Environmentalist magazines
Rule, James B.
Concern for the environment is hardly a single mind-set. A look through a few of the many environmental magazines quickly reveals its seemingly infinite permutations and combinations. At...
...While you might be paying less for the paper you are now using, this does not obviate the longer term damages to the planet resulting from the production and disposal of environmentally unsound products...
...On that first visit, Ehrenfield tells us, a pregnant goat escaped from the explorers' vessel...
...But success in any subscription strategy will, of course, in its own right, mean higher production runs, more consumption of scarce resources, and, accordingly, more waste-management problems...
...More elusive is agreement on any systematic rationale for an alternative to these things — and, a fortiori, for a vision of what those on the left would call a praxis...
...At one point on the spectrum, we find down-to-earth journals like Garbage, featuring articles on such subjects as mulching and paper recycling...
...Centuries later, in 1985, an International Wildlife Fund (IWF) expedition found the island decimated by some 380 of the goat's descendants...
...Means absolutely consistent with ends are as elusive for environmental politics as for the political left...
...No one who has felt disgust at picking through the daily harvest of junk mail can fail to admire the effort to find an alternative...
...But note: whether one accepts his resolution or not, Ehrenfield's position points to deep dilemmas bound to confront any program of environmental action...
...Perhaps because its analytical content is high, Orion makes it plain that environmentalists are much clearer about what they are against than what they are for...
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...Along with lavishly reproduced photos of attractive creatures and unspoiled places, one finds in Orion such articles as an account of a Northern California venture in sustainable forestry, a long interview with writer-ecologist-farmer Wendell Berry, a theoretical essay by economist Thomas Michael Power on the concept of wealth, and a reprint of an essay from the 1930s by pioneer environmental writer Aldo Leopold...
...Enrenfield makes his own position clear: Many of our national seashores, parks and wildlife refuges are plagued by introduced horses, donkeys, pigs, and other "exotic" animals...
...An 800 number is provided...
...A consistent high point is the witty and well-written column by Rutgers environmental scholar David Ehrenfield...
...Virtually any form of environmental action, from lobbying one's elected representatives to publishing a magazine, involves some degree of participation in processes that place demands on the ecosystem—whose effects on future generations are hard to reckon...
...To their credit, the editors and writers of Orion have avoided portraying these questions as any simpler than they are...
...Concern for the environment is hardly a single mind-set...
...But the issues at stake are alive in many real-world settings...
...As a result, any attempt to restore a sustainable "steady state" in relations with our nonhuman environment requires self-conscious judgment of how such a state is to be conceived...
...What you mean . . .," the reader wrote, "is that you hope to be able to pay for that paper...
...By way of opposition, environmental activists can readily join in disapproving despoilation of the natural world, or in combating attacks on its natural beauty and diversity of life forms...
...At another extreme, we have glossy publications like Earthwatch, apparently bent on doing for environmentalism what Playboy did for a certain vision of sex...
...These issues recur in Orion — and not just in the realm of abstraction...
...To avoid excessive environmental costs, the magazine would give up mass mailings...
...A reader found the statement unsatisfactory...
...Instead, readers would be asked to make direct, personal appeals and to offer gift subscriptions...
...What would count as an acceptable, sustainable "steady state" in relations between the human and nonhuman world...
...For more efficient service," readers are advised, "have your credit card ready...
...And how much of the tactics and techniques of bureaucratic action should those seeking environmental redress be prepared to embrace on behalf of their cause...
...One of Ehrenfield's columns, for example, spins a cautionary tale of environmentalist efforts to restore Wrightston Island, "an unmapped, six-square-mile chunk of land in one of our great oceans about seven hundred miles from the nearest mainland...
...But, he continued, it is nonrecycled paper or other environmentally SUMMER • 1994 • 401 Magazines unsound products [that] are not affordable if we think in planetary terms...
...Such oppositions provide a ready agenda...
...We human beings are ourselves, in a sense, "feral animals," irretrievably escaped from the environmental niche occupied by our earliest ancestors...
...q Orion is available from 136 E. 64th St., New York, N.Y...
...But the principle itself is hardly an open-and-shut guide to practice...
...Advertising in Garbage comes from companies producing "environmentally compatible" paints and other household products, composting toilets, and solar electric systems...
...The flora and fauna prevailing there at the first human contact were unique to the setting...
...A look through a few of the many environmental magazines quickly reveals its seemingly infinite permutations and combinations...
...and he concludes, the National Park Service [has] an overriding obligation to protect the natural systems [it is] in charge of, and to keep them from being unduly altered by human actions, including the human tendency to drop alien pigs, horses, and donkeys around the landscape...
...And that requires, in turn, some concept of "the good society" that cannot simply be read out of any "design of nature...
...Scientists need your help to assess the condition of the planet...
...SUMMER • 1994 • 403...
...How much, and what kind, of a reversal of human efforts to dominate nature would count as success...
...As the French sociologist Jacques Ellul liked to observe, when opposition to the expansion of technological activities surfaces, the opponents have little choice but to avail themselves of these same technologies to promote their cause...
...the targets are ever present and easy to spot...
...The IWF office in Liverpool was bombed and the return expedition was cancelled...
...In this varied field, the quarterly Orion stands out as strikingly thoughtful and well edited...
...Protecting "natural systems," or keeping such systems "free from being unduly altered by human actions," are notions of enor Magazines mous subtlety...
...Any effort to act on such notions requires a model of what we should regard as a "natural system" and of what constitutes "undue alteration" of such systems...
...What vision of "nature" ought environmental action to uphold...
...Act today . .. The world is changing quickly," its appeal runs...
...the youngest of the surviving Arcania trees was 327 years old...
...Ehrenfield continues: The IWF's conservation strategy recommended immediate extermination of the goats by sharpshooting . . . [But] the proposal to shoot the goats soon ran into fierce opposition . . . from a militant group of British animal rights activists known as the Mammal Liberation Front...
...With a readership of about fourteen thousand (a shade larger than Dissent's), Orion carries no advertising at all...
...Plagued" is a judgment, but these feral animals are doing great damage . . . and it is a judgment that I knowingly make...
...Earthwatch is largely given over to publicity for ecotourism sponsored by itself...
...Reading Orion, one encounters kindred issues in many forms...
...Ehrenfield's conclusion here strikes me as sober and convincing—though it will obviously not satisfy all environmentalists (or animal rights activists...
...No tree seedlings or saplings were found...
...For example, the Winter 1991 edition carried a letter from the publisher noting that he "hoped to be able to afford coated recycled paper" in the magazine's fourcolor section...
...It is supported partly by subscriptions ($18 per year) and partly by a private foundation...
...Orion's publisher, perhaps chastened by this exchange, later announced a new strategy in the magazine's efforts to raise its readership...
...Few, if any, of Orion's readers—and, I imagine, few of Dissent's—would fault the principle cited at the end of this quotation...
...Wrightston Island is fictitious, Ehrenfield finally allows...
...The costs are not usually seen directly by us, but are largely passed on to our children...
...The one thing that seems clear is that answers to such questions are not to be had from "nature" itself...
Vol. 41 • July 1994 • No. 3
