Survival first, ideals later

So what's your reaction when you hear something about an environmental protest? \nDo you picture braying radicals chaining themselves to trees? How about masses of glory-eyed alternative youths marching for nature and hoping to get arrested so they can become the next Seattle 7? Do you imagine the kids that used to get pushed into their lockers in high school donning hemp armor and crusading for Mother Earth? Do you ever actually stop and see what it's all about or do you just get kind of annoyed and litter to spite them?\nEnvironmentalism has some serious image problems. The civil rights and war protests that these crusaders are emulating were designed to focus awareness on the protesters themselves. Conducting the environmental movement in that style has drawn all the attention off environmental issues and placed the environmentalists in the spotlight.\nThe environmental cause is its own thing and needs its own approach. \nPromoting environmental awareness ought to be easy. Who in the world, aside from Monty Burns, is actually against clean air, clean land, clean water and sustainable resource use (so as not to run out of things we need)? Doesn't it make sense to focus energy on these central issues without attaching them to all the liberal dogma that forces them out of the moderate mainstream? \nNot to say there aren't forces working against these basic survival necessities. The first casualty of greedy, power-hungry people has tended to be the environment. Still though, environmentalists must reduce their categorically adversarial relationship with government and business. The goal should be to change, through government, the framework in which business operates. Environmental responsibility and sustainability should simply be factored into any business proposal from the start.\nTo get this accomplished would mean making environmentalism into a contributing subculture, rather than a counter-culture. Environmental consultants and experts from government agencies and universities should be the representatives of the movement. Doctors don't send crowds of teenagers armed with placards to deal with plagues, do they? Environmental organizers should make more of an effort to present a moderate face to the public. \nThe issues of environmentalism are broad and vague to most people and seem disconnected from their lives. It's difficult to imagine all that trash piling up since we only see our piece of it. It's difficult to really grasp how driving to work affects global climate change. So much of it seems like it's just part of the system and out of our hands. Environmentalists need to find more respectable voices to explain how irresponsible environmental practices affect the security and quality of people's lives and what they can do over time to change things for the better. \nBy no means am I suggesting giving up passions or ideals. By concentrating first on the most essential and moderate of environmental issues, the movement could get up enough strength to really take a seat at the table. Deep ecology has profound implications for every facet of our lives, it is true, but first we have to get a foot in the door. We can argue ideals after we've met our basic survival needs.