Dan Dagget's solution is simple - too simple
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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.
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.
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