Erik Loomis has some thoughts on Kate's post about "crunchy conservatives":
How will the environmental community deal with new environmentalists who hold strong conservative values? To some extent I wonder how much it matters. Alliances of convenience are powerful and I suspect we will see a lot of that, leading to the passage of important legislation in the next presidential term. The sheer numbers of evangelicals could also simply overwhelm traditional environmentalists, leading to the dominant themes of the movement being couched in Christian terms. I don't necessarily have a problem with that as it would probably lead to a lot of good, as much as I find a lot of conservative values personally repulsive. Obviously, some kind of dialogue needs to take place, but I don't think establishing a baseline of understanding and a series of priorities should be that difficult.The point being that building understanding and a cross-cutting identity really isn't as important as building a political coalition. This is true as far as it goes, I think, but I worry that on both sides identity issues could serve as roadblocks to political cooperation. To substantial extent the Christian Right defines itself as the negation of groups like the traditional environmental movement; it's not simply that they're different, it's that the crunchy treehuggers (so to speak) are the dread Other with which conservatives define Self. As Erik notes, the same problem has been evident on the other side, as environmentalists have been known to display immense arrogance towards those who actually use the land.Dr. Slammy provides an interesting analysis of language between the two wings of environmentalism. He's right--they often talk past each other. But again, I'm not convinced that this is a crisis. If both sides just agree to work with each other on issues that matter to both, they don't necessarily need to share a common language or common values, other than the need to protect the environment.
I suspect that the best opportunities for coalition building are at the legislative rather than the grassroots level; the identity conflicts and concerns are likely to undercut opportunities for cooperation in cases where crunchy cons and traditional environmentalists have to work together. At the legislative level, though, groups don't have to like one another in order to collaborate.
-- Robert Farley
