Fred Krupp, EDF - "Shrillness" Of Environmental Groups Contributed To GHG Bill's Failure

[hatrack]

Oh, sorry, Fred! Didn't mean to come across as "shrill" or "unreasonable". Heaven forbid!!

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. -- Environmental groups have too often approached climate change politics with an air of disdain for their opponents, and that must change if major federal legislation is going to advance, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund said yesterday. With neither a comprehensive energy policy nor a carbon cap-and-trade bill moving in Congress, EDF President Fred Krupp said advocates must reassess their strategy and perhaps adopt a less arrogant approach that takes into account all sides of the global warming debate.

"There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language," Krupp said yesterday, during Fortune magazine's Brainstorm Green conference here. "In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can't take the attitude that we have all the answers."

Krupp went on to suggest that the movement he has been part of as chief of EDF for 26 years would be well served to heed lessons learned over the past several years, which saw the optimism of a Congress and White House controlled by Democrats give way to a newfound hostility to climate policy after Republicans dominated the 2010 midterms.

EDIT

Krupp also appeared to agree that cap and trade's moment has perhaps passed, at least for now, and he called on his colleagues in the environmental community to open their hearts to other approaches that might capture a bipartisan center by emphasizing, for instance, the national security implications of U.S. oil dependence. "The idea of humility means we need to be open to any solution," Krupp said.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/04/05/05greenwire-edf-chief-shrillness-of-greens-contributed-to-37964.html

[damntexdem]

1. Yeah, it was almost as bad as at a shipwreck:

all those people floundering in the water shouting "help! help!"

;-)

[phantom power]

2. Have I mentioned how much fun it is to live in this age where...

it is apparently considered sane, and even legitimate argumentation, to blame the people who bring up problem X, for causing problem X?

:banghead:

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[hatrack]

4. You're starting to sound sort of . . . . shrill, XemaSab . .

Better rein that in pronto!!!

:rofl:

[The2ndWheel]

6. To be fair

science has helped to mold our current predicament.

[cprise]

10. To be truly fair

one should note that science and technology's newer developments have been all but locked out of the industrial infrastructure.

And then the industrialists turn around and accuse environmentalists of being Luddites.

[GliderGuider]

7. There are people who are awake and there are people who are asleep.

"Pro-science" is an interesting term. It implies both that one believes that science is a valid descriptive/predictive engine and that it is somehow the source of the solution to the predicament it's describing. In contrast, the epithet "anti-science" (or "moronic") seems to imply someone who rejects both the validity of the scientific paradigm and the possibility that any solutions will come from it.

There is a third stance, one that I take: I strongly believe in the validity of science as a tool for analyzing the world, but I reject the idea that science can provide us with a solution to the predicament it describes. That's because I think what science describes so accurately are only symptoms of the problem, not its root, and as a result science can offer us no more than symptomatic relief.

Is that attitude pro-science or moronic? Or is there room for nuance?

[XemaSab]

9. As far as problem-solving goes, there are areas where science works very well

and areas where science does not work well.

If I want to build a bridge or go to the moon, science is great for doing that.

If I want to make fake sugar, science is pretty good at making something that tastes sweet, but pretty bad at making something that has no additional health problems. If I want to grow big tomatoes, science is good at doing that but they might not taste very good.

If I want to predict the weather or predict earthquakes, science is pretty bad at doing these things. The best that science can really do in these areas is throw a lot of statistics at the problem.

Part of being smart about science is knowing whether a given problem can have a solution, a band-aid, or voodoo mumbo-jumbo as its scientific output. Claiming that science doesn't solve anything is just not accurate, but claiming that science can solve everything is just as bad.

The more time goes by, the more I think that there's something to be said for the Christian doctrine of original sin. We try to make things work, but all too often our plans and our solutions backfire on us. I suppose that one might also phrase this as "there's no free lunch," but I think it goes deeper than that. It's a character flaw in our species. :(

[cprise]

11. There is also a lot to be said

for the theory that Christianity is misanthropic.

Unfortunately, misanthropy creates the conditions for an automatic 'FAIL'. At the very least, you give your opponents the tools to convincingly paint you as purely self-interested and cynical... and the more misanthropic (and evil) THEY are the quicker they'll sniff you out and use you to character-assassinate the whole movement.

There was a lot of discussion on this topic a couple years ago among enviros and I found it enlightening.

[Nihil]

13. Science isn't the problem: human greed is *the* problem.

Science is great at doing what it does: Learning about things.

Every single "technological problem" from space shuttle explosions
through GM crops to spewing oil wells (and yes, including failures
in nuclear power plants) has been down to greed: the people with
the political & financial power over-ruling the scientifically
backed technologists & engineers in order to save time & money
by cutting one corner too many.

Laying that blame at the foot of science is wrong.

Laying it at the foot of honest yet uneducated people is also wrong.

The people who deserve the blame (and yet who *never* get punished)
are the ones who make the decision to "compromise" for the sake of
increased short-term profit (usually financial but often political),
knowing that by doing so they are risking the entire venture (and
any successors).

:-(

[Nederland]

14. Oh Please

There are lots of sides. Yes, among rational, intelligent people there is no debate about whether or not global warming is happening. What is debatable is how big of a problem it will be 100 years from now. There is considerable debate on the magnitude of the warming we can expect, and considerable debate as to its effects.

To say that the is only one side to this issue is completely ignorant.

[pintobean]

15. Which category do you fall in?

[kenfrequed]

5. Cap and Trade..

Was never a real solution. Maybe if they took out the trading part it would be viable.

Seriously, I like Caps and heavy friggin fines a lot better.

When you speed do you get to trade your excessive acceleration to another pokey driver in order to get out of paying a fine? Only wealthy corporations would have conceived of something this idiotic.

As far as this guy deciding to show deference and humility to 'the other side' he is a fool. He is compromising with a cannibal over what body parts will be for supper tonight. It is absurd.

[abqmufc]

8. Agreed Naomi Klein described it best...

In short cap-n-trade results in multi-national corporations forcing indigenous peoples off their native land (in places like South America and Africa). That land is transformed into massive corporate farms that are mostly mono-crop and use lots of pesticides and water. Those farms become the USA's solution to our GHG woes. In reality it is just another land grab and another form of imperialism.


http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/9/my_fear_is_that_climate_change

[cprise]

16. IOW, nothing is gonna work well while

we have an international corporate class that is largely unrestricted.

[Nihil]

17. *We have a winner!*

Bickering about technologies (or even nations) whilst ignoring the
unbelievably huge pachyderm in the middle of the conference room
is somewhat self-defeating.

[Nihil]

12. "Cap & trade is an obese guy paying his neighbour to diet."

(Can't remember the name of the guy who said that
but the quote itself stuck in my mind as being
so apt to the situation.)

[kristopher]

18. It isn't apt, but I can see why you might think it is...

You could strain it and make it work for the obese person, I suppose, since it would cause every bite of food to cost more.

The money received by the neighbor, however, couldn't be to "diet" since that can't establish a metaphorical relationship with investing the money received in building more 'dieters'(?).

Cap and trade is a good system and it would help propel low carbon energy sources very effectively.

You aren't too familiar with the mechanics of policy tools, are you? It is a boring topic to tackle, but the understanding is worth the effort IMO.