A New Conservation Politics E-Book

David Johns

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 806

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Despite many successes in the field of conservation, species extinction rates continue to climb and wild areas and habitats continue to be lost. Many look to more (or better) biology and ecology to solve the problem but the obstacles are not just scientific but political. To stop the 6th great extinction the conservation movement must become much stronger, more tenacious, and more effective. By learning from its own history and especially from the movements that abolished slavery, brought down apartheid, changed gender relations, and expanded democratic rights, conservationists can become more successful.

This book brings together in one place and in a highly usable format the lessons of those movements culled from practitioners and academic analysts.

"Protecting Earth's rich web of life, and our only known living companions in the universe, depends upon people caring enough to act. This book shows conservationists how to evoke the caring and action necessary to change policy and ultimately society." Paul R Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University and author of The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment

“This timely book by David Johns explains why facts alone don’t motivate and mobilize people to care for the natural world. Even better, Johns spells out what will work, based on a frank and informed assessment of human nature applied to social and political movements. If you would rather see change than be right, this readable and authoritative guide should be your bible.” Michael Soulé, Professor Emeritus, Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

“For me, this is a truly fascinating book. I spend much of my time writing--trying to write the stories we need to tell--and the rest of it helping run national and global mobilizations on climate change (Step It Up and now 350.org). I think David Johns has done a tremendous job of linking together insights about useful rhetoric and very practical notions about organizing. If you're trying to save a river, a forest, or a planet you need to read this book.” Bill McKibben, Scholar-in-Residence, Middlebury College

Leseprobe

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: hard times

A note on terminology

Part 1: The Gauntlet: we have met the enemy and they are both us and them

Chapter 1: Us

What’s not Working

Zeno and Conservation

Education and Emotion

Conservation as a Tease

Science and Crassness

Chapter 2: Them: inertia, inequality, and propaganda

Cultural Inertia

David and Goliath

Technique

Chapter 3: Them: power

Conservation’s opponents

The sources of conflict

The United States as a case

When conservationists win

Other cases

The exercise of power

Economic violence and coercion

Political violence and coercion

Chapter 4: Why we act – from the double helix to world systems and sunspots

The human heritage: from needs to myth

Shaping human needs, emotions, cognition and consciousness: maturation, ritual, and social networks

Group and organizational dynamics

Organizational cooperation and conflict, social structure, and structural evolution

Summary and a nod to nature

Part 2: Conservation as if life depended on it

Chapter 5: The role of vision

Unifying themes

A step backward

The path forward

Part 2A: Forging the hammer

Chapter 6: The centrality of mobilization to politics

Building on the past

Chapter 7: From vision to goals

Chapter 8: From goals to strategy: answering strategic questions

Here

To there

Other strategic issues

Chapter 9: Who will do the heavy lifting: targets of mobilization

Two approaches

Prioritizing targets: the organized and unorganized

Prioritizing targets: the sympathetic and the powerful

Prioritizing targets: groups that deserve more emphasis

Other factors in targeting

The shotgun

Chapter 10: Understanding the targets of mobilization; and opponents

The limits of the cognitive and the need for comprehensive understanding

Material interests and social position

Understanding needs and compensatory needs in target audiences

Understanding emotion in target audiences

Understanding worldviews, the sacred, and story

Chapter 11: Messengers and channels for mobilization

Messengers

Channels

Chapter 12: Mobilization and messages

A reminder about the obvious

Resonating with needs

Messages and emotions

Messages and the cognitive

Messages and the whole person

The relationship of messages in time

Adaptive messages

Chapter 13: Message as story and symbol

Politics as competing stories

A story that fits

Context

Simplicity

Character and plot

Drama and vividness

Symbols

Story’s limits

Chapter 14: Mobilization and action

Action and innovation

How action mobilizes

Chapter 15: Overarching tactical concerns

Overarching tactical approaches

Tactics of attack and responses

Chapter 16: Monitoring and evaluation

Part 2B: The care and maintenance of the hammer

Chapter 17: Organization and identity

Needs and sustaining mobilization

Emotion and sustaining mobilization

Ideology, mythology, and sustaining mobilization

Identity, strategy, and sustaining mobilization

Identity and sustaining conservation over the next decade

Chapter 18: Organization, action, and ritual

Action and sustaining mobilization

Ritual and sustaining mobilization

Opportunities for mobilization-sustaining ritual

Creating mobilization-sustaining ritual

Chapter 19: Organization, efficacy, and repression

Efficacy

Repression

Chapter 20: The life cycle of organizations

Leadership trajectories and mobilization

Organizational change, the iron law, and mobilization

Funding

Chapter 21: The need for many organizations

Chapter 22: A final question

Bibliography

Index

Dedication

In memory of Frederick Douglas and for Nelson Mandela. Two who acted against enormous odds and who did not fear to follow their vision of justice with the fierceness of a mother Grizzly. They fought for justice among humans. May they inspire those who fight for a greater justice – for the living Earth and all of her species. Truly “In Wildness in the Preservation of the World.” For John le Carré, master storyteller. And for Denzel and Carol.

This edition first published 2009, © 2009 by David Johns

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

Registered office:John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial offices:9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UKThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, USA

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Johns, David, 1951–A new conservation politics : power, organization building, and effectiveness / David Johns.,p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-4051-9014-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4051-9013-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Nature conservation—Political aspects—United States. 2. Environmental protection—Political aspects—United States. 3. Conservationists—United States—Political activity. I. Title.

