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Show THE ZEPHYR/JUNE-JULY 2005 there will be shouting. “We're not going to take it any more.” There, put that on the wall where you see itevery day. Have a good trip, and please, don’t arrive at the oil patch in SUVs. Will they give the above a moments’s thought. Course not. Maybe a minute to frame a dismissal, then back to a meeting with power people. Never mind, there’s spectacular good news: the ivory billed woodpecker lives! During all those decades on the extinct list the great birds hung on, in an old growth swamp in Arkansas. The Department of Interior and the Nature Conservancy have already announced a big effort to protect and enhance their habitat. There’s a dark side too. Adventure tours will be formed and they will clamor for access, probably doing it right now, as we speak. Can Safari trophy hunters be far behind? Can you imagine a worse time for Ivory-bills to be rediscovered? An anti-environmental president sis at the helm; his entourage and handlers are, if anything, even more disdainful of nature. But I have to be optimistic. That swamp can be given a fighting chance; we can be civilized about it, we can be alert and insistent. Civilized, just what could that mean? Here’’s my red rock/granite mountain/ free-flowing rivers suggestion: A civilization would back off from putting a price on every thing, on every animal, on every experience. Let’s dare to say that our world has an infinite multitude of intrinsic values, meaning, in this discussion, not for sale, can’t be bought. Such as blue whales and ivory-billed woodpeckers, such as planting a garden, a walk in the desert. LOSING There's already too much cleverness out there, hyped up by offers of tote bags, coffee mugs, multipurpose carabiners, etc. Over-communicating, I'd say. So, sit back and take another run at the situation. The message is wrong. That's the problem. A wrong message can be framed and re-framed, but it's still the same old pathetic tote bag. SOLITUDE By Martin Murie VORY BILLED TRUTH They’re still doing it, enviro outfits consulting consultants. The latest attack of this ilment is described in a column by Amanda G. Little. (1) A year ago about 20 “national” armental groups got together at a conference center in Maryland to listen to George Lakoff istruct them in the art of “framing.” This framing specialty is, according to Little: purposeful use of concepts and language to recontextualize debates and change the way 1e public views an issue, or the world.” Translation: How to change citizens’ minds about omething. : Or, as American Rivers president Rebecka Wodder puts it, “We hired George to help us evelop a methodology for communicating more effectively.” The down payment for this arvice: “roughly” $ 350,000. The ultimate goal is envisioned as a “reframing initiative esigned to positively change public perception of the environmental movement.” Well, if you've read this far I’m tempted to bet you have a certain fleeting thought: “Why idn’’t they ask me. I’d give them an earful.” Same question crossed my mind, and that 350,000 is tempting, but I’d not want to be greedy. Besides, we varmentalists have to eware of getting sucked into the buying and selling vortex. It’s death, in there. I mean it. o, I’d do it for free, a page or two, at most. First thing, I’d advise them, get rid of this framing thing. It’s not a lack of cleverness in This suggestion looks simple-minded, but just think, if we don’t draw some kind of firm line like that, marketeers will bring in some miserable cost/benefit study (dollar quantities, oh yes, always) and, believe you me, it will always tip toward development, toward more control, toward profit. Addendum, on value: “We come from nature. We aren’t simply a part of it, as a fixture. Because nature is a story evolution of earth ... Nature is enemy, but more than that because of the complex intertwining of human enterprise with all the rest--the story. Therefore, it is a very narrow view that attributes value only to what humans choose to be compelled to bestow. Value can’t be segregated that way ... It’s a bit top down.” (2) Recently, Alison and I have heard an unusual number of sad tales of talented, politically sophisticated people suddenly “going over” to the consumer culture. Why? Searching for ommunicating with the citizens that’s the problem. There’s already too much clever hetoric out there, hyped up by offers of tote bags, coffee mugs, multipurpose carabiners, security in this hell-bent world. But isn’t there more to it than that? I think so. Imagine standing firm, defending the earth while an elevated express rushes by, day and night, tc. Over-communicating, I’d say. So, sit back and take another run at the situation. The nessage is wrong, that’s the problem. A wrong message can be framed and re-framed, but making a great racket year after year. Nearly everybody seems to be on board. Your raggedy activist minoriy status doesn’t look as interesting, as glamorous as it used to. In E will still be the same pathetic old tote bag. That’s for starters. Solution? Use the 350 thou as travel money. Take a tour, all of you sreen CEOs. Poke heir views. Listen ind Shell and the o ranchers, listen around cancer alley down in Louisiana, talk to people who live there, get to how they “conceptualize” their efforts to fight the likes of ExxonMobil other spewers of toxics into places where people live. Travel west, listen to oil and coal bed methane workers, loggers, miners. No, wait, hold on; ve don’t want any of you to even think these people have nothing to do with saving nature, etting rivers run free. Don’t even breathe that weird mantra that saving the spotted owl and yther denizens of old growth will have no effect on employment of humans in the forests, wr the rights of workers or the health of people. Just listen, okay? And so on, maybe one more page, and that’s it. All right, Ill take a dollar for the service, with this reminder: Before inventing new ways of communicating you have to have something interesting to communicate, a goal worth a fight. Bashing the Bushies is jefensive foreplay; it’s okay to do it, but by itself it’s just more blah blah and we’ve had mnough of that. Way more than enough. We’re up to here. We're getting to the place where ORDER SIGNED spite of all the rugged individualism you grew up with, that you consider a birthright, firmly you ... there is that yearning to be a part of society. Suddenly ... apparently these moves can happen almost overnight ... you jump on the elevated. It doesn’t have to be that way. We have not only a full right to citizenship, our full participation in our tribe is needed. I would say it is necessary, to insure the full panoply of views in the coming grand coalition of change. All it takes is a realization that there are many and diverse groups of citizens who think of themselves as sideliners. It's probably our own arrogance that keeps us from seeing them. We are not the only ones suffering from loneliness, alienation, a conviction that the elevated is leaving us behind, in limbo. Besides, where is our hard won evidence showing the contrary, that the elevated itself is in deep trouble? Have we forgotten that no one can walk a straight line through an ecosystem? Too much interplay there, its made of curvaceous secrets, interconnections we don’t even know about yet, and the ones we do know about are apt to change in unexpected ways. Chance seems to enter in, final certainty is beyond our powers. We are not in charge, we do not dominate COPIES DIRECT FROM MARTIN MURIE: LOSING SOLITUDE: cowtown....$14.95 A contemporary Western. Developers invade a Send your order to: MARTIN WINDSWEPT: Birdwatchers & a biker from Montana tangle with corporation extremists in Medicine Bow, Wyoming....$14.95 BURT’ S WAY: Environmentalists labeled ‘terrorists, keep a chuggin’ on the Quebec/New Y ork border...$12 RED TREE MOUSE CHRONICLES: Forest animals on assignment; What is the future of the forests? They turn activist.....$6.00 SERIOUSLY INSISTENT: 80 pages of activist critique...$7.00 Plus Postage---$2.20 for the first book, $1.00 for the second. PAGE8 MURIE 470 CR 12 North Bangor, NY 12966 oymoitell mene: sagehen@westelcom.com |
