In the Camp of the Luddites

On my way in to register at Judd Hall, I
passed a large sign that read in dramatic fonts: “One climate, one
future, one chance!” The
organizers seemed to be taking themselves quite seriously. Perhaps that
is why
I didn’t balk when they charged me $20 to register at the door. I will
admit that I tried my best
to get the fee waived — due to my revolving status as a student,
member of the
press, and intermittently unemployed layabout. But they would have none
of it. Progressives in Vermont may have bleeding hearts when it
comes to inanimate objects like the trees, soil, and water, but they
are as
hard-hearted (and tight-fisted) as the most frugal of conservatives.

After getting my name tag, I grabbed a
coffee and went
inside to the exhibition hall to look around at the different
information
booths before going off to find the formal workshops. I saw all kinds
of people walking around. They were all here: The requisite dazed
hippie in tie-dyed
shirt and Rastafarian hat; the Guatemalan pants and Andean wool sweater
crowd;
the unshaven, knobby-knuckled young activists in the Carhart pants; the
idealistic pretty young things from Hanover high school; the university
student activists from Johnson State College;
the graduate students in environmental sciences; and a member
of the Windham County Genetic Engineering Action Group.  There was also
one solitary, disheveled anti-war activist who said little and on my
way out of the first workshop, I met two guys
from Boston in expensive
outdoor (technical) clothing who drove up for the day because they were "concerned about the environment."

Throughout the day, I also spotted a tall, long-haired hippie
who stalked the hallways and cafeteria holding several yellow, anti-nuke signs. His
counter-part  seemed to also be there: An aging hippie grandmother hawking
tie-dyed anti-nuclear T-shirts for $20 or $30 — or "whatever you felt was fair." (see Image, right).

But despite the crunchy diversity, all of these
people were united
by their desire to “do something” about the environment in order to
save the
planet. They all wanted to be saviors. And as I listened to them speak
in
different sessions throughout the day, I was amused by the gosh-darn
earnestness of some of the participants. These people may be seriously
confused about
the proper role of public policy in a free society, I thought to
myself, but at least they were sincere about their environmental
concerns.

* * *

The conference program itself offered a wide variety of
sessions from which to choose. I could attend a workshop on effective public speaking lead by VPIRG’s executive director Paul Burns; or I could learn how to plan a rally from energetic young
rabble-rousers from around the state. State Rep. Floyd Nease (currently House
Majority Leader) spoke about what the environmental left can do to pass
state-level action against global warming; Chris Williams, of the Citizens
Awareness Network, and two other nuclear safety activists spoke about Vermont
Yankee’s ongoing problems and its expected demise; Carl Etnier, director of
Peak Oil Awareness, lead a discussion on declining oil production and the
disruptive effects this will have on US food supplies; Jon Groveman of the
Vermont Natural Resources Council spoke of the over-consumption and degradation
of Vermont’s groundwater; Les Blomberg, founding executive director of the
Noise Pollution Clearinghouse (NPC) in Montpelier, spoke about the threat posed
by community quarries; and VPIRG’s environmental health advocate Charity
Carbine spoke of the nefarious presence of toxic cleaners and pesticides at
home and in our state’s schools. 

Those were just a few of the 27 different workshops offered
— more than enough to leave me feeling like a nervous wreck at the end of the
day. There seemed to be threats lurking around every corner and in every home!

In fact, after listening to different speakers — they were
actually
called “facilitators” here — and browsing through the material
available at the
information booths, I began to see why so many environmentalists are
less than joyous about the world. There was information about the
evils of clothes-drying machines and the sins of drinking bottled
water. One
person spoke to me about the dangers of household cleaning products,
while
another gave me pamphlets about the crisis of affordable housing and
the
disaster of US health care. There was even a pile of information about
the
pollution problems caused by simply driving over 55 mph — right next
to a booth
on the problems caused by driving itself!

Water, cars, light bulbs, detergents,
you name it. Nothing seemed to be
off-limits. At the end of the day, I had what felt like several pounds
worth of
informational material. (I thought about asking how many trees went
into
producing all that material but didn’t want to be a smart-aleck.) The
material
seemed to address everything in my life not already taxed by the IRS,
monitored by state agencies or controlled by federal law. The message
to me was clear: Where the government fails to
control and regulate people sufficiently, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and non-profits are
only too willing to step in.

* * *

I spent most of the day drifting in and out of workshops. At
my first workshop, titled “The Art of Executing
a Great Event” and attended by over 30 people, I heard speakers
explain how to plan events, target audiences, and identify “contingencies.” A
paper handout recommended that activists have weekly meetings and regular
communiqués with their cadres in order to maintain “momentum.” The two main
facilitators of this workshop were
Katey Gordon and Will
Bates. Interestingly, Bates was co-organizer — along with Middlebury College professor, and environmental activist Bill
McKibben — of the national “Step It Up!”
campaign earlier this year, which called for immediate federal action on global
warming. Gordon, however, in particular, caught my attention
because she said she had just spent some time at a retreat at the Blue Mountain Center in upstate New York.

I used to date a girl who worked at the Center and I know
something about it. Though not advertised as such, the Blue Mountain Center is a notorious, left-wing Adirondack lodge used to provide radical artists, progressive writers, and other left-wing
activists with a place to work away from normal, day-to-day distractions. (It’s
local analogue is the Kopkind Colony in Guilford.)
The founding director of the Center is Harriet
Barlow, co-founder of the progressive
Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis and trustee of the Harold K. Hochschild Foundation,
which had $30 million in assets in 2002. (The latter organization has given
millions to all sorts of progressive and left-wing groups throughout the US and Canada.)
I’ve even been told that Barlow once made a face after seeing
a picture of me wearing an American flag patch on the sleeve of my ski jacket.