QH76.J64 2009333.720973 – dc22

2008045481

ISBN: 9781405190138 (hardback) and 9781405190145 (paperback)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Acknowledgments

My debts are enormous as the bibliography attests. The use to which I have put the work of those I owe is not their responsibility, but I have endeavored to present their contributions accurately and in context. I owe a larger debt to those I have learned from directly in the struggle to ensure the integrity of the Earth. These include advocates and scientists whose courage, innovation, perseverance, toughness and capacity for empathy with the natural world are exemplary: Rob Ament, “Nitro” Ament, Mario Boza, Tom Butler, Romain Cooper, Ol’ga Chernayagina, John Davis, Dominick DellaSala, Bob Ekey, Libby Ellis, Brock Evans, Dave Foreman, Wendy Francis, Mitch Friedman, Alan Watson Featherstone, Mary Granskou, Karsten Heuer, Webster Heuer, Doug Honnold, Malcolm Hunter, Peter Ilyn, Andy Kerr, Harvey Locke, Rurik List, Curt Meine, Oscar Moctezuma, Jerry Mander, Brendan Mackey, Bill Marlett, Vance Martin, Bill Meadows, Murphy Marobe, Alec Marr, Margo McKnight, Brian Miller, Reed Noss, Elliot Norse, Doug Peacock, Juri Peepre, Ian Player, Bart Robinson, Rich Reading, Conrad Reining, John Robinson, Michael Soulé, Bittu Sahgal, Wayne Sawchuk, Jim Strittholt, John Terborgh, Kim Vacariu, Kelpie Wilson, Louisa Willcox, L.G. Willcox, and Virginia Young. There are many, many others too numerous to mention. They do not live for anything so transient as the acknowledgment of history but for the transcendent – the wild, self-willed and undomesticated. The ocean flows in their veins and a fierce green fire burns in their hearts.

It has been a privilege to work with a handful of visionary funders who understand the world can’t be changed without taking risks. Among them are Doug Tompkins, Rose Letwin, Tim Greyhavens, Denise Joines, Gary Tabor, Bill Lazar, Don Weeden, Yvon Choinard, Rick Ridgeway, and Ted Smith.

Not least among those to whom I am indebted are storytellers, writers, songsters, film makers, photographers, poets, painters and poster makers: Jonathan Cobb, Barbara Dean, Lou Gold, Barry Lopez, Cecelia Ostrow, Doug Peacock, Paul Shepard, Gary Snyder, Walkin’ Jim Stoltz, and Terry Tempest Williams.

Special thanks to Ellen Main for her unfailingly sound criticism and editing, and to Phyllis Ray and Margaret Flagg who proofread the manuscript. The editorial and production team at Blackwell have been superb, including editor Ward Cooper, Delia Sandford, Rosie Hayden, and Gopika Sasidharan.

Introduction: hard times

The wind will not cease, though the trees wish to rest.

Early Chinese aphorism

Conservationists have made enormous strides. In the high tide of the early 1970s, grassroots activism and lobbying in the United States prevailed on a Republican president and Democratic congress to adopt the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, and to ratify the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna. Since that time, new parks, wilderness and other protected areas have been established, the ivory trade banned, and much else achieved. Despite these successes the extinction crisis is accelerating. The political influence of conservationists continues to fall short of what is necessary.

Within a decade of the disgrace of the president who signed many of these laws, his political party declared war on Nature and has since then been attacking these laws and what they seek to protect. Agencies stealthily announce administrative policy changes – such as announcing the release of 200 million acres of wilderness-quality Bureau of Land Management lands for development at 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon, knowing that Saturday papers and news shows are little read and watched. The US experience is not unique. Despite electoral promises to the contrary, Brazilian President Lula has publicly allowed the assault on the Amazon to continue. China’s Three Gorges Dam project and other such projects throughout Asia attest to the political weakness of conservationists.

How has this seeming decline from the high tide of the 1970s come about? Leaving aside authoritarian regimes for the moment, how is it that in democracies, conservation goals remain unrealized when the overwhelming majority of the people consistently say that they value Nature and want to protect species and natural systems? Although some countries are doing better than others, the global trajectory is not good. Deborah Guber (2003: 105–6), noted similar findings among US researchers: conservationists had little affect on the votes of national legislators. One observer noted that no other lobby was so routinely ignored. Why have conservationists been unable to build on the values espoused by so many and create the political force needed for better policy? This is especially vexing in the United States because as the world’s biggest economy and preeminent military power, its behavior affects the entire globe as does no other country.

Explanations and excuses for this sorry situation are many. It is true that conservationists are up against enormous obstacles. Economic and political institutions are mostly in the hands of those dedicated to preserving their privileged positions, positions that depend on the transformation of Nature into commodities. It is true that political opportunities for change are often lacking because they are cyclical. But conservationists do have control over some things and that includes themselves. Change to make conservation more effective must begin here.

What can conservationists do differently to build a much more effective political force? One that is capable of sustained action over decades. One that can take and keep leadership away from the self-serving, and transform institutions into servants instead of masters. Creating a political force requires mobilizing people. It is action that makes a difference – action in support of conservation policy and conservation-compatible personal decisions. Mobilization is the process wherein people commit their time, energy, money, and other resources to collective action for a common purpose. Instead of buying a new toy or sitting in front of the tube and occasionally sending a check to an NGO, they vote on conservation issues, write letters to officials and the media, attend hearings, and take to the streets on behalf of the wild Earth. In the United States, 80% of the population agree with conservation goals, but conservation is neither central to them nor do they feel strongly about it (Deborah Guber, 2003: 3, 38). That’s why political leaders know they can safely ignore the views of most people on conservation issues; views don’t translate into action.

To mobilize people, conservationists need to touch more people much more deeply than they have. This also presents formidable obstacles because most means of reaching people – cultural institutions – are also businesses and they are not in the hands of conservationists. Notwithstanding, the cultural arena is not confined to the mass media and its few owners but remains a contested terrain. Indeed, even the corporate media is divided between its political agenda – protecting its privilege – and short-term profit that may cause it to carry messages it doesn’t agree with. This cultural space provides the opening for conservationists to mobilize people to act politically and economically to ensure that the integrity of the natural world is respected and protected.

Taking advantage of the opportunities for mobilization begins with an unflinching look at the current situation. This means putting aside the upbeat pabulum that is routinely cranked out by most NGOs on the advice of public relations and fund-raising consultants. Virtually all existing human societies are destructive of the natural world because they are dependent on massively transforming it. The grim numbers are all too familiar: humans take or destroy 40% of terrestrial net primary product and at least 30% of marine net primary product (Stuart Pimm, 2001). In 2006, the US gross domestic product – a close approximation of the market value of Earth transforming economic activity – was about $13.2 trillion. US charitable giving in 2006 to conservation, environmental and animal rights groups was $6.6 billion (USA Foundation, 2007). The problem is obvious.

