Dear HCN,
As an environmentalist, I
was surprised at Ed Marston’s conclusion in his recent HCN, essay
(-How to turn lemonade into lemons,” March 21) that “the goal of
environmentalism was never to achieve a cultural revolution.” Silly
me. I thought I was part of a social movement with a goal of
enacting fundamental social and economic changes – changes that are
necessary to break the historical cycle of abuse of public lands
and resources.
Revolutionary? Decide for
yourself. It means changing the assumption that people’s lives,
natural resources, and virtually everything else exist exclusively
for the purpose of making money. It means changing the assumption
that if nature is killed off in the process of making money, too
bad. If it costs too much to alleviate destruction, that’s too bad
also. It means changing the assumptions of Interior Secretary
Babbitt and Mr. Marston that if it has become custom and culture to
kill off nature or despoil the land, water and air, these customs
and culture are off limits to anything but the most limited,
incremental change. Be thankful this consensus, custom-and-culture
crowd wasn’t leading the movement for safe work places or civil
rights legislation.
Larry
Tuttle
Portland,
Oregon
The writer is executive
director of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, 522 SW Fifth
Ave., Portland, OR
97204.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Environmentalists are revolutionaries.
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