Precis: "Death of Environmentalism" as a Rhetorical Intervention

In their highly controversial text "Death of Environmentalism--" which criticizes the environmental movement for its failure to make much progress on its agenda over the previous decade and challenges them to conjure up a transformative, creative vision equipped with proposals that will reshape the global energy economy-- Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus engage in a rhetorical critique of the modern environmental movement. Their text is a rhetorical intervention, as the authors engage in a host of maneuvers that are familiar to rhetoricians: they explicitly state the thesis, scrutinize "assumptions" of the modern environmental community, and discuss the concept of "framing." Along with tracing the text's significant rhetorical movements, I will also examine the text's resonances with other texts, such Arne Naess's Deep Ecology Platform, Aristotle's Analytic Posteriora, and Al Gore's Introduction to Silent Springs. By mapping out their rhetorical intervention and the text's resonances with other texts, I hope to flesh out some of the salient features of Shellenberger and Nordhaus's argument. 

 

Throughout "Death of Environmentalism," Shellenberger and Nordhaus make several rhetorical moves, the first in which they explicitly spell out their thesis. On page 2 of the Introduction, Shellengerger and Nordhaus delineate their thesis:  "Our thesis is this: the environmental community's narrow definition of its self-interest leads to a kind of policy literalism that undermines its power." In explicitly highlighting their thesis, the authors clearly establish their argument and orient the audience (the intended audience is the environmental community) as to the direction the text intends to march. They make it clear that they intend to discuss the environmental movement's failure over the previous decade to reshape the global energy economy, specifically attributing the root of this failure to their political agenda based on self-interest. In addition to clearly mapping out the direction of their argument, they also engage in a rhetorical maneuver by highlighting the "unexamined assumptions" of modern environmentalists. 

In spotlighting the "unexamined assumptions" of the modern environmentalists, Shellenberger and Nordhaus attempt to flesh out the logic behind the assumptions in order to show the limitations, fallaciousness, or inconsistency of their logic. Throughout the twenty-eight page text, they explicitly discuss "assumptions" at least eleven times (7)(8)(10)(12))(13)(18)(19)(20)(26)(28)(29)** (see below for all references). For example, on page 12, they discuss how the modern environmentalist community suffers from "a bad case of group think, starting with shared assumptions about what we mean by "the environment"-- a category that reinforces the notions that 1) the environment is a separate thing and b) human beings are separate from and superior to the natural world." In an effort to debunk the assumptions of these environmentalist's-- who see themselves as representing a thing called Nature or the Environment, separate from us humans-- Nordhaus and Shellenberger cite the worldview of Sierra Club founder John Muir, who said that "when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe" (9). Though they do not explicitly refer to Deep Ecology, Nordhaus and Shellenberger mobilize arguments about "the web of relations" that echo Arne Naess's arguments in his Deep Ecology Platform in order to undermine these "assumptions" about nature. In his work, Arne Naess discusses the "interconnectedness" of everything in nature: "organisms are knots in the biospherical net or field of intrinsic relations." Arne Naess suggests it is ignorant of humans to view the "environment" as a simple thing, as "organisms, ways of life, and interactions in the biosphere in general, exhibit complexity of such an astoundingly high level". In addition to echoing Deep Ecology principles when stating that environmentalists should not see "environment" as a separate thing, Nordhaus and Shellenberger mobilize more arguments that resonate with Deep Ecologists when they examine the modern environmentalists assumption that "human beings are separate from and superior to the natural world". This assumption that the authors highlight can be traced back to Arne Naess's rejection of the "man-in-environment image" and advocacy for ecological egalitarianism. In principle 1 of the Deep Ecology platform, Naess argues that the "well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves"-- in other words, everything has inherent value in itself. Because everything is equal and has inherent value, we humans have no right to establish master-slave relations, as it "has only contributed to the alienation of man from himself." While Shellenberger and Nordhaus do not explicitly allude to Arne Naess and Deep Ecologists, they employ arguments that resonate with the values of Deep Ecologists in order to debunk assumptions that modern environmentalists hold. In order to successfully address environmental issues, Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that we need to see that that the environment is not "out there":  "The problem is not external to us; its us. It's a human problem having to do with how we organize our socity" (12). In order to correct our cognitive dissonance and gain momentum and ground in the environmental movement,  we must first debunk the assumption that there is a distinction between the environment and humans and start viewing the problem as "interconnected." Modern environmentalists, who do not assimilate the American auto industry or the union movement  under the category of "environment," would be much more successful if they expanded their view to see the "interconnectedness"-- or the overlap of interests and common values-- with allies in labor, business, and community. Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that redefining the notion of environment to include non-traditional environmental alliances is necessary if the movement hopes to win action on global warming. 

