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| Sign at Sierra Club rally in support of environmental protection outside EPA labs in Edison, NJ (photo/Jan Barry) |
The new administration in Washington is determined to
roll back environmental protection regulations and dismisses global climate
change as a hoax. As a nation poisoned by industrial pollution, we’ve been
there before. But more people today have
the means to learn what they can do about it. There are good models of effective
civic actions all over this country.
A group of residents in a rural corner of New Jersey organized
a campaign that saved a large wetland area called the Great Swamp from being
paved over for a proposed airport, before there was an environmental protection
agency. A larger group of residents in
towns along the New York-New Jersey border waged a campaign that saved Sterling
Forest, a headwaters area for drinking water for millions of people, from being
paved over to create a new city. An even larger coalition of civic groups waged
a campaign that transformed the Hudson River from an industrial and municipal
sewer into a much cleaner estuary.
Those are three examples I highlighted in A Citizen’s Guide to Grassroots Campaigns,
a book published in 2000 based on my newspaper reporting on effective civic actions.
Back in the day, federal environmental protection laws such as the clean water
act were enacted because of a nationwide campaign that turned out 20 million
people on the first Earth Day in 1970. And that was done the old-fashioned way,
before the Internet or cell phones. What is needed now is a sustained campaign
to focus what people can do working together to be as meaningful as that first
Earth Day event.
Recently, a statewide coalition convinced New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban hydraulic fracking for oil and gas to protect New
York City’s water supply streams and reservoirs in the Catskills and water
supply aquifers across the state. In Philadelphia, PA a citywide coalition named
Green Justice Philly convinced Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf to back a plan
for a greener expansion of port facilities, rather than a gas fracking company’s
proposed project.
On the West Coast, San Diego, California, is
implementing a plan to dramatically reduce greenhouse gasses by shifting to
renewable energy. This is a result of the work of a diverse coalition of
elected officials, business leaders, labor unions, environmental, social
justice and community organizations. San Diego’s Climate Action Campaign
reports on its website that it is now “engaged with thirteen other
municipalities in San Diego and Orange Counties to develop and pass similarly
transformative plans.”
At a Sierra Club rally outside Environmental Protection Agency labs in Edison, NJ a
few days ago, commercial tractor trailer truck drivers repeatedly honked in
support of signs such as “Global Warming Is Real It’s 70 Degrees in February”
and “EPA is for Environmental Protection, not Corporate.” Among the signs brandished by a vocal crowd of
citizen activists was US Representative Frank Pallone and state and local
elected officials. “We need to protect Americans’ fundamental right to clean
air, clean water and a safe environment to raise their families,” Pallone said.
“I am proud to stand with the Sierra Club and committed citizens against
President Trump’s dangerous environmental policies.” It was a scene that has flared up and fired up
people for years in New Jersey, where civic campaigns have forced cleanups of
toxic sites and saved large swathes of the state from destructive development.
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