The Way Forward for Environmentalists
In 1995, I was a college student studying government, fitting my schoolwork around protesting the attacks on breathable air, clean water, and a safe food supply that were written into Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America. For some context, this was pre-“Inconvenient Truth” — before Teslas and Priuses (Prii?) — and the big question was whether the U.S. could transition to a cleaner economy and still remain economically competitive.
Fast forward two decades, when there is now overwhelming scientific consensus around climate change and incredible technological advances in renewable energy production and distribution, and again I find myself protesting existential attacks on the environment, the EPA and the regulatory infrastructure that ensures our air is safe to breathe, water is safe to drink, and our public lands remain where all Americans can enjoy our great outdoors. It feels like a time warp — and not in a cool Gilmore Girls, Year in the Life kind of way.
So what can we, people who care about the environment (which includes most Americans, according to a wide range of polling) learn from our recent history to both survive this assault and build the kind of broad bipartisan support needed to meaningfully tackle these issues in the long term? We need to play loud, smart defense in the short term, and invest in building cultural and political will for the long term. Here’s how we can do that:
1SEE THEM IN COURT. Lawyers are today’s environmental superheroes. Without oversight from our federal agencies, we are reliant on environmental litigators and state governments to play defense and salvage our current environmental laws. Cases are often technical and wonky, so it is essential to communicate why legal action is essential and how it impacts us.
One example is the ongoing battle on car tailpipe emissions. President Trump has started rolling back federal rules that limit climate-damaging emissions. Our environmental superheroes will litigate this issue. Publicly, it’s a discussion that can be highly technical, but it doesn’t need to be. Instead of a press conference with lawyers explaining the arguments, why not create a pop-up electric car show in the city where arguments are being held, and show people the consequences of the case in a real and relatable way?
2GET OUT OF DC and GET LOCAL. While the federal government is currently a hostile place to advance policies needed for a clean energy economy, there is ample opportunity at the state and local levels to make progress and show what is possible. From developing the technologies to capture renewable energy, to the transmission systems needed to deliver and store the energy, to the consumer goods powered by that energy — there is much to share and boast about. We won’t convince people by arguing this point with data. Instead, we will convince them by showing them what they can gain from smart environmental policies.
In Los Angeles, home to the largest urban oil field in the nation, residents struggle with the health impacts of oil rigs in their neighborhood. Through virtual reality, we could help them envision what it would look like to implement a policy that prevents oil companies from drilling within a half-mile of their homes and replaces those drill sites with parks or community gardens. Building a social media campaign around this content, we can boost civic engagement in these communities by asking their opinions on what their community could look like without oil drilling — effectively engaging them in the process of planning their new sustainable neighborhood.
3REFUSE TO FIGHT THE WRONG BATTLE. For as long as I’ve been doing this work (and long before), the fight has been a narrative of environment versus jobs. At one time, that might have been a true choice; it no longer is. We need to move on. Any time we are spending trying to win this argument is time we aren’t telling the story of how building and operating a clean energy economy is happening, is lucrative and offers a competitive advantage.
For instance, why not build a digital campaign around a video where a young job seeker explores various renewable energy jobs across this country — showing the future through the lens of a young storyteller? While learning about these jobs, the narrator can also learn and share about the local and state policies that made those jobs possible. Show, don’t tell, what the clean energy economy looks like.
4PUT PEOPLE FIRST. Whether through litigation, legislation, or corporate advocacy, environmental narratives should begin and end with impacts on real people. Environmentalists for years have been trying to move people with facts and data. While valuable in guiding smart policy, science is rarely effective in activating our audiences or changing the hearts and minds of people we need to bring into the movement. So, we put people first by telling their stories. And putting people first means putting all people first. For many years, the environmental movement excluded communities of color. We are now at a turning point. If we don’t move forward by being more inclusive of these communities — the same ones that bear the brunt of climate change — we won’t move forward at all.
Kids with asthma, ranchers without safe water supply for their herds, neighborhoods at constant risk of water contamination and dirty air from oil rigs in their backyards — those who benefit most from strong environmental laws have stories to tell. It is high time we tell them. In every media opportunity or piece of digital content, we should root the consequences of the status quo in harm to real people.
Acknowledging that my perspective here might be skewed by my day job, the throughline for the way forward is communications that tell the stories, build the narratives, and shift the argument to what’s possible versus what’s terrifying. We should push communications that leverage protest, litigation, legislation, and programmatic work to paint a picture of what the future can look like — starting right now in the present.
Our federal government is in the midst of a full-frontal assault on our environment. When I was in college, my response would have been to organize and demonstrate in protest. Now, I get to work alongside environmental superheroes — lawyers, impacted communities, and scientists — to envision, communicate and build our alternative: a world in which a bedrock of environmental laws are secured by shared cultural commitment and uncontroversial political will to keep our air breathable, our water drinkable, and our land habitable.
Hillary Moglen is a Principal at RALLY, a communications firm that works to influence the way people think about and respond to political and social issues.
