seen as an exemplar of the populist impulse, in terms of both its relation to materiality and identity. Emerging from networks of activists resisting local environmental hazards, the environmental justice (EJ) movement focuses upon the protection of places where these activists and their families live, work, and play. As one leading activist explained, ‘We become fighters when something threatens our home’ (Gottlieb 1993, p. 209). Rather than privileging an abstract scientific discourse, the environmental justice movement emphasises local knowledge rooted in the particularities of place and community. Rather than privileging the transfor- mative experience that some have achieved in places remote from everyday human lives, the environmental justice movement is rooted in the material connections between environmental contamination and community illness, hazard, or threat to livelihood. EJ leaders are far more likely than those of mainstream national environmental organisations to be women, people of colour, and people from working class backgrounds (Krauss 1994). At first, this led many activists to resist identifying themselves as environmentalists; some still do. As another movement activist explained, ‘Calling our movement an environmental movement would inhibit our organizing . . .’ (Gottlieb 1993, p. 318). This reflects a perceived cultural disconnect between the identity of ‘environmentalists’ – a white, cosmopolitan elite; focused upon the protection of an environment usually at some distance from home – and the identity of the EJ activists (for an insightful discussion of the struggles over environmentalist identity see Allen et al. 2007). As one African-American EJ activist put it in a discussion of a struggle against a large, polluting hog factory, ‘Most of the whites are concerned about the surface waters because it is recreation for them. 226 J.M. Meyer

And those of us who live in rural communities [and have old and shallow wells] are more concerned about the ground water because it is life for us . . .’ (Allen et al. 2007, p. 122). While the environmental justice movement often illustrates these two characteristics of the populist environmental impulse, it is not the only US movement that resonates with them. Evidence of both the importance of the relation to materiality and lived experience and the difficulty in embracing an environmentalist identity can also be seen in the so-called collaborative conservation movement that is increasingly prominent in the Western US. Watershed-based groups have been organised in many places with the aim of sustaining the livelihoods of rural communities by ensuring the conservation of those natural resources upon which their local economies depend. These groups have emphasised the importance of local control for sustainable resource management and restoration, especially on public lands. As such, they too rely upon claims to the superiority of experiential knowledge and scepticism toward the scientific and managerial claims made by distant administrative and corporate decision-makers (Jungwirth 2001, p. 61). They have advocated an alternative that is reliant upon communication, deliberation and collaborative decision-making among the diverse stakeholders within the region (Kemmis 1990, Brick et al. 2001, Sabatier et al. 2005). Activists in these watershed groups also parallel EJ in their wariness of the ‘environmentalist’ moniker (Brick and Weber 2001, pp. 22–23). Class and rural identity play the most visible role here. The former chairman of the Sierra Club explained his worries about these rural conservation initiatives in the following terms: they ‘disempower our constituency, which is heavily urban. Few urbanites are represented as stakeholders in communities surrounding national forests’ (Michael McCloskey in High Country News, 13 May 1996, quoted in Snow 2001). It’s not difficult to see why collaborative conservationists would wish – and need – to distance themselves from an environmental constituency understood in this way. There are many other initiatives and movements that have echoed the commitments of environmental justice and collaborative conservation to fighting for common concerns tied to home, family, and livelihood, while keeping the environmentalist identity at arm’s length. The growing ‘creation care’ movement among Evangelical Christians offers one example (Johnson 2007). The fight by hunters and fishers to maintain access to rural public lands, in the face of opposition from oil and gas interests, is another (Larson 2006). More generally, a plethora of efforts to combat urban sprawl, to promote the availability of local foods, to reduce exposure to workplace toxins, and to preserve open space have all been promoted in ways that often transcend ‘red– blue’ political divides. Robert Gottlieb, in his book Environmentalism unbound, has identified and described several such efforts in urban areas such as Los Angeles (Gottlieb 2001). Environmentalism, in this populist sense, emerges from the lived experience of citizens, who then act in concert with others to protect, preserve, or recover such widely shared values and interests as Environmental Politics 227 economic livelihood, healthy communities, and opportunities for their children and grandchildren (c.f. Luke 2002). Despite environmentalism’s paternalistic impulse, then, we should not be surprised by these contrary manifestations of populism. After all, one of the most consistent results of public opinion research on the environment shows large majorities concerned about environmental issues and expressing a willingness to support public action to protect and remediate (Guber 2003, Public Opinion Strategies and Peter D. Hart Research Associates 2005, Xiao and Dunlap 2007). When allowed to characterise values on their own terms, it also becomes clear that environmental values are widely shared, even by groups – such as sawmill workers and Earth First! activists – who are otherwise characterised as disagreeing over these values (Kempton et al. 1995, pp. 196–203).