Reforming human societies so that they become less destructive of the natural world is a long-term effort. Extinction is a much more immediate problem, and in the near term, conservationists can more consistently win legislative, policy, and electoral battles if they can mobilize powerful constituencies. Conservationists will never match the enormous financial and political resources of their opponents and all that big money can buy and enormous power can coerce. They can make up for this by being smarter, more creative, and more agile than their opponents. And that entails becoming more realistic about the political process, its institutions, and people.

Many, perhaps most, conservationists are trained in the natural sciences and have a high regard for rationality – careful thought and analysis, and measured consideration of alternatives and consequences. They want others to share these traits and come to the right conclusions by means of the right process; they want people to do the right thing for the right reasons. But all the rational arguments in the world for protecting shrinking grizzly bear or tiger habitat, for example, won’t save the day if people don’t care about grizzlies or tigers. Caring is not a matter of what is usually denoted by the term rational, that is, the cognitive or the mental. Caring is about emotion and need. Emotion and motivate come from the same root – to move. Thoughts, beliefs, and values are anchored in how people feel, in what they are connected to, in what they long for, and in what they require to sustain their lives and make them meaningful. Critical thought, and especially reflection, are important in examining the authenticity of emotions, but thoughts do not move people. Conservationists who love Nature and people in love with money and toys are both motivated by caring, by desire, by the connections (which are always emotional) to other living things or to inert matter like a car. Thought helps to sort out which connections serve human well-being and which are compensatory, but cognitive arguments by themselves do not persuade people to reject the compensatory; rather, a lack of emotional satisfaction does.

I use the term rational in this book to refer to both cognitive and emotive aspects of the personality that are healthy, authentic and grounded, as distinguished from those aspects that are compensatory, self-destructive, or contrary to needs and biological well-being over time. Anthropologist Roy Rappaport (1976: 65) argued similarly that survival is at root biological, and institutions that are destructive of biological well-being are maladaptive. Thus, an emotion such as fear may be rational or irrational, depending on the circumstances; similarly, thoughts may be rational or irrational depending on internal consistency, approximation to reality, and so on. In this view, the irrational is a major part of politics, as philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1964) noted when he described modernity as the rational pursuit of irrational goals, that is, the methodical way in which humans created and deployed weapons of mass (self) destruction. Writer D.H. Lawrence (1936: 284–5), who spent much of his life seeking to free people from sexual and cultural repressiveness, nonetheless agreed with Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor: most people require and demand “miracle, mystery and authority”. He also observed that in the 20th century at least, people found their miracle and mystery more in the products of science than in religion. Political effectiveness depends on attending to these observations. That ir/rational emotion and need (and structural factors) move people, rather than reason, is not a weakness – it’s just how we are. It will be catastrophic for life on Earth if conservationists confuse how they want people to be with how people are. Such confusion is a weakness.

Because so many conservationists do not have training in the social sciences nor the experience of long involvement with social movements, electoral campaigns or political infighting outside of NGOs, they are often engaged in reinventing the wheel. This is a waste of precious energy. Many of the answers to a more effective conservation movement lie with learning from other social movements. There is a vast body of practitioner and academic literature that documents important and hard-won lessons. It is not reasonable to expect conservationists to sort through and absorb this enormous body of knowledge. The purpose of this book is to make available, in summary form, the critical research findings and practitioner experience from a range of movements and nonmovement politics across the globe. The nature of this literature and my own experience is unavoidably skewed to the developed world, but many of the lessons are transferable among regime types. I have provided extensive citations, not to back up statements, but to make more detailed discussions of topics easily accessible to readers.

This book is organized around the elements of one central question: how can conservationists mobilize influential segments of the population to change policies and institutions and keep them on track to achieve conservation goals. Although I will present examples of success, lessons from failure, and even some truisms, the real answers are found only in practice, in doing.

The first part of the book examines the main obstacles to conservation, both within the movement and external to it. It also includes an outline of the main factors that motivate human political action. These factors may be thought of as levers that conservationists must learn to operate simultaneously rather than one at a time.

Building an effective movement has been likened to forging a hammer. Along with an uncompromising vision, flexibility of means, and the ability to convince opponents and decision makers that one will never tire or fade away, and being able to reward and punish (the hammer) is essential to political success. Part 2A is devoted to the many elements involved in forging the hammer and Part 2B to the maintenance of the hammer over time. Although the chapters build on each other in important ways, readers can usefully access them individually and in an order that best suits their purpose. Where something critical appears in another chapter, I have made reference to its location.

If conservation remains a sideshow or social afterthought it cannot ensure the survival of wild (self-willed) creatures in “natural patterns of abundance and distribution” (Reed Noss, 1993: 11) and of wild places. While it is probably true there will never be a world free of greed, hubris, myopia, and stupidity, a world in which the most powerful institutions are not constitutionally enslaved to endless material growth and accumulation of material wealth is possible. It is also desirable and necessary. The well-being of humans as well as the natural world depends on the former becoming, in Aldo Leopold’s (1987 [1948]: 204) words, “citizens of the land community rather than its temporary conquerors.”

A note on terminology

Some conservationists object to military-sounding terminology because they feel it reinforces political antagonism: it paints political opponents and even the uninformed as enemies. What is needed, they argue, is language that better reflects the need to bring people together and to achieve social change by means that transcend the violence of those who have tried to subjugate Nature. I understand and respect this position, but do not fully agree with it and so will use the objectionable terminology now and then. First, because it fits, and second because there are often no alternatives that so clearly convey by metaphor the meaning intended. As Evan Cornog (2004: 163), the chronicler of presidential stories observes, the metaphor of war is instantly understandable. Second, human societies are waging war on Nature and have been doing so for millennia. The violence is horrendous. Many institutions are also waging war on conservationists. To not acknowledge this, and to refrain from language that makes this clear, is a disservice, akin to the militaryese used to obscure mass murder, for example, as collateral damage. It also obscures the need to act intelligently by taking this violence seriously and recognizing the need for self-defense. Abolitionists from Frederick Douglass to Nelson Mandela had no illusions. Their lack of illusions, their refusal to confuse the way they wanted the world to be with the way it actually was, helped guarantee their day-to-day survival and eventual triumph. Conservationists need to heed Douglass’ and Mandela’s example.