Along with providing an explicit thesis and dissecting "assumptions," Shellenberger and Nordhaus also draw attention to a concept familiar to rhetoricians: framing. In the footnotes, they define "framing" as using "different words to describe the same old problem and solutions" (34).  Similar to the examination of "assumption," they mention the concept of framing at least a dozen times. Shellenberger and Nordhaus understand that the environmental problem is contingent-- that is, it can be framed in one way or another. Shellenberger and Nordhaus's major criticism of the modern environmentalists is that they have myopic vision, framing the environmental problem by focusing on environmentalism as a "thing"-- the environment. The authors say the "root of the environmental community's failure can be found in the way it designates certain problems as environmental and others as not" (20). In other words, their failure can be attributed to their shallow dichotomization of problems as "environmental" or "non environmental." Furthermore, ever since 30 years ago, the community's political strategy became defined around "using science to define the problem as "environmental" and crafting technical political proposals as solutions" (7). Because they frame the problem from a limited perspective, employ analytic (scientific) logic as a way of legitimating their argument, and mobilize technical political proposals,  they have come up with narrow solutions. In contrast to the narrow, short-sited, special interest, technical framing that environmentalists employ now, Nordhaus and Shellenberger call for a reframing of the problem in a creative, transformative vision. After explaining the need for a compelling, inspiring vision, they introduce the "New Apollo Project," a proposal which they put together in 2003 with Carol/Trevelyan Strategy Group, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, the Common Assets Defense Fund, and the Institute of America's Future (though they do not explicitly state the Apollo Project is the  manifestation of that vision, they include a quote from Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope who states that he sees "the Apollo Project as a way of reframing the issue" (27). In the text, they discuss how the "New Apollo Project" proposes a vision to "free the US from oil and create millions of good new jobs over 10 years" by building a coalition of environmental, labor, business, and community allies. Instead of assuming a special interest agenda, in which they craft technical proposals, Apollo suggests a new vision where allies recognize their common cause or their interconnectedness and frame "proposals around core American values and start seeing our own values as central to what motivates and guides our politics" (33). 

 

Related to the issue of framing, Nordhaus and Shellenberger's discussion of the environmental movement's use of reductive logic is reminiscent of Aristotle's discussion of the three various modes of inquiry-- analytic, dialectic, and rhetorical. In Analytic Posteriora, Aristotle discusses how there are three modes of inquiry that yield epistema, or knowledge. Aristotle's analytic mode of inquiry most closely aligns with "reductive logic." The analytic mode is a process of inquiry that engages one person (it does not engage two people like dialectic); it is a methodology concerned with questions as to the fixed essence of something; and it involves demonstration, or the logical structure of inference that is centered around sound syntactical and grammatical relationships. It is this mode of inquiry that Nordhaus and Shellenberger say modern environmentalists have taken up: "the environmental movement acts as though proposals based on "sound science" will be sufficient to overcome ideological and industry opposition." However, it is this analytic or reductive mode that has contributed to the environmental movement's failure.  Rather than privileging analytic logic, the authors suggest a new mode of inquiry: a rhetorical mode of inquiry. Using a rhetorical mode of inquiry, they suggest reframing the problem to create a compelling, transformative vision. As discussed in the above paragraph, this vision would focus on the alliance  between environmentalists, labor, business, and community. In addition to framing proposals around core American values, like right-wing think tanks have been doing, Shellenberger and Nordhaus also suggest making investments in cleaner coal: "Investments in cleaner coal should be framed as part of an overall vision for creating jobs in the energy industries of the future, not simply as a technical fix" (23).  They encourage the environmental movement to rethink its strategy: "the way to win is not to defend-- it's to attack (30). Rather than assuming the defensive and arguing on the right wing's terms, the modern environmentalists should try a new approach-- talking about the millions of jobs that will be created by accelerating the transition from a clean energy economy. Essentially, Shellenberger and Nordhas encourage the environmental community to exercise their collective creativity and imagine a more creative plan of attack that breaks out of their "airtight containers" or "conceptual boxes" (21). 

