Next Planet, Please

The environmental movement calls it a day

Chris Colin

20 May 2002

Surprising both longtime allies and adversaries, the environmental movement announced yesterday that it was sick of nature's indifference to its work, and would be wrapping things up Friday.

"We're not mad, we're just ... moving on," a movement spokesperson said. "We're going to buy some nice clothes and go spend a few months in the Bahamas. We hear drinks there are like 75 cents."


Former Greenpeace activists in the Bahamas.

Sources within the movement indicate that the apparently sudden development had in fact been a long time coming, and that the number of "bruised egos" in the various eco-groups was "astonishing."

"Fine, there are the earthquakes and the forest fires and the floods -- whatever," Kathryn Fuller, former president of the World Wildlife Fund, said, cleaning out her desk. "But when animals attack? I thought those elephants were supposed to be majestic and gentle."

Julie Montgomery, a longtime environmental activist and an amateur composter, recently rode her bicycle to a Toyota dealership in Minneapolis and bought an SUV.

"Sorry, I have feelings, too," she said while the service department finished her undercoatings. "Fifteen years devoted to the planet, and then it turns around and gives me poison oak all over my body. My whole body."

Movement leaders met in secret last week to discuss mounting frustration within the ranks. Feelings of confusion and even resentment were widespread at the hush-hush summit, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope recalled.

"Everyone felt like they'd spent years separating bottles and cans, and nature could care less," Pope said. "What's more, nature was almost hostile sometimes."


Alligators: an ever-present threat.

According to Pope, the meeting ended abruptly when a swarm of hornets made its way into the conference center.

Indeed, the number of natural disasters worldwide has hardly diminished since humans began trying to take better care of the planet. What with tornadoes, tidal waves, volcanoes, mudslides, locust swarms, and the ever-present alligator threat, Mother Earth has struck many dedicated greenies as downright ungrateful. Two recent incidents -- the unrepentant collapse of a polar ice shelf and a remorseless lion attack at the Busch Gardens theme park in Florida -- are said to have pushed people over the edge.

Environmentalists -- no strangers to criticism -- have found that even their decision to get out of the business angered some.


Wildfire: an inconsiderate natural disaster.

"Oh, I've heard it all: 'You never really loved the Earth.' 'If you cared you would stay,'" said Mike Roselle, co-founder of the Rainforest Action Network and Earth First! "Well, for the record, it's nobody's business but me and the trees. And by the way, I don't appreciate the drought. My lettuce looks like old crepe paper."

Roselle denied rumors that he'd been secretly participating in other causes just prior to his retirement.

"I am not presently involved with the historic preservation movement, no," he said.

Followers of the green movement predict that environmentalists will probably get together for a couple of reunion protests, but that the movement had largely run its course.

"I still love the whales and whatnot," said Fuller. "But this relationship is so not equal."