Throughout these chapters I use the term “resources” extensively when speaking about mobilization. I also frequently refer to people as the objects of mobilization. As objects of mobilization, resources and people or groups of people are more or less interchangeable. Political resources are mostly to be found in people. Sometimes it makes sense to specify what particular qualities are being sought: money, certain skills, bodies on the line, access to leaders, control of institutions, and so on. At other times, when talking about political clout, it makes more sense to talk about people or groups of people.

And there are nonhuman resources, and it can make sense to talk of mobilizing them. Wolves in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone are a political resource – conservationists call them flagship species for that reason. They can be photographed or shown to potential members, donors, or legislators. Watching wolves creates a bond, and some people thereby become devoted to protecting them. To label something a political resource is not to reduce it to that. An ecological disaster like a mudslide resulting from deforestation is real – it kills fish and causes stream damage. Such an event can be used as a resource to make dramatically clear the costs of roadbuilding and logging. A freak 1999 hurricane that struck France undermined French faith in the human control of Nature (Gary Bryner, 2001: 96). Severe disease outbreaks have had similar political effects (Hays, 2000). In some cases, disease outbreaks are closely tied to human intrusion into and disruption of ecosystems, and to long-distance trade. In some instances, diseases have been directly mobilized as an instrument of politics, as when plague-infected corpses were catapulted over the walls of fortified cities in medieval Europe. Biowarfare programs and use of antibiotics in factory farming are more recent examples.

Usually, however, resources refers to a short list of those things important to achieving political goals:

self-consciousnessan understanding of the social system including the levers of political control and the systemic dynamism that generates opportunities and threatsa grounded ideologycontrol of important institutionscontrol of the instruments of forceaccess to decision makersorganizing and communication skillsaccess to or ownership of media for mass communication, and possession of internal media for communication with memberscharismatic spokespeople and good stories, anda number of members and supporters, and their degree of commitment, unity, and internal division.

Part 1The Gauntlet: we have met the enemy and they are both us and them

1

Us

History is shaped ... not by the cunning of Reason but by the cunning of Desire.

Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death (1959: 16)

The destruction of creatures with whom we have long shared the Earth is accelerating, despite the efforts of conservationists to slow or stop it. Whole ecosystems are being buried under asphalt, concrete, subdivisions and domesticated monocultures at an exponential rate just as surely as great tides of Hollywood lava once consumed whole cinematic villages of noble savages – only this is real, not a movie. Despite efforts rooted in rural communities, in centers of world power, and everywhere in between, conservationists have been unable to stem the cancer that is inexorably devouring grizzlies, wetlands, dry forests, raptors, butterflies, tropical forests, boreal forests, tundras, and caribou.

What can conservationists do differently that will make them more effective? This book is written for those who care enough about the natural world to examine their assumption and the current way of doing things. It is written for those who understand that extinction is irreversible and that alongside the tyranny of swelling human numbers and demand for even more stuff, are conservationists who are wedded to business as usual. This book is not for those who think things will somehow work out in the end, or for those who think they can magically have Nature and the equivalent of 6.5 billion American consumers. It is for those who are willing to look squarely at current practices and to dump approaches that aren’t working for more promising approaches. It is for those for whom Nature is more important than cherished ideas or the need for recognition from other humans.

Effective political and social change begins with those who seek to make change and ground themselves in what works.

What’s not Working

Thomas Patterson (2002: 13) echoes the observations of many social scientists when he states that if all those eligible had voted in 2000 the electoral outcome would have been very different. Having the presidency and both houses of Congress in other hands would have not halted human-caused extinctions in their tracks, but it would have been far better for the natural world than the actual outcome. The point is that a lack of action on the part of potential voters made a difference for conservation. Action is what counts. Action changes outcomes. One action damages Nature, another nurtures it.

There are many reasons conservationists have not been effective in getting people to act. Some of the most salient are related to their assumptions about what motivates people to act. Conservationists know that what people think and feel counts, but not how these thoughts and feelings generate action. Why do some thoughts and feelings move people to action and others don’t? What happens when people’s hearts tug in one direction, but their calculations in another? What causes people to publicly espouse one view but act contrarily? The relationship between emotions, values, and views of the world on one hand and action on the other, are complex and not always obvious. It is difficult to gain insight, however, when one already possesses insight.

Conservationists are fond of quoting Margaret Mead on how small groups of committed people drive change in the world, but Mead lacked a full understanding. A small group can start a snowball rolling down a hill, but the group needs a hill, a way to get to the launch place on the hill, the right kind of snow, and much more. For the conservation snowball to become a daunting boulder a good understanding of the sources of political action are needed. Such knowledge is not innately mysterious or hard to come by, but much gets in the way. Conservationists too often:

Focus not on generating action but on the precursors to action.Focus too much on the cognitive and on education as transmission of knowledge.Fail to follow through when they have emotionally energized people by involving them in a community or organizational structure that can nurture their energy and sustain it.Do not understand or do not want to understand what causes decision makers to act.

Zeno and Conservation

Conservationists often aim not at instigating action, but at some intermediate point in a process that is supposed to lead, in some vague way, to action. If loving Nature leads to action, and experiencing Nature causes people to love Nature, then conservationists focus on hiking programs. The other elements that determine whether or not people act – the need for constant encouragement, the overwhelming importance of collective reinforcement in sustaining action, the role of organization – are never addressed. Similarly, conservationists sometimes treat lobbying like the unmet demand for contraception. If one provides information, states a preferred outcome along with some poll numbers, things will work out. In the case of contraception there is often a preexisting motivation, but for most objects of lobbying the motivation must be provided.

