Environmentalism for the Left

[TBF]

From Midwestern farms to pristine suburbs to public acreage, American landscapes are a monument to a history of inequality, hierarchy, and exclusion. And they are informed at every point by moral and political conceptions of the natural world—often undemocratic in origin and effect—whose advocates tended to deny that they were political at all.

An Environmentalism for the Left
Jedediah Purdy ▪ Fall 2015

Although modern environmental politics emerged in the radical ferment of the early 1970s, leftists were suspicious from the outset of its easy mainstream appeal and its elite constituency. The same doubts persist today. The venerable Nature Conservancy’s close partnerships with corporations and focus on “ecosystem services” that can be monetized are just one reminder that environmentalism’s institutional mainstream fits comfortably with neoliberalism. Consumerist appeals to eco-consciousness (think of the local-sourcing policies and the prices of anti-union Whole Foods) suggest that environmentalism is about image and market choices. Despite decades of talk about environmental justice, the movement remains disproportionately white, elite, and motivated by romantic attachment to high mountains, old forests, and charismatic animals. Even treating climate change as an “environmental” question obscures issues of global justice—the ways that the world’s rich are much more responsible for, and less vulnerable to, the problem than the poor.

What would an environmentalism of the left look like?

It would first of all have to change its attitude to “nature.” Environmentalism is the youngest generation of a longer-running politics of nature. This politics pivots on contested visions of nature’s value, humanity’s place in it, and what, in fact, “nature” even is. From the preservationist movement that helped create national parks and wilderness areas to the awareness of ecological interconnection that inspired the anti-pollution laws of the 1970s, the politics of nature has often been democratic and creative in advancing the notion of the living world as part of a human ecology. But the politics of nature has also been an anti-politics, appealing to “nature” to shut down democratic debate ...

Much more here: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/after-nature-left-environmentalism-jedediah-purdy

[KT2000]

1. interesting - but

there are so many other issues involved. First the corporate world has corrupted the meaning of environmentalism and turned it into an elitist pursuit to be fought against by "working people." Anyone who has worked issues knows that they can instantly call to action the workers who have been told they will lose their jobs.

Included in environmentalism is the whole area of environmental health. Research is conducted on the health effects of toxic chemicals but never makes it to mainstream medicine for the purpose of prevention and treatment. In fact doctors are afraid to even consider adverse health effects from profitable chemicals. The barrier needs to be broken that is preventing this information from being used to safeguard human health. The fight to do that would be against the medical community, insurance companies, bought politicians, corporations and their trade groups.
The caveat here is that there very few protections for human health so we must depend on rules established for environmental protection.