Hope and Environmental History: The Political Economy of Optimism

One of the clich�s of environmentalism is that it's all gloom and doom. Environmentalists, the standard story goes, are a dismal lot, ranting about how we are laying waste to the planet. And these days, reports of accelerating climate change, as well as Trump's war on reason and love of coal, can provide ample confirmation that we're on the path to catastrophe.

So we can assume that optimism is a scarce commodity these days.  But that assumption is wrong. Observers in both academia and the media have, I think, missed the extent to which environmentalists in fact so often tell sunny stories of success.

Here's one exhibit from this week: Eric H�bert-Daly, Executive Director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, telling us the good news of conservation victories: new parks and protections for species, with opportunities for more.

His sunny sentiment is more widespread than is usually appreciated.  I wrote a few years a short paper for Alternatives Journal that discussed this phenomena of environmentalists celebrating success.  Several factors seem to be at work.  One is pragmatism: experience has shown that success, not failure, motivates people.

But the key factor, I think, has been the changing political economy of environmental organizations.  Increasingly, they have to be run like businesses: meeting a budget, demonstrating tangible outcomes to donors and partners.  In other words, these organizations have become less about exerting pressure, and more about providing services for their members and contributors.  These services aren't the individual benefits that businesses provide, but collective action on behalf of contributing citizens.

Proclaiming success can be a risky business: it can limit one's ambitions to what can be achieved most easily, while declaring victory too quickly may leave the initiative to the forces of reaction.  As more than one gloomy environmentalist has been known to say: "Success is temporary, but defeat is forever."

But I think that, even when the news these days is all about America shifting into full reverse, there's room for careful optimism � what has worked remains our best guide, and our inspiration.