What the populist impulse indicates, then, is the conceptual difference in ‘environmentalism’ as it moves across a divide between a well-educated class of knowledge workers and others in American society. For the former, environmentalism could be embraced primarily as a concern with the protection of remote places and a trust in managerial and scientific experts to protect air, water, and land. For the latter, including many minorities, women, and generally poorer, less-well-educated classes of blue collar and service workers, environmentalism may emerge more powerfully as a reaction to perceived material threats to their lives, livelihood, and community well- being. It is the perception of these threats that makes this manifestation of environmental concern particularly – often uniquely – salient. The divide on matters of economics, lifestyle, and identity illuminates the limitations of equating environmental concern with the voices and profile of the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the other large, national organisations. However, it offers little reason to conclude that there is a deep divide in the American polity over environmental values themselves. Indeed, environmental populism suggests just the opposite – that recognisably environmental values are widely shared and already extant. In sum, a cultural divide continues to constrain environmentalism’s institutionalised representatives, even as the diversity of those who embrace recognisably environmental values becomes more apparent. In general, neither the membership nor leadership of mainstream environmental organisations reflects the breadth of popular support that environmental concerns can now claim. The large national environmental organisations have certainly made changes to address this diversity; for instance, many now maintain significant environmental justice programmes (Sandler and Pezzullo 2006). Leadership has also become less homogeneous: the National Wildlife Federation’s board member and recent chair, Jerome Ringo, is an African-American and former chemical industry worker (Hertsgaard 2006). These changes speak to a growing recognition by national organisations of the need to be more inclusive, in order to address the underlying tensions between populist and paternalist impulses. 228 J.M. Meyer

The politics of climate change Paternalistic underpinnings are in evidence among large, expert, DC-based environmental organisations when they focus on seemingly abstract, technical, and large-scale environmental concerns. Their reliance upon administrative rationalism and scientific expertise feeds perceptions of elitism that reinforce popular perceptions of paternalism. The frequent emphasis upon regulatory strategies can also contribute to the perception of environmentalists as paternalists. By contrast, to date populist approaches and rhetoric have emerged most clearly when the emphasis is placed upon the knowledge of citizens with first- hand experience of the impact of environmental hazards or of effective management of resources that are central to their livelihood. These movements are rooted in a material relation to their surrounding environment and challenge the culture, priorities, and identities commonly associated with environmentalism. In this way, they promote greater reflexivity among self- identified environmentalists, by pressing outward at the boundaries of what counts as ‘environmentalism’. How might an appreciation of these two environmentalist tendencies illuminate the politics of climate change? After all, this is one arena where – until very recently, at least – virtually all observers have concluded that environmentalist efforts have been ineffective in the US. Even if this may now be changing, modest successes remain dwarfed by the scale of the problem. If populism and paternalism are impulses rooted in distinct identities and relations to materiality, then we ought to evaluate the role played by each in efforts on climate change. Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope suggests one such interpretation:

The environmental challenges which gave rise to the reforms of the early 1970s, on which the progress of the next 30 years rests, had tangible, local, and immediate consequences for the public. Lake Erie was dying under the boats of ﬁshermen, the Cuyahoga River could be seen to burn by Clevelanders, New Yorkers had to change their shirt in the middle of the day, and children in Los Angeles could not go out and play hundreds of days a year. The problems that environmentalism has failed to get a grasp on, or develop a deep public commitment and attention to, by contrast, are intangible, global and future oriented. Global warming, habitat fragmentation, and the loading of global ecosystems with persistent but toxic and disruptive industrial chemicals are simply harder for an opportunistic, reactive primate species to understand as threats. (2005)

