This might not fit the textbook definition of socialism, but it does fit the popular definition (at least here in North America).

Government is also at fault however. They create all of these green strategies, and then make it impossible for citizens to implement them. Municipalities fight when individuals want to put up wind generators, utilities fight when customers want to sell power back to the grid. It’s ridiculous.

as far as Fukushima is concerned I think we could say “probably will cause massive long term problems for those living nearby”. It’s also not a great example of a fault with nuclear power, as the disaster was caused by a once-in-a-thousand-years event striking a plant not designed to cope with that.

In short, your examples are deep and interesting questions, not slam dunks

I agree that we should not accept them blindly, but importantly we should not to reject them blindly either (as many have done).

That is my main criticism.

I hope to be a bright green (Kermit thought it wasn’t easy being green but being bright green is even more difficult), because the current dull greens have alienated me, even though I agree with them on the big picture points they make.

So there really is a question of whether you are writing from the point of view of science or that of politics. They aren’t really the same, and the advice of one means little to the other. In a way, that’s the problem. If you are saying you’d like more respect for science within politics, I totally agree. But you pick examples where there really is a valid argument on both sides and coming down is not exactly a no-brainer.

Is genetic engineering adequately controlled? A very difficult question. If not, it isn’t enough to say “that’s a political problem and shouldn’t be taken out on the scientists”. Because once some nasty biological agent is in the field, there is no changing your mind. You have to live with it for who knows how long. Millions of years, maybe. GMOs can introduce irreversible changes in the environment overnight. Is Monsanto careful enough about this? Every single corner of Monsanto? And their competitors? I don’t know. I have heard terrible stories about Monsanto. Are they true? I don’t know that either and don’t presume to judge them one way or the other, but there are definitely people who believe those stories. What is the ethical action on their part?

Is Germany making a terrible mistake by going first in stopping nukes? I think so too.

But you can’t shrug off Fukushima. Fukushima is a whole prefecture. 2 million people lived there a year ago. Is it ruined forever? For how long?

High radiation readings are being found all over Japan. Releases are, if I understand correctly, ongoing. Do we need nukes? Some people think so. I know a very competent solar energy engineer who does not think so.

I agree, there definitely is a need for a new or revived movement, and one which respects science and engineering. Alex Steffen calls it the Bright Green movement, and I consider myself among the Bright Greens.

But respecting science and technology doesn’t mean we should unwittingly accept every innovation brought into the world by every corporation or government or whatever. The default has been to find out about scary things after they are already deployed. There is a real argument for putting the brakes on the most radical inventions, and stopping certain directions of research is something that may or may not have merit in that context.

It is a way of respecting science and technology to claim that its deployment as engineering should be very slow and careful. There are those who would have you “get out of the way of progress”, but the question is who gets to decide what “progress” is, you or the money machine?

In short, your examples are deep and interesting questions, not slam dunks like fluorine in water.

http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2011/08/mayor-i-tried-to-stay-away-from-science.html

I think what we need more than anything is a hopeful vision. To a real treehugger, our time is one of great and mounting tragedy. They have a point. Fortunately for me, my case of biophilia is modest and I face every day with fear rather than horror. But we can’t promise the world a sad future and have a hope of leading anything.

The post-fume world is going to be wonderful. Much better than this stuff. What we need to do is come up with a vision and explain how and why. And I don’t think coming up with better than what we’ve got is all that hard, even in relatively civilized BC.

I see you, and the other bloggers on my sidebar as prime examples of people who are very passionate but who at the same time remain firmly rooted in reality.

First off, I agree that the green movement is not first in line to be criticised. Even though I think they have made many mistakes I can at least agree with their goals (for human civilization to stay within the limits of our planet). To avoid collapse. I certainly cannot say that about some other people, and they should be first in line for criticism. But in all my years of blogging I have rarely written about the mistakes of the green movement and frequently spoken out about the Merchants of Doubt (BTW everyone needs to read the book Merchants of Doubt by Oreskes and Conway) that could public understanding. And I suspect that in the future I will continue to spend more time criticizing the merchants of doubt than the green movement. But every once in a while it is valuable give a critical look at your ‘team’. Especially when the game is not going in your favour.

But you hit on a very important point. The green movement is not a single uniform group of people all marching to the same drum. I didn’t get into the many facets of the larger green movement manly in an admittedly failed effort to keep this post short. You are absolutely correct in pointing out that there are many different aspects to the green movement.

However, I do think that within those various aspects there is a convergence of positions on many topics like nuclear and GMs. It certainly is not universal, but there is a strong condemnation of both those technologies.

Ok on to your specific points. First up nuclear power

nuclear power is dangerous, and poses a massive risk to communities who live close to nuclear power plants, a risk that is, at least locally, much greater than any other means of generating power.

I think this is a massive overstatement. Nuclear power is safe (not a hundred percent, but not far off either). There have been 3 major incidents with nuclear power, 2 of which caused massive long term problems for those living nearby (Chernobyl and Fukushima), and 1 which caused some short term panic (probably justified) but little long term issues (Three Mile Island). From my perspective that is not bad record.

So the story here is really one of different groups weighing up local versus global risks and coming to different conclusions.

I find that statement hard to square with the statements from Greenpeace I quoted above. And such absolute statements are frequent in regards to nuclear power from green groups. There certainly is a local vs. global element involved but it is deeper than that for many I think.