In each of these instances conservationists become trapped like Zeno’s hypothetical arrow; they only get half of the rest of the way toward their goal. In the case of instigating action, there is often no understanding of the need for creating a conservation community – something which has empowered many other movements.

Conservationists may limit their activities to those short of directly generating political action because it is less risky. Action can create controversy. Action draws the attention of sometimes powerful and violent opponents. Whatever the reasons, There is a lack of recognition that half-steps will not stop extinctions. Action can run contrary to some countries’ laws that limit the political activities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have charitable tax status – a status many rely on to raise funds.

Education and Emotion

The focus of conservation NGOs on education as provision of knowledge is not just a reflection of tax laws but of a pervasive belief that if people are given good information they will do the right thing; they will act rationally in their long-term interests and with generosity toward the natural world. Those conservationists trained in the natural sciences seem particularly susceptible to this Enlightenment predisposition. But the predisposition often goes beyond faith in the cognitive and the notion that people reason through issues and act accordingly. Perhaps they regard appeals to emotion as inherently manipulative – the province of the wealth and power driven. Perhaps it reflects living in one’s own head too much. Ted Brader (2005: 21–3) reports that political scientists share this problem: they acknowledge the importance of emotion in political behavior but don’t study it, whereas political practitioners hold political action to be essentially emotional and operate on that basis. Certainly many scientists have an abhorrence of irrational behavior, a reticence about delving into the emotional which is often identified as irrational, and a faith that people learn from their mistakes. Yet there is little support for such faith. Often enough people’s emotions are irrational. In the United States, for example, 19% of Americans believe they are among the richest 1% of the population and another 20% believe they will be in that 1% some day (John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, 2004: 307–8). Most who believed the Bush administration’s misrepresentations about Iraq’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks and possession of weapons of mass destruction, still believed them three years later, despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary (Steven Kull, 2004: 3–6). Just as some people fall in love with those who abuse them, sometimes repeatedly, so do people embrace and make excuses for political leaders who ill-serve them. If people can’t get basic economic self-interest or security issues right, are they likely to get ecology right based on emotion?

Good information might be of help if bad information caused irrational emotions or bad political choices. But it does not; bad information, emotions ungrounded in reality, and bad decisions have a common cause. This is why proffering and even instilling more accurate views of the human impact on the natural world has not paid off with commitment and action as anticipated.

As we will see a range of views about reality and a range of values can contribute to the actions conservationists desire and conservationists are most successful when they can work across a range of beliefs. People may act to save a species, protect a wilderness area, have small families, and limit consumption because they are ecocentric, theocentric, and for a variety of anthropocentric reasons including aesthetics, quality of life, humility, a love of wilderness solitude or recreation, and so on. Few people, however, who chose to have one or no children do so because they have “correctly” reasoned that another human life in a developed country adds yet another straw to the camel’s back. Reproductive decisions are usually associated with the quality of one’s own childhood experience, peer pressure, calculations concerning the cost of children, the existence and desirability of other options besides motherhood, which are related to self-esteem, selfishness, and attitudes toward birth control (Laurie Mazur, 1994: 111–299; Alan Durning and Christopher Crowther, 1997).

Thus, although the natural world is real and operates as it does regardless of what we believe to be true, people’s views of how the world works need not be strictly accurate in order to give rise to desirable action. It is not necessary to understand evolutionary biology to act to protect a species, though clearly it informs how to achieve protection. People often work hard to conserve a place without understanding its biological value. Indeed, humans are seldom in possession of complete knowledge about the world around them and so fill in the gaps. Whether one avoids lightning because it’s lethal or one is frightened by Zeus’s anger makes little practical difference if people are similarly motivated to stay off hilltops.

Not all views similarly motivate, however. Elizabeth Barber and Paul Barber (2004: 13) observed that people are predisposed to explanations for events that are both deterministic and purposive. Such explanations are more economical than the usually more complicated reality. Deborah Keleman (1999: 283–9) noted that both children and adults use their own intentionality as a model to explain causality in the larger world. Most observers of human thought and behavior, she goes on to say, see this approach as so widespread because it is adaptive. Though literally mistaken, it organizes experience in a functionally successful way. A central feature in most religions is a purposeful god(s) or Nature and this has caused some believers to reject biological evolution because of its random elements. But recall that Einstein dismissed quantum mechanics with the statement that god does not play dice with the universe.

Of course mistaken views do create problems for people and society, but successful conservation depends on right action, not purity of motivation. Indeed, many of those who cannot accept that the universe lacks purpose increasingly evince strong support for conservation on the basis of their religious views. Conservationists who cut their teeth on Lynn White’s (1967) essay on Christianity and conservation may have a tough time with this, but if conservation is really the priority, then both the religious and nonreligious need to focus on conservation goals and not on perceived imperfections in each other’s world views and motives if they are immaterial to outcomes. Conservationists would do well to heed anthropologist Roy Rappaport (1974: 56, 1999) who observed that “(i)t is not merely that adaptive behavior may be associated with understandings which do not accurately reflect material conditions, but that some adaptive behavior may be elicited only by such understandings.” Marvin Harris (1974: 11–32) documents many instances of this as well.

Most people will reject factual information that seems to contradict their values or what they find meaningful, and that is worth keeping in mind. Neither conservationists nor scientists are immune from the effect of values, beliefs, and their emotional underpinnings on the acceptance of knowledge. Values, beliefs, and emotions do change, but less as a result of contrary knowledge than their failure in the face of generational change or values and emotional orientations that are more functional. In the context of mobilization to address near-term issues it is inescapable that a wide variety of views must serve conservation. Grizzly habitat, for example, will more likely be protected for clean water and for fish than for the great bear. Beliefs and rational thought are for the most part after the fact justifications or strictly utilitarian, that is, in the service of securing emotionally determined goals. Critical thinking is rare.

