Police make an arrest after Greenpeace protesters scaled the walls of Parliamenton Monday, December 7, 2009.
Greenpeace scales Canada's Parliament buildings, delivering a message that inaction on climate change is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year. What will most Canadians make of this? Here's my take.
Most voters like that environmental NGOs have helped us all become more aware of pressures on the planet. But now, the tendency is to want ENGOs to shift gears, to step back from perpetual confrontation and conflict and put more effort into collaborating with others. Less theatrics and more solutions.
When it seemed nobody was concerned about the environment, and no positive change was occurring at all, this week's banner-draping ploy would have been seen as a legitimate way to get the planet on the agenda. That was then, but things have changed.
Nowadays, people may quarrel about whether enough is changing quickly enough. But most see signs of improvement in auto and other manufacturing sectors, sustainable resources management, wildlife protection, public transit, green building, power generation, waste reduction, paper, metal and plastic recycling, and also in the array of products on store shelves. Voters want everyone to roll up their sleeves together and find ways to accelerate in this direction, to make the "creative tension" between ENGO's and businesses less tense and more creative.
And so, one way to analyze this week's Greenpeace event is to see it as a massive billboard signalling that the best-known ENGO brand in the world remains more comfortable on the fringes rather than immersed in partnerships to change markets and economies. Greenpeace says it is the "world's most effective environmental activist group," but maybe that claim is becoming more doubtful. Monday's event certainly garnered a lot of media coverage, but did it make people more concerned about the environment, or more convinced that Greenpeace was stuck in the past?
A number of other ENGOs have adopted a more collaborative approach, and this episode obscures that reality, but it may be only a matter of time before collaboration replaces conflict as the new normal. These days, wall-scaling stunts may still grab attention, but most people have moved beyond simply wanting more profile for the environment, and want to know what we can all do to make it better, in very practical terms.
(Photo: Police make an arrest after the Greenpeace protest on Parliament Hill. Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press)
Bruce Anderson