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The Environmental Studies Association of Canada (ESAC) is
putting out a promotions newsletter aimed at environmental
activists outside the universities. I was asked to write an
article, encouraging environmental activists to join ESAC. The
article is posted below. To contact ESAC, write:
esac@cousteau.uwaterloo.ca
David Orton
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A n o t h e r V i e w
Do activists need ESAC?
I am writing from the perspective of someone who is not employed
(or wanting to be employed) by a university, and who is a full-time
environmental activist. I have been a member of the Environmental Studies
Association of Canada since I first heard about it shortly after its
formation. I joined because of the potential for intellectual stimulation
from kindred souls. Also, I joined in order to bring my own endeavours to
the attention of others who may have some interest in what I do, in left
biocentric environmental work and philosophy. From my own personal
viewpoint, and as an activist, at the present time ESAC is more promise
than reality. But I think there is a lot of promise.
More generally, "studying" the environment, the work of
"environmental studies", needs to be linked with defending the environment.
It was Marx who pointed out a long time ago, "The philosophers have only
interpreted the world, the point however is to change it." Unfortunately,
when one lives in a society based on a model of continual economic growth
and increasing consumerism, studying the environment often has to do with
further exploiting Nature, although perhaps in a less reckless way than in
the past. It was the deep ecologist and university teacher John Livingston,
who in his 1981 book "The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation", pointed out
that environmental impact assessments are a "grandiloquent fraud" that
"anoint" and "bless" the process of so-called development. So, what we have
generally in "environmental studies" is managerial environmentalism in the
service of industrial capitalist society. This perspective is strongly
reflected, although perhaps unconsciously, in ESAC literature.
In 1995, at the Learned Societies Conference in Montreal,
co-sponsored by ESAC and the Society for Socialist Studies, I presented a
controversial discussion paper "Rethinking Environmental-First Nations
Relationships". At the time, this seemed an expensive indulgence quite
isolated from the real world. But it led to follow-up invitations to speak
in university clasrooms, e.g. the Dalhousie University School for Resource
and Environmental Studies on "Indigenous Peoples and Resource Issues", as
well as publishing opportunities in various movement magazines. But to be
honest, there was little expressed interest from ESAC in an issue they
apparently saw as an extremely hot potato. The Learneds, which ESAC seems
preoccupied with, is marginal to my life as an environmental activist.
What could ESAC provide to activists?
1- ESAC could provide a forum to overcome the intellectual
isolation of activists. It could provide for the exchange of ideas,
practical information, and philosophical examination. It could make known,
for example, practical information sources which can help in fighting
chemical herbicide or biological forestry spray programs; or good critiques
of industrial forestry operations, and where practical ecoforestry
alternatives are being practiced in Canada.
2- Activists need an independent scientific capacity. The present
situation is that the companies, and the governments which are in bed with
them, control the gathering and interpretation of data. Progressive
academics in the universities are needed to help with advice on the
scientific, legal, political, components of environmental struggles, e.g.
pulpmills, offshore oil and gas exploration and exploitation, chemically
contaminated land and marine sites. The advantage for university people is
having to deal with real problems, not just past or hypothetical ones.
Activists need to keep in mind that universities are there to perpetuate
industrial capitalist society, not subvert it. Graduate or senior students
can research real problems facing activists and make their results known to
activists. This can help break the "education for self advancement"
syndrome, commonplace in academia. Activists can be an alternative source
of information for university students, but for this to happen academics
have to reach out into the environmental community.
3- If there is to be an activist infusion into ESAC, then it needs
to be remembered that "environmental activist" is a much abused term.Within
the broad environmental movement, there are various theoretical tendencies
which have their counterparts in academia. ESAC should not be only a magnet
for government-funded environmentalists who have come to an accommodation
with industrial capitalist society.
This commentary is my way of supporting an outreach to encourage
environmental activists outside the universities to join ESAC.
- David Orton
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