The Russian psychologist Luria Vygotsky (1962: 150) wrote many decades ago that “Thought itself is engendered by motivation, that is, by our desires and needs, our interests and emotions. Behind every thought there is an affective-volitional tendency, which holds the answer to the last ‘why’ in the analysis of thinking.” More recently neurobiologists such as Antonio Damasio (1994, 1999) have demonstrated not only that human needs and emotions guide people, but that reason cannot function without them. The options people face, especially when making complex social decisions, are too great. Emotional filters, shaped by genome and experience, whittle the universe of options down to a few that conscious intellect can manage (Damasio 1994: 165–201). Even then emotions influence choice. That’s why successful advertising is aimed at the heart, not the cortex.

The conservation reticence to fully engage emotion in mobilization is ironic given that conservationists are so plainly motivated by their own passions. The conservation literature is full of passion and emotional epiphanies. Aldo Leopold’s (1987 [1949]: 130) is a moving example: having shot an old wolf and her pups because fewer wolves meant more deer, he approaches to finish the job, only to see a fierce green fire fade in the dying wolf’s eyes. He realized in that wolf’s eyes “something known only to her and the mountain.” That something encompassed a more profound and larger view of life than more deer for human hunters. For Mike Harcourt, the former British Columbian Premier who created many protected areas, the moment came when he visited an enormous clear-cut in the heart of Vancouver Island. It looked to him like a massive bomb had exploded, leveling the great forest for miles around. Harcourt saw the wrongness of this intentional destruction and knew he had to try and stop it. Peter Illyn, the founder of Restoring Eden had a gentler epiphany: rising early one morning he saw through the mist an elk grazing near his tent. It is perhaps trite to say that Illyn saw the “miracle of the ordinary”: another creature breathing, eating, living; a creature so much like him, yet different, and no less remarkable. People see most deeply with their hearts.

The eminent biologist David Ehrenfeld (1979: 142, 224) noted that emotions have been around for many millions of years in the mammalian line and have been long tested; our “higher” cortical functions are much more recent and still an evolutionary experiment. Rachel Carson (1984: 24) argued that “it is not half so important to know as to feel.” It is our emotions that connect us to others, and to our selves. Our needs – for survival (food, shelter, and sex), for love and belonging, for making sense of the world – impel us to meet them. Our reflexes, our pleasure/pain responses and our emotions fit us to the world in ways most likely to meet our needs based on evolutionary experience. Only by touching people at this level will they be moved to act on behalf of the Earth and all of its life.

When conservationists do use emotion in their campaigns it is often to good effect. But frequently campaigns demonstrate a superficial understanding of emotions. Fear is a powerful motivator, as governments and political candidates know. Both regularly and successfully use fear to mobilize support or draw attention away from their own weaknesses and misdeeds. Conservation has been less successful for a number of reasons: they have sometimes overstated or exaggerated threats and industry has pounced on the slightest error or misprognostication, undermining conservationist credibility; threats to biodiversity, unlike threats to human health from polluted air and water, are not experienced by most people as salient; fatigue sets in, especially if the threat is distant in time or place or emotional ties to the natural world are weak or absent.

Conservationists often appeal to people’s concerns for their progeny. Certainly most people express great concern for the lives of their children and grandchildren, but psychiatrist Harold Searles (1979) has questioned reliance on these statements. He argues that given the level of human inaction and apathy in the face of biological meltdown, people do not hold their children in such high regard. They are not willing to sacrifice to give them a better world, in part because they resent their own parents for passing on a world of problems. Certainly there is some corroboration for this view in the United States where increasingly education and similar services are underfunded.

In later chapters we will devote significant space to how conservationists can make better use of emotion to reconnect people with the natural world and each other and motivate more committed action.

Conservation as a Tease

It is the rare conservationist who has not attended a conference or other meeting where some inspiring speaker thoroughly excited hundreds of people, priming them to act. Invariably members of the audience ask the speaker what they can do, only to hear vague and general answers. Write a check. Fill out this form, so we can inundate you with pleas for money and the occasional request to send a postcard or letter to an official. The crowd goes home, and in the noise and distraction of day-to-day life, the positive energy dissipates. Meanwhile the subdivision and strip mall developers, and oil drillers are highly energized and organized. Conservationists have failed to involve people in a setting that sustains sympathizers’ energy and commitment. Doing so requires creating a home for the whole person. It requires facilitating the creation of a conservation community and organization that involves people on a regular basis over time.

Except for a small portion of conservationists – professional staff and committed volunteers – there is no conservation community. Most NGO members live lives in which their social networks have little or nothing to do with conservation, important events and rituals have little or nothing to do with conservation, conservation is not routinely celebrated, nor its value routinely experienced. There exists no conservation equivalent of Black churches or White universities that provided the substrate for the thick webs of friendship and mutual support that sustained commitment in the US civil rights movement. Within the movement people made friends, met their spouses, socialized and relaxed together, shared risks, disappointments and euphoria, and found common meaning. The web of relationships contributes enormously to making a cause central in people’s lives. That’s because relationships and the venues that support them meet people’s needs, just as conservation meets the need for meaning. When these needs are intertwined the ties that bind are strengthened.

Organization is also critical to sustaining, building, and deepening commitment to political action. Apartheid was not brought down with organizations of check writers and postcard signers. Nor did such people bring down the Berlin Wall, create strong unions, achieve suffrage, or topple corrupt leaders. Organizations of check writers and postcard signers will neither halt the extinction crisis nor slow climate change. Broad-based and strong political organizations will do that. Organizations that have a place for all of those who become excited hearing a speech for the first time and want to do more. Organizations that involve people regularly and nurture their involvement. When people are left hanging, when their contact is a quarterly newsletter or even a glossy monthly, they are not drawn to greater involvement and they are not available down the road when they are needed.

The reality is that getting involved in politics is not most people’s idea of a good time. Most of them need strong encouragement to act politically (or to act to restore an ecosystem or boycott a product) and consistent reinforcement to sustain action. By involving people in regular activity and making an organizational place for them encouragement and reinforcement can be provided, relationships built, and reticence about taking action overcome. People gain experience and mutual trust. The activities in which people are involved do not need to be directly political, for example, monthly visits to the state capital or quarterly rallies, or regular visits to a local wetland to cull exotics. They can be social or educational activities. The purpose is that they involve and make people part of the organization in a way writing a check usually does not. People are then available for political action when the time comes.

