Winners And Losers On Earth Day 2005

by John Stauber

The Greens are getting pounded politically, losing almost every national battle they fight including the new energy bill, and today they can't even beat George Bush at the PR game on the 35th anniversary of Earth Day.

Thirty-five years ago, 20 million Americans demonstrated, rallied, teach-in'd, lobbied, danced and partied for a healthy, ecologically sound planet on the very first Earth Day. This unprecedented and massive grassroots mobilization was followed by a flurry of green political reforms (supported by many Republicans) from the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency to the first Environmental Impact Statements and the first national clean air and clean water laws. Today, even though surveys show enviromentalism is more widepsread and popular than ever, with citizens annually donating hundreds of millions of dollars to big green groups in Washington, the movement is a political basket case and loses fight after fight.

Today's big Earth Day greenwashing winner is President Bush, arguably the most anti-environmental president in history, presiding over a Republican Party dismantling environmental regulations and whose energy bill is a massive give-away to corporate polluters. Yet his photo-op Earth Day visit to Great Smoky Park is getting great press despite Mother Nature's interference that moved it to an airport hanger.

Meanwhile the big green groups are looking for image help from George Lakoff, the California professor who has emerged as a PR guru for progressives. Maybe instead of PR advice the greens need political advice. After all, here is a movement spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year, its goals are supported by a majority of Americans, millions of whom give passionately and generously of their own time and money to the cause, and yet it is politically impotent.

It seems like this is more of a reality problem than an image problem, with the green movement needing to develop strategies, tactics and new organizations that can actually translate into political power from the grassroots upward. Where is the green Ralph Reed or Grover Norquist? Where are the green funders who will play the roles that Scaife, Bradley, Mellon, Coors and others have played for decades in the rise to power of anti-environmentalism?

Until those questions are anwered, the image re-design won't accomplish much. What began as a powerful popular movement has turned into competing non-profit companies that merely use their grassroots members for fundraising, failing to organize and empower them into the potent political force they must become to win real change. Thirty-five years after the first Earth Day, a revolution is needed in the ranks of the greens. Until the environmental movement rebuilds itself from the grassroots up and demands accountability from its own organizations, it will continue its losing ways.