And given the appalling track record that nuclear operators have on being open and honest about safety, it’s not surprising that environmentalists are opposed.

I agree that nuclear operators are doing themselves no favours and there is a legitimate cause for concern here. Ok that is probably an understatement. But this should not translate into “no nuclear power ever!”, yet far too often it does.

Ok on to GMs:

While GMs may be a useful technology in helping to feed the world, the track record of companies pushing GMs has been abysmal.

Again agreed, but this isn’t so much a scientific problem as a political one. We can and should criticise Monsanto. They deserve it. But we need to be careful that our criticisms are focused on the problem and not directed at ‘innocent bystanders’. Attacking all GMOs instead of the terrible polices of Monsanto et al. Is exactly what makes protesters, who want to do the right thing, attack a trial of GM wheat. Wheat that contained no foreign genes and offered a lower glycemic index and higher fibre content.
If we demonize all GMOs (or nuclear power) because of the bad decisions of Monsanto (or nuclear operators) we essentially close the door on tools that can help us create a better future.

Ok last point, is the green movement tied up in left wing politics?

In many ways yes I think it is. It isn’t as simple as a yes/no answer. I agree that there is a significant attempt by some to portray the green movement as a communist plot (again I remind everyone to read the Book Merchants of Doubt; it contains a good history of where this claim comes from). But I think by in large the green movement (especially in North America) is tied up on the left. On the climate front one needs to look no further than Joe Romm at climateprogress. It seems he takes every possible opportunity to jab at the right. And even though these jabs are often justified they also serve as a means to alienate right leaning people who might also care about the climate.

That being said, thank you for bringing up the politically hard to define Green party of Canada (as well as those in Europe and Australia, but I know them less well). However if they become more prominent I do foresee battles as many members of the green movement come into conflict with the more pragmatic approach of the green parties. How the parties react to this will be interesting to watch. For a negative glimpse of what this might be like take a look at Elizabeth May’s recent stance on Wifi and smart meters.
But I do think that in many ways the green parties way of thinking represents a large part of the way forward for the green movement(unless the parties cave as Elizabeth May did in response to smart meters). As do people like you and the bloggers I have listed on my sidebar.

Again thanks for the comment. Keep the insightful and respectful criticism coming! It is the only way I will learn:)

Partly because, of all the stakeholders who should be criticized for failing to act on climate change, the “green movement” would be last in line.

But more because I think you’ve missed the woods for the trees. I don’t think there really is such a thing as “the green movement”. There are lots of different groups struggling to make sense of the relationships between humans and the biosphere, all focussing on different parts of the puzzle, and sometimes coming to contradictory conclusions. The examples you pick on are not necessarily evidence of a “movement that has failed”, but of people struggling to keep up with a challenge that’s now so big and so urgent that it defies understanding. For example:

– nuclear power is dangerous, and poses a massive risk to communities who live close to nuclear power plants, a risk that is, at least locally, much greater than any other means of generating power. However, it’s only really in the last few years that it’s become clear that that the global risks of GHGs completely dominate the local risks of nuclear accidents. So the story here is really one of different groups weighing up local versus global risks and coming to different conclusions. As many of those involved in environmental activism got their start by campaigning on local issues, it’s not surprising that they’ve been slow to shift attention to global risks *when these risks are in conflict*. And given the appalling track record that nuclear operators have on being open and honest about safety, it’s not surprising that environmentalists are opposed. Nuclear plant operators seem to behave as badly as the worst polluters on the planet.

– While GMs may be a useful technology in helping to feed the world, the track record of companies pushing GMs has been abysmal. GMs have been deployed almost universally as a way of further industrializing and centralizing food production, via massive deployments of herbicides and pesticides. Many environmentalists are quite rightly outraged by this. While I don’t condone the destruction of scientific labs, I can see exactly where that impulse comes from. The problem is that much of the research on GMs isn’t value-free at all – it’s funded and exploited by companies like Monsanto, and as long as such companies show complete disregard for the environmental impact of their technologies, they’ll be targeted by protesters. It’s disingenuous to pretend that the science of genetically modified foods is value-neutral, when there’s a huge for-profit machine driving that science forward without adequate safeguards.

– the argument that “the green movement” has become too tied up with left-wing politics is also way off base. They’ve been portrayed that way, particularly in the US, because of a particular brand of extreme libertarianism that views any form of environmental protection as a socialist plot. But if you look at what the platforms put forward by Green parties across Europe, Australia and Canada, there’s no left-right ideology at all, but rather a very different take on how social, environmental and economic priorities interact, leading to a set of policies that look nothing like either traditional left-wing nor right-wing thinking. Plenty of people in the labour movement (or at least what’s left of it in the US) dislike “greenies” as much as the current US tea party does. It’s just that the former have very little voice right now in US politics.

And describing the environmentalists as anti-technology is purely a red herring. It’s a version of the (primarily US-based) narrative that portrays environmentalists as dirty hippies.

So what you’re really saying is that you want a new movement that’s no longer rooted in the passion that people bring to local environmental issues, but is instead based on the cold rationalistic calculations of scientists. You want to take the heart out of it. I don’t see how that can be successful as a movement. Scientists aren’t generally successful at inspiring social change…

I also added an image that hopefully illustrates why I have such a low opinion of the Heartland Institute.

For now suffice to say that a massive amount of energy infrastructure will have to be replaced or retrofitted and there is no way that wont cost a lot of money, and take decades.

All the more reason to start as soon as possible.