One approach to organization is to organize the already organized – those who are self-conscious and have political experience and clout. They bring more to the table than the unorganized although more of an investment is required to bring them to conservation. On balance the investment pays off more than organizing the merely sympathetic.

Science and Crassness

Many conservationists believe or want to believe that decision makers, at least elected officials in democracies, are responsive to scientific findings and otherwise persuadable by reasoned arguments. They are shocked when non-science (non-sense) or pseudoscience holds sway (Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, 1997; Todd Wilkinson, 1998). They should not be shocked. Politics operates by a different rationality – one that is focused on getting and keeping power (Johns, 2000: 226–8). Politicos are concerned with the substance of policy in a few areas that are priorities for them, but their position in these areas is usually consonant with their more powerful supporters – that is often the basis for successful campaigns. When scientific findings support a policy position being backed they will certainly be cited; if not, they will be ignored, denigrated, or the “tobacco company doctors” rolled out in support. Science does find a receptive audience when elected officials genuinely care about problem solving. As with other audiences, if a legislator values the natural world the science important to protecting it will be valued. Science can also play a pivotal role in a crisis or when decision makers are closely divided. Scientific findings or lobbying by prominent and high-profile scientists can provide one more hook to put one’s position over the top. Scientific findings are more often probative before courts and before agencies in some circumstances.

An old proverb provides useful direction to conservationists: good does not triumph over evil because it is good but because it is strong. That’s the reason for this book.

There are other problems within the conservation movement that limit its effectiveness and are within the power of NGOs to change. Dependence on foundation largess limits organizations in many ways: many foundations are conservative and action-averse or seek to set recipients’ agendas; being a tax-exempt entity limits political action; and foundation support in total is inadequate to support a movement of the size and strength needed. Ultimately the most reliable support is self-funding. That’s a different book.

Increased effectiveness also depends on conservationists’ understanding of what they are up against. In politics illusions about opponents can be mortal. We turn to that now.

2

Them: inertia, inequality, and propaganda

In the affairs of this world men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.

Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac (1987 [1732]: 37)

It must be remembered of course that good will ... can be preserved in the long run only by those whose actions warrant it. But this does not prevent those who do not deserve good will from winning it and holding onto it long enough to do a lot of damage.

Edward Bernays, The Engineering of Consent (1947: 116)

In his 1999 documentary Free Speech for Sale, Bill Moyers tells the story of a North Carolina state representative who took on the hog industry. Businesswoman Cindy Watson was the first Republican elected to the state legislature from her district in decades. A supporter of economic development, she also took seriously the concerns of her ordinary constituents when they told her that huge hog farms were making their lives miserable. Massive factory farms were spraying hog waste on crops, poisoning groundwater used for drinking and causing high levels of airborne ammonia that made breathing difficult. To address this she sought to change a state law that had years before removed the power of counties to zone hog operations, and to have air and water quality laws enforced. The industrial hog farmers reacted. Wendell Murphy – owner of Murphy Family Farms (a billion-dollar operation) and a former state legislator who had pushed the hog farm zoning exemption into law – along with several cohorts created a political front group called “Farmers for Fairness”. They did this because they knew messages directly identified with the hog farmers would be discounted as self-serving. The industrial hog farmers launched a saturation media campaign attacking Watson’s integrity, defeating her in the Republican primary.

Many, many years before Cindy Watson confronted the marriage of campaign cash and mass media, Rachael Carson experienced a concerted effort by industry to suppress her book, Silent Spring. When the chemical industry learned of the book, they sought to stop its publication by threatening the publisher with economic injury. When that failed, the industry trade group doubled its public relations (PR) budget, formed front groups (like Farmers for Fairness), and recruited supposedly independent scientists and doctors to counter her claims. Silent Spring was published nonetheless, and changed the world by helping to create the modern environmental movement. In other cases, industry has been more successful, such as when Dupont persuaded Book-of-the-Month Club to break its contract and rescind its selection of Gerard Zilg’s history of the family and its corporation. Industry-hired PR firms have infiltrated groups to spy on and disrupt critics by spreading rumors, sowing dissension among them, and making threats (John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, 1995). They have undertaken attacks on character, put pressure – sometimes successfully – on people’s employers, and sabotaged the efforts of people to promote views contrary to the interests of the wealthy and powerful. Powerful interests routinely create phony “grassroots” groups (insiders call their creations astro-turf groups) to mislead the public and hide who is funding and supporting the campaigns. They spend huge amounts of money not to compete on the merits but to dominate the debate and drown the opposition.

Campaigns aimed at manipulating the public agenda do not stop with spending huge sums and mild forms of coercion. We will deal with the exercise of power in the next chapter. Here our focus is on the obstacles conservationists face in the cultural arena: the vastly greater resources opponents of conservation can employ to neutralize or overcome conservation mobilization and the capacity and willingness of opponents to use nondemocratic techniques to shape how important groups in society see the world and interpret their experience. A focus on the cultural arena does not limit us to the media or worldviews; the cultural is entwined with economic and political power. Most media operations are businesses; governments routinely engage in controlling and spinning information, issuing disinformation, and much more. Even though powerful interests are able to influence or dictate the rules of the game, they seldom hesitate to break the law when it suits them.

Cultural Inertia

Human social arrangements tend to reproduce themselves and this includes people’s view of the world. Change is incremental most of the time and existing relationships with Nature appear as the only possible way of relating to it. Overcoming this usually nonconscious acceptance takes great energy; a systemic crisis is often required to open opportunities for change.

Over the last 12,000 years, human population growth and growth in per capita consumption – both of which are directly related to loss of biodiversity and wildlands – have been the norm and are mostly seen as desirable. At the beginning of the Neolithic age, there were about 10 million people on Earth. It took from our emergence as a species to about 1820 to reach 1 billion. Today, at 6.6 billion, it takes us only 14 years to add a billion. Only 20% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface outside of Antarctica is relatively untouched (Eric Sanderson et al., 2002) and only 4% of the ocean (Benjamin Halpern et al., 2008). Even though many recognize that human-caused changes are at the root of many problems, the pervasive human presence is taken for granted. Although many developing countries in the most recent century have sought to slow growth, the United States issued a major report in the early 1970s calling for population stabilization at 200 million (Commission on Population and the American Future, 1972), and there are many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) trying to address the issue, there is no strong awareness that reducing human numbers significantly is likely to be necessary to maintain ecological health and biodiversity or to ensure healthy human populations.