Here, Pope characterises earlier environmental successes as sharing the populist’s attention to material, quotidian concerns of citizens with diverse identities: fishermen, city dwellers, parents and children. By contrast, climate change is argued to be ‘intangible’ and so ‘harder . . . to understand’. Pope’s argument, here, suggests that popular mobilisation is improbable and invites a paternalistic response to these challenges. Only in this way might we overcome Environmental Politics 229 the obstacles that Pope describes as posed by human nature itself to public comprehension and salience of these issues. A similar interpretation is on display in a prominent feature story by environmental reporter Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. Entitled ‘Yelling ‘‘fire’’ on a hot planet’, Revkin details the frustration of many with the gap between clear scientific understanding of climate change, on the one hand, and the dearth of decisive action on the other. He also outlines the results of a Gallup public opinion survey measuring both prominent concerns in the US and the degree of concern expressed for particular environmental problems (Revkin 2006). Consistent with most such surveys this one showed widespread support for environmental concerns, yet low levels of salience for these concerns.1 Thus, this poll showed overwhelming majorities of Americans expressed concern about a variety of environmental problems, with a 64% majority concerned about climate change in particular. Yet at the same time ‘environment’ was buried below the war in Iraq, economy and jobs, immigration, terrorism, and other topics, at the bottom of a ranked list of respondents’ ‘top concern’ (Revkin 2006). This context puts into stark relief the comments of one of Revkin’s informants, David Hawkins, the director of the climate programme at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ‘I wish I were more optimistic of our ability to get a broad slice of the public to understand [climate change]’ Hawkins laments; ‘[W]e understand diesel soot because we can smell it and see it. Getting global warming is too much of an intellectual process. Perhaps pictures of drowning polar bears (which we are trying to find) will move peopleet . . .’ (Revkin 2006). Hawkins echoes Pope, here, in his conviction that popular understanding is a key obstacle to action on climate change; the solution will require more clever forms of educating – or shocking – the public to overcome their ignorance. From this point of view, a gulf exists between environmental activists and the general public; one not explained by just a differential willingness to act but by different knowledge and values. ‘We’ need to get ‘them’ to come around to a new way of understanding and valuing the environment so that ‘they’ will act accordingly. This strategy presumes that most people currently reject global warming as a concern and must, therefore, be converted. Yet this appears blind to the 64% of respondents that already do ‘get’ global warming. The real challenge identified in the survey – the very low salience of global warming – is unlikely to be addressed in the same manner. Al Gore’s climate change slideshow, An inconvenient truth, offers further indication of the pervasiveness of this approach. Gore shares with Pope and Hawkins the presumption that public denial is at the core of the climate change problem. This frames his quite popular climate change message in a paternalistic manner. One of the most striking features of An inconvenient truth is that it focuses on an accessible account of climate science, to the exclusion of meaningful strategies for change. In the movie, suggestions for ‘what you personally can do’ are presented literally as an afterthought – interspersed with the closing credits. 230 J.M. Meyer

