Dear HCN,
Dan Dagget’s essay (-It’s
unAmerican, or at best unWestern, but cooperation works,” HCN,
10/16/95)is a clean and tidy one-size-fits-all solution to the
environmental crisis. Certainly cooperation has its place in the
scheme of things. Yet many environmental problems are international
in scope and interconnected in nature. Suggesting that cooperation
is the only or best approach to environmental advocacy is like
trying to build a house with a screwdriver.
In
the big picture, playing nice-nice with people who represent
destructive practices seems a poor replacement for a diverse
environmental movement with an array of tactics and strategies. The
way things are going, environmental protection will boil down to
the messy business of political power for some time to come.
Granted, to have power is scary; it implies responsibility. To work
to increase power is scary; you may get
burned.
Another possible alternative is to make
something tangible out of what now seems a sadly hollow
cliché: the broad-based, multi-issue, solution-oriented,
grassroots citizens’ campaign. Sure, organizing is hard work, but
at least you can sleep at night and live with yourself in the
morning.
Scott
Brown
Coeur d’Alene,
Idaho
Scott Brown worked for
six years for Greenpeace in Atlanta; he’s now working on
environmental issues in
Idaho.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Dan Dagget’s solution is simple – too simple.
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