Degrading Environmentalism

With world attention focused on the Persian Gulf, it is easy to forget that 1990 is the first year of what was supposed to be the decade of the environment. But it is important that the environmental movement take stock of what it accomplished in 1990, because the problems which led the world to focus its attention on Earth Day last April will remain when the Persian Gulf crisis ends.

Phone canvassers for one environmental group which emerged from April's events point to the Clean Air Act of 1990 and McDonald's decision to stop using styrofoam as the two major victories of the environmental movement in the past year. Yet these "victories" point up the weaknesses of the environmental movement. They show that the major, mainstream environmental organizations are cut off from grassroots organizations and too willing to compromise their independence and principles.

The Clean Air Act was not an environmental victory. Rather than preventing pollution, the Act tries to control it. As a result, says Greenpeace's Alexandra Allen, "major corporations have protected their prerogative to carry on with destructive production methods."

For example, the Act mandates improved emission controls on motor vehicles and minor changes in the composition of gasoline. The expected rise in motor vehicle miles travelled, however, will wipe out the Act's projected gains. A provision to allow governors to use federal highway money for mass transit alternatives might actually have reduced auto usage, but it was scrapped.

Perhaps the most important lesson from the Clean Air Act battle comes from the work of the major environmental groups' "Clean Air Coalition." The Coalition targeted its efforts inside Washington, D.C., where it was inevitable that it would be overwhelmed by the powerful corporate interests aligned against it.

The Coalition failed to mobilize public support for a strong and far-reaching Clean Air Act. As Richard Grossman, publisher of the Wrenching Debate Gazette, notes, the Coalition "did not seek a joint effort of national and community groups to educate the nation about the true extent of the problems.... It did not seek to build the public support required to oppose the totally predictable job and economic blackmail that industry and the administration used."

The division between the Washington-based and grassroots environmental groups was also highlighted by McDonald's November 1990 decision to stop using styrofoam packaging.

It is unlikely that McDonald's will ever provide a complete and accurate account of why it decided to abandon styrofoam, but it was probably a result of the McToxics Campaign, coordinated by the Citizen's Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW). This effort included a boycott as well as a campaign to get consumers to send their styrofoam trash from McDonald's back to the company. McDonald's predictably denied the McToxics boycott had any effect on its sales, but it did acknowledge the public relations problems raised by the mail-back program.

The media, however, credited the success to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which entered into a joint arrangement with McDonald's in early August 1990 to study the company's solid waste generation. Yet even if the study did contribute to the company's decision, it is not plausible that EDF provided McDonald's, which does meticulous studies on how far restaurant cash registers should be from french-frying bins, information it could not have generated on its own.

There are substantial costs to EDF's arrangement with McDonald's: EDF provided McDonald's with unwarranted, free publicity. The day after the EDF-McDonald's announcement--and months before McDonald's indicated any willingness to abandon styrofoam--a Washington Post headline read "The Greening of McDonald's." EDF also undercut CCHW's grassroots campaign by providing McDonald's with "green" credentials.

The national environmental organizations need to reorient themselves. Advocacy organizations such as EDF cannot enter into cozy relationships with major polluters without impairing their integrity and ability to function effectively. And national groups cannot cut themselves off from grassroots organizations without dramatically lessening their political influence. Only genuinely independent groups which are responsive to grassroots organizations will be able to tap into the strength of popular outrage to achieve significant and untarnished victories.