Even then, these suggestions focused upon such familiar consumer nostrums as buying compact florescent light bulbs and bringing a reusable tote to the supermarket. Prioritising information on the nature of climate change over strategies for change makes sense from a paternalistic perspective: once we convince the people that it is a real concern, then they will act. The challenge is the first step rather than the second; the lack of action makes it plain that we need to work harder to convince most people that the concern is real. As Gore put it in an interview, ‘nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem’ (D. Roberts 2006). His slideshow encapsulates the prescriptions also apparent in Pope’s and Hawkins’ comments – educate us, scare us, appeal to our morality – that emanate from this view. If lack of action on climate change is evidence that people ‘don’t think there’s a problem’, then efforts like these appear to be exactly what is needed. But the impact of such jeremiads would seem very different in a context where most viewers, and a majority of all Americans, are already convinced that climate change is real and yet clear strategies for large-scale change remain elusive. Gore might have fostered a conversation about climate change that emerges from the already salient concerns of everyday life, rather than attempting to trump these concerns. That could have allowed moviegoers to leave with a vision of how to tackle climate change by working to make their lives and communities better, rather than leaving us with the too easy sense that knowledge or awareness itself is what is missing. This would have resulted in a very different movie, rooted more in a populist than a paternalist environmental discourse. In sum, then, the characteristics of climate change as an environmental concern are conventionally taken to be its global impact, the tremendous number and diversity of sources generating CO2 and other global warming gases, its large-scale and long-term dire effects upon climate stability, and consequent effects upon both humans and a host of other species. Yet as a political issue, the above commentators view climate change as more abstract than many other environmental issues; one that can be grasped cognitively but not materially or emotionally. Global in its impact, it appears that solutions cannot be place-based, since a reduction in greenhouse gases in one particular community, state, or nation will do little to protect that place from the consequences of global change. Thus policy change seems to rest in the ability of transnational elites to forge and implement an agreement. Moreover the problem is something to be limited if not averted, while the disparate sources of global warming gases are something the can be reduced but not eliminated. Thus, the appropriate policy response appears to be a matter of regulation. A question confronting environmentalists is whether a populist approach could be more effective in mobilising a broad constituency for change on climate change. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus’ much discussed report ‘The death of environmentalism’ and subsequent book, Break through, suggest an affirmative answer to this question (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2004, Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007). To be sure, their work has been read Environmental Politics 231 in very different ways and the debate has often generated more heat than light (see Grist 2005, 2007; I offer a more extended discussion of the report in Meyer 2005). Nonetheless, some key normative and strategic questions have emerged, and distilling these from amidst the rancour can illuminate the challenges and opportunities for populist discourse in the contemporary politics of climate change. The understanding of climate change that I have characterised here is dismissed by Shellenberger and Nordhaus as a product of environmentalists’ ‘literal-sclerosis’:

What, then, is the cause of global warming? For most within the environmental community, the answer is easy: too much carbon in the atmosphere. Framed this way, the solution is logical: we need to pass legislation that reduces carbon emissions. (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2004, p. 14)

While such legislation typically generates broad public support, Shellenberger and Norhaus conclude that it has not proven to be ‘an inspiring vision . . . that a majority of Americans could get excited about’ (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2004, p. 16). Their concern, then, is with the lack of salience of climate change as an issue and their contention is that salience (unlike support) is dependent upon transcending the conﬁnes of an ‘environmental issue’ to be seen as a question of community reinvestment, sustainable jobs, energy independence, and a better world – a vision that might inspire hope, because it ties solutions to an array of material concerns already highly salient to most citizens. They highlight the work of the Apollo Alliance, which has sought to bring together labour, environmentalists, civil rights activists, and others to collaborate on precisely such strategies, as indicative of a viable alternative approach (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2004, p. 515, http://www.apolloalliance.org). In these ways, the criticism of environmentalism levelled by Shellenberger and Nordhaus tie the movement’s limitations to its paternalistic approach and tone. By contrast, their valorisation of strategies that are tied to the quotidian concerns already highly salient to many people is precisely the approach that has driven the environmental justice movement and others that are distinguished by their populist impulses. Shellenberger and Nordhaus, however, took no notice of these movements in their 2004 report. Many environmental justice proponents and other place-based activists have responded by angrily drawing attention to their invisibility in Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ account of environmentalism. As one response put it,

I was struck by how the piece echoed the National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summits of 1991 and 2003 . . . [yet] despite the authors’ demands that the environmental movement broaden itself, they had little if any engagement with the US EJ community or non-American environmentalists. For too long, the concerns and solutions proposed by those constituencies – and especially by indigenous communities around the world – have been ignored, scoﬀed at, and actively campaigned against by elite American environmentalists. (Blain 2005) 232 J.M. Meyer

