The Grassroots: Public Policy Battleground

Last time I ranted on the need to view environmental policy in terms of a public policy. As I mentioned, public policy implies advancing societal welfare. The public policy paradigm for the environment removes policy decisions from the exclusive hands of politicians and scientists and recruits the efforts of any and all people who recognize that the Earth is our universal public welfare.

Now, this is certainly not a new concept. In fact, the majority of recent successes in environmental policy have come from decentralized sectors of the country. From individuals to municipalities, focused efforts around the nation are recognizing that public policy is formed by action. While Washington sits on its ass and debates, environmental progress is happening in the grassroots.

Daniel Farber, who has written extensively about environmental law and policy, calls this phenomenon a "republican moment." In his 1992 article "Politics and Procedure in Environmental Law," Farber discusses how particular environmental events can override concerns for self-interest, triggering large-scale public prioritization of social welfare. We just might be in a republican moment right now. Global Warming and related concerns for green energy are prompting nation-wide action to ensure a clean environment for present and future generations.

One inspiring trend has come from the universities. Across the nation, colleges have set lofty goals towards greening their campuses. In Northfield, Minnesota, Carleton and St. Olaf colleges have played upon their 125 year football rivalry to challenge each other in a sustainability contest. In 2004, Carleton built a 1.65 megawatt wind turbine which generates around 40% of the school's electicity. St. Olaf has employed more of a multi-faceted plan of energy-efficient lighting, cafeteria waste composting, and curriculum-based campus conservation efforts. Elsewhere, Ohio's Oberlin college has reduced electricity use in dorms by one-half and NYU has recently vowed to purchase the majority of its power from renewable sources [courtesy of Danaher, Biggs, and Mark's Building the Green Economy (2007)].

Individuals often impact public policy within the grassroots of environmental policy, and their stories give personal face to the issues. Winner of the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize, Maria Gunnoe of Bob White, West Virginia has been entrenched in environmental warfare for years. Four years after a 2000 mountaintop removal mine began operating on the ridge above her home, Maria's property directly bordered two toxic ponds filled with mine waste. Recent flooding destroyed her home, in the process covering her yard in the toxic sludge. Because the poisoning occurred from flooding, the offending coal company was held unaccountable. In 2007, despite a recent ruling which repealed mountaintop removal valley fill permits, the Army Corps of Engineers granted permits for two new valley fills in Boone County where Gunnoe lived. During the Ohio Valley Environmental Council's challenge of the permits, Maria was the only resident willing to testify after coal workers had launched a heated intimidation campaign within the affected community. In October 2007, the court ruled in favor of Gunnoe and the OVEC. Maria Gunnoe's ability to stand up and to a coal company in coal country, W. VA and thwart their environmental misdeeds shows that individuals can and do have significant impacts on environmental policy.

Grassroots activism doesn't have to occur outside the traditional venues of government policy. By 2007, as Bush and cronies were adamantly denying all concerns over Global Warming, cities across the country were vowing to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Over 60 million citizens and 400 mayors signed the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement which comitted each municipality to reducinc their carbon emissions to seven percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012--the very standards outlined by the Kyoto Protocol, which Bush had profusely oppossed. Such success shows that federal dimwittedness can be combatted by concerted local coalition [Danaher, Biggs, and Mark's Building the Green Economy (2007)].

In the efforts to achieve a public policy for the environment, the grassroots has seen myriad successes. Its decentralized locatoin allows wide-scale public engagement and empowers the impacts of individuals.

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.