I chose to check out the “Anyone Can Run” workshop as well.
There were only four people in the audience. A young man named Matt from Howard Dean’s
Democracy for America spoke first. He talked about the
importance of setting ideas down on paper (“if it is not written down, it
doesn’t exist”); he emphasized the need for strategic fund-raising (“the
candidate is always the best fund-raiser”); he spoke wistfully of a future in
which all campaigns will be publicly-financed; and he questioned the usefulness
of yard-signs (“the people who decide based on yard signs generally don’t
vote”). 

During young Matt’s closing,
he spoke about the fundamental importance of involvement — in anything. “Get
involved and join local civics committee, any group that you can,” he said. “Be
visible, be out there, get name recognition, build up your name … [and] think
about the kind of viral effect you can have.” (That is good advice for all of
us, actually.) 

Newly-elected State Rep. Christopher Bray
(New Haven, Addison County) spoke next. He described
his successful campaign against Harvey Smith, a four-term incumbent
(with a Vermont family going back 100 years) and member of the House
Agriculture Committee.
Though the margin of victory wasn’t great, Bray said his personal visit
to the
home of almost every voter in his district — he visited 1,351 houses,
representing 90% of his district — certainly helped. (This is
something Senator Bernie Sanders does as well, to great effect.) Bray also echoed young Matt’s
earlier comments about participation. He told the audience to participate — in anything. “Step up and
see what will happen,” he urged. “It’s all just about participation.” Another
way of saying this, I thought to myself, is “You’ve got to play to win!”
(something many of us have forgotten).

I attended several other workshops but, aside from
hearing over and over again about the ills of nuclear power, the perils
of carbon emissions, and the environmental damage caused by the
excesses of capitalism, feel I got little out of them. One underlying
theme, however, was the importance of participation and involvement in
our respective communities — a message that was hammered into
participants in all the workshops (and an area where the progressives
in Vermont have really trounced the rest of us).

* * *

Later on, when I got home, tired and a bit numb
from the full-day conference, I began
to look at all the informational material I had brought home.  Reading a bit more, I noticed that there was an underlying theme which seemed to unite
all the groups I had met in Randolph and helped explain their negative view about, well, nearly
everything. In the words of another writer, they were all progressives
against progress. 

In one small, yellow pamphlet given out
by the Vermont Peak Oil Network, I came across a passage that is
particularly representative of all the groups I had met. The pamphlet
is a small introduction to the
“triple-crisis of civilization” — that is, energy, climate change, and
population growth. The pamphlet praises the work of
18th century political economist Thomas Malthus who first advanced the alarmist
notion that the exponential growth of human populations would eventually
outstrip food supplies, leading to global crises. Another passage refers to
another now-discredited book, The Population Bomb (1968) by scare-monger Paul
Ehrlich. His main thesis was that population growth would become unsustainable
and that the drain on resources would force the long-term price of all
commodities to rise inexorably.

But in fact, Ehrlich’s thesis was disproved quite easily in
the 1980s when the [now deceased] economist Julian Simon famously won a bet
arguing that, in the long-run, the price (in real dollars) of commodities has
tended to go down (not up). The reason is a combination of factors including
improved extraction and harvesting methods, increased technological
sophistication, and just plain old human ingenuity. These are the material
benefits and technological innovations that the progressive Left fails to see
and that the environmental movement refuses to anticipate. 

Simon once told me during a phone interview that the problem with
most environmental activists — and, by extension, the progressive Left in
Vermont — is that they are steeped in Malthusian thinking, motivated by
Ehrlich’s alarmism, and seemingly ignorant of the fact that every new human
being is not just a consumer of current resource levels, but also a potential
future producer as well. (Thus, Simon called human beings the “ultimate
resource.”) 

From the looks of things at the conference in Randolph,
the environmental Left continues to be inspired by Malthus and Ehrlich. This is deeply troubling — not only because of the
command-and-control policies that progressives in Vermont seems to advocate but
also because during the 20th century, neo-Malthusian thinking has been used to
justify the most horrific types of population control efforts (including forced
sterilizations and the infamous "Eugenics Survey" in Vermont between 1927 and
1931). 

I think the most important thing I
learned at the conference is
that the environmental Left in Vermont is driven by a dangerous mindset
that rejects the idea of progress and wants to
turn the clock back to some idealized and highly stylized vision of a
bucolic America.
This vision, combined with an enviable zeal for activism, if left
unguided and
unchecked, will continue to spread virally (and with great vigor)
throughout Vermont. Unfortunately, it is a vision that is shared by a
wide variety of groups, which form an
intricate network of overlapping environmental organizations,
foundations, and
associations crisscrossing towns throughout Vermont and around New
England. It is this progressive network — this infrastructure of
the counter-culture, if you will — that is their fundamental strength. 

But there is no reason why those groups
should be the only
ones to benefit from the strength of networks and collaborative
relationships
(and, similarly, there is no reason why they should also have a
monopoly over
concern for the environment). Those of us who love rural Vermont — and
who believe in the ingenuity of man, the benefits of free enterprise,
and
the possibility of progress — just need to work a little bit harder to
make
ourselves heard.

This article originally appeared in the Vermont Tiger.

Alvino-Mario Fantini