We might, then, view the tension between Shellenberger and Nordhaus and EJ activists as primarily about recognition. If this were so, it would seem amenable to resolution, given the critique of mainstream environmentalism that both sides share. Yet their diﬀerences have sharpened, rather than lessened, over time. Why? Whereas many EJ activists have conceptualised their grassroots activism as a model for the movement as a whole (e.g. Gelobter et al. 2005), Shellenberger and Nordhaus have characterised it as a local and parochial approach, a brush with which they paint other forms of place-based activism as well (e.g. Bergman 2005, Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007, pp. 66– 104). Viewed in this manner, it would oﬀer few resources with which to address climate change or other global challenges. This reading neglects shared populist sentiment in both analyses. To rethink solutions to the seemingly global, abstract, long-term, intellectual issue of climate change in terms of everyday material concerns could serve to dramatically expand the constituencies for which this is salient. Doing so presses apart the boundaries of environmentalist identity. In short, it could move a concern that has generated perhaps the most paternalistic rhetoric in a populist direction. If successful, it would indicate that the limited salience of climate change to date is not due to the abstractness of the problem, but the abstract and hence inherently paternalist gestures toward solutions (for grassroots initiatives developing on climate change, see J.T. Roberts 2006).

Conclusion My aim has been to show how the normative discourses of paternalism and populism emerge in deliberation about what should be done in the face of pressing environmental challenges. Rather than merely introduce another dichotomy into our understanding of US environmentalism, I have sought to sketch the contours of these discourses in order to call attention to the fluidity of claims for the existence of other divides, such as that between local and global or concrete and abstract. If we move down this path, we might also interrogate the role of the label ‘environmentalist’ itself within American discourse. For it would seem that environmental concerns are too big and too important to be addressed only by self-identified environmentalists. If a populist perspective has much to recommend it, then transcending the limitations of such identification will be at the core of new strategies to address climate change and other awesome challenges. This perspective ought not be embraced naively. Ambitious and inclusive strategies for change that sincerely embrace new constituencies and relations to materiality are not easy to devise nor will they be readily won. And certainly ignorance, apathy, and egoism do pose challenges for which a populist orientation offers little insight. Leadership, passion, educational campaigns, and the testimony of experts are vital. Yet the ubiquity of climate change – its threat to so many aspects of our lives – also provides a populist opening that Environmental Politics 233 has yet to be seriously explored. A substantial push to retrofit buildings for conservation and renewable energy, develop innovative and flexible forms of transit, foster in-fill development rather than sprawl, or restore wetlands that can mitigate the destructiveness of hurricanes, are approaches that require a serious investment of public resources to be realised on a large scale. This sort of community development and reinvestment may appear politically infeasible. Yet for those who seek meaningful employment, cheaper and more convenient transportation, reduced utility bills, or more comfortable homes, such an agenda could prove not only attractive but salient in a way that more familiar discussions of regulating carbon emissions are not. The populist impulse has long represented an alternative to the dominant discourse of American environmentalism. Typically associated with local and place-based activism, however, it has often appeared ill-suited to global challenges including climate change. Yet in its challenge to received wisdom about materiality and identity, populist environmental discourse offers key insights that have the potential to build a more powerful and expansive movement in the US. The need could not be more urgent; the opportunity could not be greater.

Acknowledgements Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the International Conference on Globalization, Environmental Ethics, and Environmental Justice, Michigan State University, August 2006; the Environmental Ethics and Policy Lecture Series at the University of Washington–Seattle, January 2007; and the Western Political Science Association conference, Las Vegas, March 2007. Many individuals oﬀered insightful comments and critiques at these venues. The author would particularly like to thank Stephen Gardiner and Andrew Light, his hosts at the University of Washington, as well as Ronald Sandler, Gary Bryner, and Justin Williams for the eagerness to engage his ideas and their insightful suggestions and critiques. Thanks, too, to the anonymous reviewers for Environmental Politics for pressing him to be clearer about what these categories do – and do not – mean.

Note 1. http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro.htm provides more detailed information on this and other recent surveys of US environmental attitudes. Deborah Guber (2003) provides a thorough review of studies of US public opinion on environmental concerns. She summarises her ﬁndings as follows: ‘evidence from national surveys suggest that Americans are concerned about environmental degradation and are persuaded of its dangers. It is simply that other values compete for scarce energy and attention, a blunt reality that is at once understandable and stubbornly pragmatic’ (p. 181).

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