May 22, 2008

Today’s environmentalists confuse
being ‘green’ with making ‘green’

Pre-Script: When I agreed to emerge from my tree stump to pen this blog, I was told that people actually make money writing these things. Although I have no concept how that works, I pre-empted the problem by requesting that any monies coming my way be donated anonymously to the Saint Jude Children’s Hospital in Nashville and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles because they treat patients far braver than any adults I have ever met….

I have an old friend, another imaginary character named Kermit T. Frog. While we certainly have very distinct tastes in female companionship, we have long had soft spots in our hearts for the world around us. Almost 20 years ago, my buddy starred in a movie in which he sang the opening theme song.

Hard to believe, but back in the 1970’s environmental consciousness was pretty much limited to folks like me who live in tree stumps, guys like Kermit who live in ponds and strange, intense humans who wore dark socks and Birkenstocks. They were the ones with the bumper stickers on the back of their VW vans encouraging everyone to save water by showering with a friend. Sit next to one of these folks in a closed room and it became quickly and odoriferously apparent that these were the friends of those who had no friends.

It’s hard to believe today when it seems like the label “green” is replacing the colors “red, white and blue” in virtually all corporate television commercials, but back in the Disco Era, those folks were a lonely, odd bunch who spoke primarily among themselves at strange little events they created like “Earth Day.” It was in this context that Kermit sang:

“It's not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow, or gold
Or something much more colorful like that”

Another anomaly about being “green” in the 1970’s was that good motives, righteous indignation and an autographed first edition of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” could barely generate the 40 cents for a gallon of gas, a tie-dyed t-shirt, a pair of worn Levis, a hemp vest and a three-finger baggie of weed. Into this economic wasteland entered a new breed of well-educated, bright, young men and women at the prestigious Yale Law School who decided to become the legal shock troops of the new environmental movement. They called themselves the Natural Resources Defense Council and they allied themselves with Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

In the name of the NRDC, its founding members picked their battles carefully and quickly developed a reputation for legal work that created both precedent and fawning press coverage. They became the valiant, “green” knights who jousted with the bloated, unimaginative polluter and developer bar and outmaneuvered them legally and publicly. A group which once been dismissed by corporate giants as nothing more than an annoying gnat had been revealed as a mosquito that carried a kind of “green” malaria that could frustrate and defeat those who pursued environmental business as usual. They were a dynamic force to be reckoned with.

But let’s face it, trees, fish and birds are notoriously deadbeats when it comes to paying the lawyers that represent them. While their classmates and rivals from other prestigious law schools were quickly assimilating into the polluter economy, driving Mercedes and lunching at exclusive country clubs, the new “green” lawyers disappointingly learned that noble purpose and ethereal ethics alone were not legal tender.

“It's not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over
'Cause you're not standing out
Like flashy sparkles in the water’
Or stars in the sky”

So these young bright legal lights figured out that when it came to their legal futures, they needed to identify an alternate course to future financial security. The result was to create a national reputation by challenging the polluters in the name of the environment and then trading off their “green” credibility for positions of power and wealth.

Very soon one enterprising utility company took the unprecedented approach of deciding that “if you can’t beat them, co-opt them.” After cutting his teeth with the NRDC and spending a little “respectable” time with the Morrison & Forester law firm in San Francisco, John Bryson parlayed his “green” credentials to appointments to the California regulatory boards overseeing water and public utilities until he was hired by Southern California Edison in 1984 and ultimately appointed its CEO in 1990. Another of the NRDC pioneers, Mary Nichols, has re-created herself as the “neutral” overseer of California’s forestry and fire protection, water, fish and game and state parks. No one seriously doubts the knowledge or intelligence of either Bryson or Nichols, but when a committed conservationist can so easily drift from one side of the battle to the other and exploit their “green” reputation for advancement, their intellectual honesty remains an open issue.

“But green's the color of spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like a mountain
Or important like a river
Or tall like a tree.”

Not that any of this is new. In 1902, to open more western land to settlement and irrigation, Congress created the United States Reclamation Service. The Owens Valley was one of the first places considered for a government-sponsored irrigation system. Simultaneously, however, William Mulholland, Los Angeles superintendent of water, took note of the quality, quantity, and proximity of Owens Valley water. Well aware that more water was necessary for Los Angeles’ growth, Mulholland and others garnered political and economic support for a Los Angeles water project by implying in speeches, interviews, and articles that Los Angeles teetered on the brink of a water crisis. Letting Owens Valley ranchers and farmers believe they were selling their land to the U.S. Reclamation Service for the Owens Valley irrigation project, engineers J.B. Lippincott and Fred Eaton bought vast amounts of land and associated water rights in the valley for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The Reclamation Service subsequently scuttled the irrigation project. Instead of returning reclamation service land in the Owens Valley to the public domain for homesteading, Forest Service chief Gifford Pinchot made reclamation land (mostly treeless) a part of the Inyo National Forest under the auspices of “the greatest good for the greatest number.” So in order to satisfy the political demands of Los Angeles, the water in Owens Valley was appropriated and piped 300 miles south. Coincidentally (or maybe not), Gifford Pinchot, revered in some circles as the proto-type environmentalist, was the founder of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the same place where the NRDC was born. And (more coincidentally) who wound up as the chairperson of the LADWP? Mary Nichols.

But it would be unfair to point the finger at a few and ignore what has become a vast black market of selling environmental reputations to the highest bidder. It is commonly the goal of environmental activists to seek out the attention of and, ultimately, the absorption by the Borg they have resisted. They have learned to leverage the threat of action to fashion some accommodation from developers in exchange for a hold-harmless agreement that they will not challenge a proposed, amended project. The developer demands 100 percent more than that to which he knows he is entitled, the environmental groups force him to accept 50 percent more than he thought he could get and “environmental victory” is declared.

Makes you re-examine a recent May 8, 2008 Los Angeles Times article, huh?

“A coalition led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Audubon California, the Planning and Conservation League and the Endangered Habitats League will not oppose the Tejon Ranch’s plans to build three urban centers, including more than 26,000 homes as well as hotels, condominiums and golf courses at the western and southwestern edge of the ranch.

”Those groups and others had threatened a campaign against development of the property, saying it would extend Southern California’s suburban sprawl to the Central Valley, add to regional traffic and air pollution woes, and harm endangered species such as the condor.”

Nothing says environmental sensitivity in an undeveloped wildlife area with endangered species like “more than 26,000 homes as well as hotels, condominiums and golf courses.” The NRDC strikes again?

As a result, government regulators will be politically intimidated by the imprimatur of the environmental groups, and the principals negotiating the deal for the environmental groups will gain a reputation as “reasonable” and, therefore, potentially employable by the “dark side of the force.” Once re-planted in the executive corner office of a government agency, corporate headquarters, law firm or utility company (perhaps overlooking more than 26,000 homes, hotels, condominiums and golf courses), his or her environmental credentials will become a valuable commodity for future negotiations perhaps on behalf of the same entity they once opposed and with a succeeding generation of environmentalists who one day hope to follow in their footsteps. Resistance is futile.

To be fair, there was some dissent on the Tejon Ranch deal. Ilene Anderson, a biologist and spokeswoman for the Center for Biological Diversity, said her group remains worried about habitat for the condor. Apparentlt Ilene never got the memo and it looks like her future may be limited to writing silly little blogs that no one reads.

As for me….

“When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why
But why wonder why wonder
I am green, and it'll do fine
It's beautiful, and I think it's what I want to be”

May 22, 2008

May 8, 2008

May 1, 2008

April 24, 2008