Current Lull Just The Quiet Before A Trend-Reversing Storm

Recent Republican efforts to reform America’s environmental laws have failed. The expected revolution in environmental protection did not occur in 1995, nor is it likely to in 1996.

Regulatory reform, changes in species protection laws and a new Clean Water Act are all on the back burner, along with proposals to protect property rights and reform management of federal lands. This year it is unlikely that the Republican leadership will advance any environmental proposals of lasting significance.

This delay has made environmental lobbying organizations in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere ecstatic. Their thousands of direct-mail appeals, fax-network alerts and media blitzes managed to temporarily fend off reform efforts. Now green conventional wisdom says that Republican candidates will be hurt in November because of public support for the environment.

But conventional wisdom is wrong.

Political power can be misleading, especially in Washington, D.C., where image can create reality and then, like a mirage, disappear. Political establishments still look powerful just before they fall. Without widespread public support - and an agenda in line with the views of a majority of Americans - the environmental movement will not be able to dominate policy making or shape public opinion in the long term.

Polls show that Americans call themselves environmentalists and believe in environmental protection. But most oppose the policies advanced by “mainstream” environmental groups. For example, a recent Roper Starch Poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe landowners should be compensated when their property is devalued by wetlands regulations or endangered species protections. Only 26 percent opposed compensation. Yet so did every major environmental group.

Surveys comparing environmental activists to the general public disclose an even wider gap.

Dr. S. Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, found that 74 percent of activists believe government should increase taxes to protect the environment, compared to only one-third of the public. Moreover, only 6 percent of activists in the survey believed government regulation of business is harmful, compared to more than 60 percent of the public.

The more Americans learn about how environmental laws are enforced, the more they reject them. James Connor, former head of the Sierra Club’s Montana chapter, observes, “I got involved in the environmental movement because I thought it was in the enlightened self-interest of humankind. But I’m not in tune with what is going on now. Something snapped. People in the movement have lost faith in humankind.”

Many environmental groups do recognize the need to increase their lagging membership - the National Audubon Society has offered free memberships to anyone who buys a stuffed Nature Bear - but few of them seem to understand that they may have to fix their policy agendas to maintain popular support. Pressing for more government regulation, as most groups do, will not sustain the movement’s momentum.

Whether activists like it or not, environmental policy will be transformed in the coming years. Those who aspire to be environmental leaders will have to give up the perks and privileges of a Washington lobbyist. A reconstituted environmental movement will have to kick its dependency on federal power, and it will have to discard the strident rhetoric and the anti-capitalist ideologies used by much of the current leadership.

The movement must learn to listen to Americans’ concerns and recognize the real needs of individuals and local groups. There are now many property rights organizations that oppose government agencies that seize private land. Many local civic activists want a greater voice in environmental decisions affecting their community. This necessarily will involve the devolution of political power from the federal government to state and local entities.

As Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg has noted, “For ordinary citizens, devolution is a way of making the environmental regime more responsive, more flexible and sensible.”

Sadly, most environmental activists have opposed taking a new course of action. Unwilling to change, the environmental movement increasingly relies on the foundation endowments that have given it power, money and a capacity to frame debate based on political and media savvy.

But nothing lasts forever. The American people grow skeptical of environmental claims and distrustful of media scare stories. Americans want environmental protection, but they also want a growing economy, secure property rights and the clear sense that they are in control of their own lives.

America’s environmental organizations stand at a crossroads. Will they choose to develop and pursue responsible and popular policies? Or will they remain mesmerized by extreme ideologies that will further alienate the public?

The first path leads to a renewal of America’s conservation tradition, the latter to the movement’s eventual political collapse.

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