February 26, 2008
Environmental forum speaker: is enthusiasm for a greener world sustainable?
Jacob Scherr of the Natural Resources Defense Council (Photo by Jeff Watts)
“Change” and “sustainability” are popular buzzwords. But how can environmental awareness and enthusiasm for change be sustainable themselves?
“It seems every 20 years or so, Americans get really excited about the environment,” said Jacob Scherr, international program director and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If you look at the last two green waves,” he said at a student-organized environmental forum, “they rose very quickly, then they faded.”
One of the major challenges is creating the political will to create change, he said. But that only happens if people get involved and stay involved.
Scherr sketched an overview of the historical cycles of the environmental movement from the time he became involved in the 1970s to today’s political landscape. In the 1970s, most people thought that only industrialized countries had environmental problems, he said.
Smokestacks belching pollutants into the skies of the developing world were described as a poverty issue, not an environmental disaster in the making.
It was even hoped that countries like India and China could leapfrog over the mistakes of the West and develop their economies with greener and more appropriate technologies, so that much of the world would avoid the pitfalls of pollution.
That turned out to be a pipe dream. The Chinese did not choose to stay on bicycles when cars were at hand; and in rural villages across the developing world, women needed to walk farther into the jungle to collect firewood, pollutants made it into the water supply, and there was no escape from environmental deterioration.
By the late 1980s, scientists were talking about global warming and climate change. It had become clear that the environment wasn’t just a concern for the West, but was a problem that impacted the globe, and would need to be solved globally.
The early 1990s were a hopeful time, Scherr said. Governments seemed concerned and made no shortage of statements about their commitment to change. But within a few years, it was clear that the words weren’t being followed by actions.
It didn’t help that American leadership was increasingly lacking. “If you look back at the last 30 years, when you haven’t had U.S. leadership, it’s very difficult to go ahead,” he said. “I think the last seven years have been really difficult. The U.S. has not provided leadership on a wide range of global views.”
America’s position in the world makes the home front crucial. “Probably one of the most important things the U.S. does on climate change is what we do at home,” Scherr said. It’s not just the percentage of the world’s pollutants that it spews out that makes the U.S. a key player in the global environmental picture. As the world’s richest country, it’s the likeliest place for innovation to take hold, he said.
Experience has shown that the rest of the world is unlikely to leapfrog to sustainable technologies that have not proven themselves at this point by taking hold in the developed world. “If we’re going to make a transition to a greener society, it’s got to happen here first,” he said.
Change can happen, but it has to start happening now, he said. “As we think about the next 30 years, the challenges are huge. I’m optimistic, because so many people are working on these issues. But we have to work really, really quickly. We don’t have 30 years to solve these problems. A lot of scientists say we have about 10 years to get on course, especially in relation to fossil fuels,” he said.
It wasn’t long before students asked him the question on so many minds these days: how will the presidential elections make a difference?
Scherr noted that the Natural Resources Defense Council, which started as a public interest law firm, is nonpartisan and doesn’t endorse candidates. He did say he has been disappointed that the environment didn’t become as central a primary issue as he’d hoped initially.
But he added that candidates are all talking about green jobs and progress on climate change, which indicates that environmental issues seem to be transcending partisanship to some extent. “With a new president, whether it’s a Republican or Democrat, it looks like we will see some real progress,” he said.
In theory, government can be a powerful force for a greener world, he said. “When people talk about creating transformation, creating whole new industries, this is what government is for,” he said. “Government can help create these choices.”
If you look back throughout history, he said, the government made decisions to promote railroad and interstate highways. There is no reason the government can’t require new homes to be energy efficient or promote solar power, particularly given that “we’ve spent billions subsidizing nuclear, subsidizing oil.”
But whether politicians make good on their talk about change is another thing. Change only happens in a democracy when people continue to push for it and support it. “If you think McCain or Clinton or Obama will create change by getting elected, forget it,” he said. For change to happen, and for today’s wave of environmental concern to be sustained, people have to get involved and stay involved.
The current interest in the political process is encouraging, he said. “But it can’t end in November.”
The environmental forum was sponsored by the Global Environmental Politics and Environmental Studies programs and Coppi’s Organic Restaurant.
