[Sosfbay-discuss] Some jarring stats

[cls]

>Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2008 09:14:14 -0800 (PST)
>From: Caroline Yacoub <carolineyacoub at att.net>
>To: Tian Harter <tnharter at aceweb.com>
>Cc: sosfbay-discuss <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
>Subject: Re: [Sosfbay-discuss] Some jarring stats

>I agree, Tian. Ideological campaigns will never win us an election.
> We are Green. People look at us and say,
> "If you are Green, why are you talking to me about________(fill in the blank)?"

Because ________(fill in the blank) is an environmental issue.


> They expect us to be about the environment,

They expect us to be about a few specialized issues that they have been
taught are "the environment."  Sorting trash, euphemised
as "recycling."  (Before the corporate media redefined it, "recycling"
meant *buying* stuff made from materials reclaimed from the waste
stream instead of buying stuff made from virgin materials.  Now it means
sorting trash into different bins.)
Litter on beaches and the roadside.  Non-urban parks.  Smog.

Ask the next ten people you meet whether urban sprawl is an
environmental issue.  Ask the next ten whether land use planning
is an environmental issue.  I'll bet you get less than half, and
less than a quarter, even though it's two names for the same
problem.  Or chloramine in the drinking water.
(You'll get ten blank stares on that one.)  Groundwater contamination.
I'll bet most people you meet don't even consider emissions trading
an environmental issue, if they even know what it is.  Industrial
agriculture.  The biggest enviro issues, except CO2 emissions,
have been successfully propagandized out of the public perception
of "environment."  That's why "environment" is now a safe thing
to use in oil company image ads.  Being "environmentally conscious"
doesn't mean changing the way you live very much.


> and this is a very important time to be about the environment. P=
>eople (some, not all) are becoming environmentally conscious.
>They are probably confused and disappointed that we are not leading the cha=
>rge to save the world as we know it.

They are, but if you can't explain the problem in ten words you've
lost them.  People have been trained to expect answers to fit on
a bumper sticker.


>Well, why aren't we?

Well, most of us are in that "ten words or I'm gone" crowd.

There was a pretty good Hollywood antiwar movie last year, _Lions
for Lambs_.  Tom Cruise played the warmongering senator.  There's
a scene where his pitch comes down to a loaded question where
you're either a warmonger or a traitor, no other choices allowed.
A "liberal" is questioning his warmongering, and he's bellowing
"yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!" while she sputters there's more
to it than that.  I thought it summed up the problem pretty well.


-- 
Cameron