In addition to Arne Naess's Deep Ecology and Aristotle's Analytic Posteriora, "Death of Environmentalism" also reminded me of Al Gore's Introduction to Silent Springs (along with Howard Kunstler's and Peter Sloterdikj's historical narratives), in that all plot a historical trajectory of environmentalism. Like the Silent Spring's Introduction, in which Gore cites Carson's publication in 1962 as the defining moment marking the transition from conservation to the modern environmental movement, Nordhaus and Shellenberger also discuss Van Jones's tale of the three waves of environmentalism: "the first wave of environmentalism was framed around conservation and the second around regulation. We believe the third wave will be framed around investment" (28). In quoting Van Jones, they are creating a narrative of environmentalism, one which pave the way for and then buttress their suggestion in the New Apollo Project: "Apollo stresses the need for great public-private investments to establish American leadership in the clean energy revolution-- investments like those America made in railraods, the highways, the electronics industry and the Internet"  (28). Like Gore, Shellenberger and Nordhaus paint a history of the environmental movement to help contextualize the situation for readers, providing more information for them and helping them understand what is necessary so that they can support investments in clean energy. In discussing Van Jones's historical account of the environmental movement, Shellenberger and Nordhaus are making an argument, which mobilizes an authority appeal, to hopefully persuade readers to support the next wave of environmentalism.

By plotting Shellenberger and Nordhaus's rhetorical intervention, as well as the text's resonances with other texts, I have articulated my own idiosyncratic relation to "Death of Environmentalism."  In threading together my own idiosyncratic relation to "Death of Environmentalism," I hope to have highlighted the salient features of the text, as well as its rhetorical workings, Deep Ecology resonances, rejection of the analytic (scientific) mode and call for a rhetorical inquiry, and historical tale of environmentalism. 

**Different sites of use of "assumption": "By failing to question their most basic assumptions about the problem and the solution, environmental leaders are like generals fighting the last war" (7); "most of the movement's leading thinker's do not question their most basic assumptions about who we are, what we stand for, and what it is that we should be doing" (8); "we have become convinced that modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live" (10); "But as a community, environmentalists suffer from a bad case of group think, starting with shared assumptions about what we mean by "the environment"-- a category that reinforces the notions that 1) the environment is a separate things and b) human beings are separate from and superior to the natural world" (12); "Literal sclerosis can be seen in the assumption that to win action on global warming on must talk about global warming instead of, say, the economy, industrial policy, or health care" (13); "In light of this string of legislative disasters on might expect environmental leaders to reevaluate their assumptions and craft a new proposal" (18); "the conventional wisdom today is that the auto industry and the UAW "won" the CAFE fight. This logic implies that industry executives represent what's best for shareholders, that union executives represent what's best for workers, and that environmentalists represent what's best for the environment. All of these assumptions merit questioning" (19); "Environmentalists as well as industry and labor leaders have yet to rethink their  assumptions about the future of American auto industry in ways that might reframe their proposal" (20); "Whether or not you believe that the New Apollo Project is on the mark, it is at the very least a sincere attempt to undermine the assumptions beneath special interest environmentalism" (26); "the assumption here is that the American electorate consists of 100 million policy wonks eager to digest bleak news we have to deliver" (28); "the unspoken assumptions here are a) the problem, or the "root cause" is "greenhouse gases" b) labor must accept the environmental movement's framing of the problem as greenhouse gases and c) its the responsibility of labor to get with the program on global warming" (29).