Is Environmentalism Out of Ideas?

The answer depends on where you look.

Last month, Len Necefer, founder and CEO of Natives Outdoors and the author of All At Once by Dr. Len, published an essay called “Environmentalism Is Out of Ideas” (subscribers only, but well worth the subscription). Like a lot of us, he’s despondent about the second Trump administration’s attacks on longstanding environmental laws — and about the inadequacy of the op-eds, petitions, and press releases that large environmental groups have issued in response. The U.S. environmental movement, he writes, has been “perfecting outdated strategies while the country’s environmental laws disintegrated.”

I agree that these strategies are outdated, and I agree with much of the rest of Dr. Len’s critique. Large environmental organizations “have, in many ways, come to resemble the very bureaucracies they were founded to confront,” making them cautious and slow to act. Some of the philanthropies that fund them suffer from the same sclerosis. Environmental activists at all levels, from local to global, can and should spend a lot more time connecting environmental health to human health and livelihoods, making it clear that the “fight for a livable planet is the fight to make ordinary life bearable again.”

Less doom, more possibility; less restraint, more restoration. Yes.

But is environmentalism out of ideas? Not exactly. The problem, as I see it, is narrower: some of the wealthiest environmental organizations in the U.S. are relying on Silent Spring persuasion tactics in a Braiding Sweetgrass world.

Let’s start by naming names.

As even this short list makes clear, “environmentalism” encompasses a wide range of strategies and interests. Two of the above groups are land trusts dedicated to protecting private land (The Nature Conservancy and The Conservation Fund). Two operate famous zoos as well as national and international conservation programs (the San Diego Wildlife Alliance and the Wildlife Conservation Society). Two are focused on bird conservation (Ducks Unlimited and the National Audubon Society). Generalizations about environmentalism and environmental groups are always risky.

What we can say is that all of these organizations, and not a few of their smaller counterparts, were shaped by the environmental politics of the 1960s and 1970s (the two youngest groups on the list, The Conservation Fund and Conservation International, were both founded by former leaders of The Nature Conservancy). In 1962, the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring brought unprecedented public attention to the omnipresence — and, often, invisibility — of environmental threats. Over the following two decades, environmental advocates and their allies in Congress were able to pass more than a dozen major environmental laws, from headline-grabbers like the Endangered Species Act to the obscure but crucial Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which addresses hazardous waste.

Since that era, large environmental groups have employed teams of lawyers and lobbyists to defend these laws and, when possible, strengthen their enforcement. Considering the wealth, power and determination of their corporate opponents, they’ve been astonishingly successful. As the Trump administration mounts new attacks on these protections, we need this legal and political expertise more than ever.

What environmentalists don’t need, as Dr. Len points out, is another frantic email asking for a clearly inadequate response to a terrifying threat. Or, more precisely, they need more than that. They may well keep signing petitions and calling their Congresspeople, but every environmentalist of my acquaintance knows that’s no longer enough.

Silent Spring was, among other things, a fear appeal, and as such it worked brilliantly. Sixty years later, fear appeals can still turn out the faithful, but the faithful’s adrenal glands are exhausted, and potential supporters don’t want new reasons to worry. Neither group is apathetic, though. In fact, they’re eager to listen and act.

Consider the success of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, which, since its publication in 2013, has become an international juggernaut with an almost alarmingly fervent following. Like Silent Spring, Braiding Sweetgrass is a remarkable work of art, but unlike Silent Spring, it’s not a fear appeal. Instead, it’s an invitation to connect with the living world nearby — to observe one’s place more closely and participate in its care and repair.

If Braiding Sweetgrass is any indication, tens of millions of people are longing to do more than wearily play defense for the environment. And that’s an enormous opportunity for mainstream environmental organizations.

To make the most of this opportunity, these organizations need to more fully delegate the job of persuasion. I’d like to see national organizations dedicate a larger fraction of their funding to local groups, whether those are existing local chapters or like-minded independent organizations. With expanded financial and technical support, members of these groups can more effectively use their place-specific knowhow, and credibility, to recruit new allies.

They can do this by, for example, pointing out the tangible and intangible benefits of a healthy local environment, from climate resilience to economic development to emotional well-being; by working with local and state officials on proactive laws and policies; by helping neighbors steward and restore their place. And when a bedrock national law is at risk and calls to Congress are needed, they can remind their supporters to pick up the phone.

This kind of work is already happening, but we need more of it. In recent years, deep internal conflicts have disrupted the work of the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society. The tensions are complex, but they tend to pit leaders who want to defend the organizational “brand” against staff and volunteers who want to work on a greater variety of issues and employ a greater variety of strategies (and, in Audubon’s case, change the organization’s name). The irony is that in plenty of places, including the red county where I live, most national environmental organizations’ brands are frankly toxic — even as their basic concerns are widely shared. Diluting their brands by lending more support to local groups could well be a strategic move.

Dr. Len suggests that the environmental movement take a cue from Lockheed Martin, which during World War II ordered a select group of its engineers to design the fastest jet fighter in the world. Sequestered under a rented circus tent and freed from bureaucratic restrictions, the group accomplished its mission in less than five months. He suggests that large environmental organizations and the foundations that support them use a similar approach to make “the environment” one of the top five reasons Americans cite for voting in 2028.

With respect, I’m wary of both strategy and goal here. Public engagement in environmental issues is not an engineering problem, and it doesn’t lend itself to engineering solutions. It doesn’t need a faster jet fighter; it needs the likes of Robin Wall Kimmerer and the conversations and alliances that her work can spark. And I don’t think it’s possible, or even desirable, for an abstraction like “the environment” to top the list of concerns for today’s voters. I’d rather see environmental organizations of all kinds drive home the relationship between environmental issues and the concerns voters are already talking about — health, safety, affordability. Doing that persuasively means supporting savvy local advocates and freeing them to talk so their neighbors will listen. It means raising not just one tent, but as many as the job requires.

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Conservation at Work

• One year after the removal of four hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River, there are “salmon everywhere” in the Klamath Basin, reports the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Amanda Royal of Earth Hope shared the good news, and my friend Emma Marris reflected on its significance in this guest essay for the New York Times.

• I’m proud to have helped birth an extensive ProPublica and High Country News investigation of the public-lands grazing system. Among other findings, it shows that the system’s benefits flow disproportionately to the very rich. Read part one here, and look for parts two and three this week. Or subscribe to the print version of High Country News and read the whole thing now!

• Speaking of the strategies employed by large conservation groups, a study in Conservation Biology examines the assumptions identified by employees of The Nature Conservancy at strategic planning workshops in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. While conservation practitioners readily question what is being done, the authors write, and engage in “deep reflection on the ethics and operating principles of the conservation community” — the why of their work — they are less likely to critically evaluate how their work is being carried out.

• A new paper in People and Nature analyzes the arguments used by British opponents of the plume trade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, finding that while some appealed to existing values, others advocated a new worldview, suggesting that people appreciate birds’ right to live in the wild and cultivate more meaningful relationships with them through birdwatching. (In a sense, they anticipated Braiding Sweetgrass.) As the study’s author concludes, “conservation should not be viewed as a linear story of continuous improvement or refinement of ideas but rather a cyclical process, with the same arguments reappearing in new contexts.”

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Finally, please enjoy this essay by Zen teacher Susan Roshi on the power of haiku in a changing world. “The love at large in haiku is too natural, implicit, and bone-deep to surface in sentimentality,” she writes, “and so intimately felt that it can’t separate feeling with the Earth from feeling about it.”

   Deep autumn—

my neighbor,

    how does he live, I wonder?

                                                  Bashō