[saymaListserv] Does This Sound Familiar? (Relevant to theTestimony on Truth and the Proposed Testimony on Care of the Earth)

[Rblissfam at cs.com]

I agree with Steve.  Watch "I Love Huckabees" a comical look at the dedicated environmentalist against the slick green of the market, a path his former friend takes.

We don't have the pr advisors that those in the market have.  It's either join us or lose.  Either way you lose.  The way we live our life is one of the best witnesses we can have.

We've got to walk the walk before we can talk the talk.  And many of us are making large efforts to do just that.  There is too much history of market forces saying they're green, when as usual, it's a cover up for making more bucks with as little regs as possible.

Also watch "the Corporation" sometime to help yourself understand alittle better what we are up against.

Rachael Bliss

Janet Minshall <jhminshall at comcast.net> wrote:

>Dear Friends, I think this article is
>particularly timely for SAYMA Friends right now.
>It makes a point that I've been trying to make in
>messages and articles for several years, but this
>piece makes the point more clearly.  We can help
>the environment considerably more than we do by
>understanding and promoting economically sound
>proposals to fix what is broken.   We can also be
>more effective as environmentalists by checking
>our facts and being sure that what we say about
>the environment is accurate and well founded (For
>some painfully truthful discussion of commonly
>misunderstood issues read
>  The Skeptical Environmentalist, 2004, by Bjorn
>Lomborg, a former Greenpeace activist).
>             In Peace, Janet Minshall
>
>
>Environmental economics
>Rescuing environmentalism
>Apr 21st 2005
>From The Economist print edition
>Market forces could prove the environment's best
>friend-if only greens could learn to love them
>
>"THE environmental movement's foundational
>concepts, its method for framing legislative
>proposals, and its very institutions are
>outmoded. Today environmentalism is just another
>special interest." Those damning words come not
>from any industry lobby or right-wing think-tank.
>They are drawn from "The Death of
>Environmentalism", an influential essay published
>recently by two greens with impeccable
>credentials. They claim that environmental groups
>are politically adrift and dreadfully out of
>touch.
>
>They are right. In America, greens have suffered
>a string of defeats on high-profile issues. They
>are losing the battle to prevent oil drilling in
>Alaska's wild lands, and have failed to spark the
>public's imagination over global warming. Even
>the stridently ungreen George Bush has failed to
>galvanise the environmental movement. The
>solution, argue many elders of the sect, is to
>step back from day-to-day politics and policies
>and "energise" ordinary punters with talk of
>global-warming calamities and a radical "vision
>of the future commensurate with the magnitude of
>the crisis".
>
>Europe's green groups, while politically
>stronger, are also starting to lose their way
>intellectually. Consider, for example, their
>invocation of the woolly "precautionary
>principle" to demonise any complex technology
>(next-generation nuclear plants, say, or
>genetically modified crops) that they do not like
>the look of. A more sensible green analysis of
>nuclear power would weigh its (very high)
>economic costs and (fairly low) safety risks
>against the important benefit of generating
>electricity with no greenhouse-gas emissions.
>Small victories and bigger defeats
>
>The coming into force of the UN's Kyoto protocol
>on climate change might seem a victory for
>Europe's greens, but it actually masks a larger
>failure. The most promising aspect of the
>treaty-its innovative use of market-based
>instruments such as carbon-emissions trading-was
>resisted tooth and nail by Europe's greens. With
>courageous exceptions, American green groups also
>remain deeply suspicious of market forces.
>
>If environmental groups continue to reject
>pragmatic solutions and instead drift toward
>Utopian (or dystopian) visions of the future,
>they will lose the battle of ideas. And that
>would be a pity, for the world would benefit from
>having a thoughtful green movement. It would also
>be ironic, because far-reaching advances are
>already under way in the management of the
>world's natural resources-changes that add up to
>a different kind of green revolution. This could
>yet save the greens (as well as doing the planet
>a world of good).
>
>"Mandate, regulate, litigate." That has been the
>green mantra. And it explains the world's
>top-down, command-and-control approach to
>environmental policymaking. Slowly, this is
>changing. Yesterday's failed hopes, today's heavy
>costs and tomorrow's demanding ambitions have
>been driving public policy quietly towards
>market-based approaches. One example lies in the
>assignment of property rights over "commons",
>such as fisheries, that are abused because they
>belong at once to everyone and no one. Where
>tradable fishing quotas have been issued, the
>result has been a drop in over-fishing. Emissions
>trading is also taking off. America led the way
>with its sulphur-dioxide trading scheme, and
>today the EU is pioneering carbon-dioxide trading
>with the (albeit still controversial) goal of
>slowing down climate change.
>
>These, however, are obvious targets. What is
>really intriguing are efforts to value previously
>ignored "ecological services", both basic ones
>such as water filtration and flood prevention,
>and luxuries such as preserving wildlife. At the
>same time, advances in environmental science are
>making those valuation studies more accurate.
>Market mechanisms can then be employed to achieve
>these goals at the lowest cost. Today, countries
>from Panama to Papua New Guinea are investigating
>ways to price nature in this way (see article).
>Rachel Carson meets Adam Smith
>
>If this new green revolution is to succeed,
>however, three things must happen. The most
>important is that prices must be set correctly.
>The best way to do this is through liquid
>markets, as in the case of emissions trading.
>Here, politics merely sets the goal. How that
>goal is achieved is up to the traders.
>
>A proper price, however, requires proper
>information. So the second goal must be to
>provide it. The tendency to regard the
>environment as a "free good" must be tempered
>with an understanding of what it does for
>humanity and how. Thanks to the recent Millennium
>Ecosystem Assessment and the World Bank's annual
>"Little Green Data Book" (released this week),
>that is happening. More work is needed, but
>thanks to technologies such as satellite
>observation, computing and the internet, green
>accounting is getting cheaper and easier.
>
>Which leads naturally to the third goal, the
>embrace of cost-benefit analysis. At this, greens
>roll their eyes, complaining that it reduces
>nature to dollars and cents. In one sense, they
>are right. Some things in nature are
>irreplaceable-literally priceless. Even so, it is
>essential to consider trade-offs when analysing
>almost all green problems. The marginal cost of
>removing the last 5% of a given pollutant is
>often far higher than removing the first 5% or
>even 50%: for public policy to ignore such facts
>would be inexcusable.
>
>If governments invest seriously in green data
>acquisition and co-ordination, they will no
>longer be flying blind. And by advocating
>data-based, analytically rigorous policies rather
>than pious appeals to "save the planet", the
>green movement could overcome the scepticism of
>the ordinary voter. It might even move from the
>fringes of politics to the middle ground where
>most voters reside.
>
>Whether the big environmental groups join or not,
>the next green revolution is already under way.
>Rachel Carson, the crusading journalist who
>inspired greens in the 1950s and 60s, is joining
>hands with Adam Smith, the hero of
>free-marketeers. The world may yet leapfrog from
>the dark ages of clumsy, costly,
>command-and-control regulations to an enlightened
>age of informed, innovative, incentive-based
>greenery.
>
>Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group.
>