Environment & Public Policy: Removing the Lab Coat

When I first dove into this thing called environmental policy, I did so with eyes closed and mind set. But of course, I thought, environmental policy is the hard-lined, clear-cut rules and regulations shaped by governments which either help or hurt the natural world. Continuing my descent, I've since squinted my eyes open a few times to witness the murky water through which I've been paddling.

Sure, you can put a crisp definition on it if you want. Brennan and Withgott take such liberty on p. 34 of their environmental science textbook, The Essential Environment (2009):

Policy consists of a formal set of general plans and principles intended to address problems and guide decision making in specific instances.

Already, equivocality rears its ugly head. "Formal set of general guidelines"? Guidelines written in stone to wish-washily dictate certain rules? Luckily, they continue...

Public policy is policy made by governments, including those at the local, state, federal, and international levels. Public policy consists of laws, regulations, orders, incentives, and practices intended to advance societal welfare. Environmental policy is policy that pertains to human interactions with the environment. It generally aims to regulate resource use or reduce pollution to promote human welfare and/or protect natural systems.

Upon first reading I felt I'd hit an iceberg in my academic departure. The very title atop this page, after all, is "Environment & Public Policy." And here was the definition of public policy as laws, rules, and practices to "advance societal welfare." Environmental policy, as Brennan and Withgott distinguish, was my intention. Not this societal welfare crap.

Then I read it again. Something was amiss. Environmental policy "pertains to human interactions with the environment." Fair enough. "It generally aims..." Hold up.

There's nothing "general" about environmental politics. That, I have learned. Speaking as a card carrying tree-hugger, my politics are impassioned and focused towards defense of the natural world. Even the other side, as our study of environmental negotiation [pt.1, pt.2] taught us; the energy executive, the corporate lawyer, the right-wing politican. We're all hungry for our environmental policies. This is a bloodsport, baby.

You may write this off as hyperbole, and that's fine. But I'm dead serious. If environmental policy is set of "general" pursuits to "regulate resource use" or "reduce pollution," then I'm out. Furthermore, while markedly less offensive, "to promote human welfare and/or protect natural systems" still doesn't at all grasp the fervor behind my passion for mountain overlooks, the deep sense of place I've established with my local neighborhood park, the overwhelming suffocation I feel when I've been indoors for too damn long.

Brennan and Withgott, I'll admit that I did enjoy your thorough account of Global Warming in chapter 14, but this is one topic where you can toss aside the objective, lab coat zombie mantra. Show a little passion! These are the choices we make; as individuals and as societies, as mothers and fathers, and future mothers and future fathers. From anyone mildly intrigued by An Inconvenient Truth to the battle-scarred, barefoot monkey-wrencher. This is our past, present, future Mother Earth. The only thing at all that can make us look around and think, "Hey, we really are all in this together."

What kills me is they were so close. It's already half-way together right there one line up. This isn't environmental policy. It's public policy.

Whereas I set-out perhaps by sheer luck with the phrase carelessly thrown into my blogspot URL, the distinction is important. Public policy, as Brennan and Gottwith say, intends "to advance societal welfare." And that is the very point. Our future is our public welfare. Our universal public good. Yeah, I'm talking short-term, rocking in your chair, cane waving, talking about the day you went to Yosemite and hiked up Half Dome. But more importantly, long-term. Our existence can't merely be confined to the 80 some years we happen to trot around here. Rather, we're part of a long lineage of Homo sapiens with one common habitat. And we might as well make it our public policy.