Human reproductive urges and security needs certainly are important drivers of population, but population growth has strong cultural and social components. Decisions about fertility are usually made for personal reasons (influenced by the cultural and social); policy decisions likewise tend to focus on the parochial rather than the ecological. High fertility is closely associated with high levels of childhood mortality and other forms of insecurity, which produce cultural prohibitions against birth control, divorce, abortion, or women undertaking roles other than mother (Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, 2004: 233). Economic motives become enshrined in cultural directives ensuring, for example, that there are children to provide agricultural labor and old age support for parents. Children help allay parents’ fear of death by providing a kind of immortality (Sheldon Solomon et al., 2004) (Kasser et al., 2004). Children also provide needy parents with objects for control and vicarious living (Christopher Lasch, 1978). The economically powerful have often favored a rapidly growing population because it keeps the price of labor down while allowing for expanded production. Migration can fuel fertility. Ethnic and political competition can generate high birth rates, especially when leaders encourage high fertility or reward it. Ancient and modern states have encouraged high fertility because armies need soldiers and economies need laborers (Bernard Van Praag, 2003; Partha Dasgupta, 2003; Peter McDonald, 2003).

Growth in the human footprint is also due to increasing consumption per capita, which has skyrocketed with the capture of much higher energy subsidies. Personal striving plays a major role here as well. The Neolithic brought a marked decline in nutrition and health from hunting and gathering days (Marshall Sahlins, 1972; Marvin Harris, 1975: 233–55; Richard Steckel and Jerome Rose, 2002); not until well into the modern period did nonelites recover pre-Neolithic stature and nutrition. Since the Neolithic, the vast majority have struggled to escape poverty and billions still do. Much of the world wants to consume like Americans. Consumption is also status driven (Grahame Clark, 1986; Andre Gorz, 1980). For some, there is never enough. Adam Smith (1976 [1759]: 50–1) noted that although wealth gives great power of many sorts – control over goods, over the labor of others, over political and military machines – “(t)he rich man glories in his riches because he feels they naturally draw upon him the attention of the world. At the thought of this, his heart seems to swell and dilate itself within him, and he is fonder of his wealth on this account, than for all the other advantages it procures him.” Status is not just an elite phenomenon, however. Consumption is also strongly linked to fear of mortality, and if available is preferred to children and religion (Sheldon Solomon et al., 2004) (Kasser et al., 2004). Consumption, like belief in immortality, building monuments, or having children, is used to assuage the “terror” associated with awareness of death. Their research shows that consumption increases with awareness of mortality. This relationship is not modern, as the story of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, attests.

The acquisition of goods and so-called wealth is not just personal, but built into the organization of societies. The institutions that organize the division of labor, allocate resources, govern, maintain order, and interact with other societies in war, trade, and peace must be fed. To be stronger than other groups in society or stronger than another society not only gives access to more wealth but also requires more wealth. Probably no form of social organization in human history has been primarily organized around getting wealth than modern capitalism and its imitators (communism or state capitalism as some called it). It is now the globally dominant system, based on the European conquest of much of the world, and does not tolerate alternatives (David Abernathy, 2000; Robert Beil, 2000; Sharon Beder, 2006). It has produced and sustained a series of cultural beliefs embraced by many. John Locke (2003 [1689]: 111–9) believed that human happiness depended on the domination of Nature. David Ehrenfeld (1979) has ably documented the faith that emerged with modern capitalism: endless progress based on the human ability to solve all problems with technology or changes in social organization and the limitlessness of the material world to supply human wants. Progress as growth has found support in religious doctrine (Carolyn Merchant, 1980; David Noble, 1997). Modern economics holds that economies are closed systems, that is, not meaningfully connected to the natural world and physical law; this is metaphysical hocuspocus under a cover of complex math, not science (Robert Nadeau, 2006: 102–23, 135–45). These views both rationalize the pursuit of wealth and serve as a cultural impetus, providing support for its goodness and rightness. Such views reflect the military power and wealth that growth has conveyed on some groups and societies. For those victimized by this system, growth seems the only way out.

Countervailing views persist. Lao-tzu, William Blake, Henry Thoreau, and countless others who have not attained a dominant historical voice have remained connected to the pulse of life and inspire others. Some societies reject or seek to tame cowboy capitalism. The culture ministers from the developed countries – hardly a subversive group – have expressed major concerns that language, art, and other aspects of distinctive cultures could be destroyed by unrestrained markets (Anthony DePalma, 1998: E1). Only a small minority, albeit articulate and growing, has voiced such concerns about the effects of growth and markets on biodiversity (Brian Czech, 2000; Richard Tucker, 2000; Herman Daly and Joshua Farley, 2004; Robert Nadeau, 2006). The great irony of the last 12,000 years of biologically destructive growth is that “early hunters and plant collectors enjoyed luxuries that only the richest” enjoy today, and “worked far fewer hours for their sustenance” (Marvin Harris, 1977: x).

David and Goliath

Enormous political and economic inequality marks virtually all extant societies. Some groups command enormous resources; these resources enable them, over long periods of time, to mold mythology, inculcate values and control information directly or through the state. Powerful groups in the United States, for example, have helped to make pervasive the story that Americans are a chosen people, destined to impose civilization on unenlightened peoples (Richard Hughes, 2003). In the short term, the resources of these groups enable them to frame and reframe public debates for their benefit. The Bush administration’s Healthy Forest Restoration Act became law in part because its supporters had the resources to overwhelm the voices of critics. Supporters’ false claims that the bill didn’t involve ecologically destructive activities such as logging of old growth or in roadless areas could not be effectively challenged (Jacqueline Vaughn and Hannah Cortner, 2005).