You have to be registered with the New York Times to see this, but here's the gist. When you ask a general audience, including audiences of college students, to free associate with the word "environmentalist," they come back with a litany of synonyms for "extremist." Good brainwashing job done over the last 20 years by the hard right -- but it's a reality that must be dealt with, as McKibben says.
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The election results may not have been the only reason they have struck a nerve. Other nagging concerns abound, like worries about the effect of repeated defeats on morale and concerns about image; a recent survey conducted for the Nature Conservancy suggested that the group use the term "conservationist" rather than "environmentalist."
"To a large extent, most of us in the environmental movement think most people agree with us," said Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the author of "The End of Nature," a 1989 book on global warming.
But Mr. McKibben, who called Mr. Shellenberger and Mr. Nordhaus "the bad boys of American environmentalism," said their data showed that the kind of political support the movement had in the late 1970's had come and gone. "The political ecosystem is as real as the physical ecosystem so we might as well deal with it," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/national/06enviro.html?ex=1108357200&en=2eca4f92ee78a493&ei=5070
Posted by Dave at February 7, 2005 09:56 AM