Green days

From the State House agenda to the international global-warming summit in Japan, green is the fall political season's hottest color.

by Michael Crowley

September is growing old, and fall's orange and red foliage will soon appear. But don't be surprised if you're still seeing green for months to come.

Locally and nationally, environmental politics are hot. Important debates on clean air and global warming are raging in Washington, and Bill Clinton continues to flog the environment as one of the few issues that separate him from the GOP. In Massachusetts, the environment is a central element of the fall political season, from a battle over a tax to fund local conservation (See "Banking On the Land," page 20) to a deregulation of the state's electric utilities that would have major consequences for clean air as well as for electric rates. Meanwhile, both the good news about the cleanup of Boston Harbor and the bad news about chemical contamination of land and water around a General Electric complex in Pittsfield serve as reminders of the need to remain vigilant about the environment.

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What to watch for
Energy star

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Environmental politics have reached a new level of pervasiveness and strength at a time when the movement is in flux. One the one hand, Washington is now debating such sweeping changes as an international treaty on global warming. On the other hand, local activists are placing a new emphasis on community-based, ground-level activities that bear little resemblance to traditional environmentalism. But what is clear is that Americans continue to insist on strong environmental protection -- and the politicians are listening.

In the three decades or so since its inception in the US, the environmental movement has grown and changed considerably. It has left behind the theatrical stunts that defined its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s for high-powered lobbying and precision media skills. Even Greenpeace, the icon of traditional environmentalism, underwent a drastic restructuring this summer; it cut its budget by $10 million and closed chapters nationwide, including its Boston office. Although they are now powerful in both the public eye and the polls -- and revitalized after surviving a 1995 congressional assault -- enviros in 1997 are looking for different ways to move public opinion forward on a new range of issues.

"The environmental groups are having an internal self-examination on where their rhetoric and politics are going," says Gregg Easterbrook, a leading environmental author often critical of the movement. "They have to understand that the public is very weary of doomsday rhetoric."

From Washington to Roxbury, the way several pivotal issues on the national and local agendas play out in the coming months will shape the next stage of environmentalism. They will also have major implications for the way we treat our land, air, and water at the close of the century.

On to part 2

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.