The Unbearable Whiteness of Green

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Once again this year, the spring season brought a flood of green-themed magazines to super-market checkout stands and airport news racks all across the country.

And once again, the faces of non-white and non-affluent Americans were almost entirely missing.

Our new environmental movement is rapidly gaining visibility and momentum. That is very good news. Life-or-death ecological issues finally are starting to get the attention they so urgently deserve. And we can all celebrate that.

But now we would be wise to start paying closer attention to the kind of coverage that we as environmentalists are getting. Because I see a disturbing pattern of exclusivity that is starting to set in. And that kind of elitism can sow the seeds for a very dangerous, populist backlash, down the line.

To see what I mean, just flip through the pages of Vanity Fair's recent green issue (the one with Leo DiCaprio and that cute polar bear cub on the cover).

Vanity Not Fair: Where are Americans of Color?

Now, count the non-white Americans in the whole magazine. Okay. Now try to find the working-class environmentalists, the ones trying to protect their kids from pollution at the fence-line?

Go ahead. Keep looking. See what I mean?

I am sure that Vanity Fair and the others mean well. But nobody is doing our new green movement any favors by continually portraying it solely as the playground of a white, affluent "eco-elite."

To turn this country around environmentally, we are going to need super-majorities in every demographic group.

It would be easy for green proponents to get cocky and be over-confident now. It would be easy to say, "Why bother working for race and class diversity, when the environmental movement is growing faster now than at any time in its history?"

Such misguided thinking would be trading short-term gain for long-term pain. This year -- right now -- is precisely the smart time to start worrying about a future anti-green backlash. If we let our movement be portrayed as solely a "white thing," it will be easier for demagogues to forge an alliance between polluters and the poor -- to derail our success.

Do you think I am being paranoid?

Well, then please heed a cautionary lesson from California, the supposed leader in all things green.

California Provides Cautionary Tale to Eco-Elite

Everyone loves to brag on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for signing our global warming legislation. But nobody talks about the fact that a few months earlier, the majority of California voters here rejected a clean energy ballot measure.

That's right. Elected officialdom might be willing to take major green steps. But six months ago, when Californians got to speak up in the ballot booth, ordinary people said no.

It is important that we study this defeat -- and pull out the lessons going forward. The idea for Prop 87 was brilliant in its simplicity: California would start taxing the oil and gas that we extract from our soil and shores. And those dollars would go into a huge, "clean-energy" research and technology fund.

Many states and nations have similar excise taxes. But California would have been alone in dedicating the revenues to inventing alternatives to carbon-based energy sources. Had it passed, money from oil would have been used to find a replacement for oil.

It was a brilliant idea. And at first, the measure was polling off the charts. Silicon Valley and Hollywood put $40 million on the table to ensure the measure passed. Al Gore and Bill Clinton campaigned for it. Victory was certain.

The Polluters Will Organize Everyone We Exclude

But in the end, Californians voted the measure down. Why? Because big oil convinced ordinary Californians that the price tag for them would be too high for them to bear.