Free loves rules at PowerShift ’07

This is a guest post from Nate Lowenthiel, the Executive Director of The Roosevelt Institution, a national, student-run think tank.

Judging from PowerShift ’07, the hippies are back. While panelists are discussing green-collar job growth, messaging and the role of corporate America in combating global warming, attendees are circling up on the grass quads, tossing Frisbees and bemoaning the lack of activism on campus.

As I write this, George Lakoff is running late for my third panel session of the day. With the stage open, a corporate CEO trainer steps up and begins exhorting us to use courage and conviction in our battle for the environment. The room is led deep into meditation, our eyes closed. The trainer repeats “I do not have an internal guidance system.” “I do have an internal guidance system.” On the third “I Do,” we open our eyes, and a collective sigh of relief rises. Everyone looks around and smiles.

When Lakoff finally arrives and starts discussing messaging and the way to build support among conservatives for environemtnal issues, students slowly head to the door. A junior tentatively raises his hand, “I just don’t get it—why don’t they care?”

The Lakoff panel is one of 30 or so concurrent sessions running for three days on end. The conference is fantastically well-organized. Almost 6,000 students made the trek to the University of Maryland from all over the country, and the planners managed to deal with transportation, housing and the 1250-acre maze that is the University of Maryland at College park. This monumental achievement costs hundreds of thousands of dollars donated by foundations, corporations and individuals. The goal is to “create a path for young people to lead” environmental change. There are enough training sessions to educate a small army of activists, with an emphasis on recruitment, value messaging, and coalition building.

The conference is working to foster a new sense of professionalism and creativity in the environmental movement. Many top speakers are from organizations like the Apollo alliance, which works to create a broad-based environmental movement that appeals to working class America through an emphasis on innovation, technology investment and growth.

Unfortunately, most of the attendees are from the outdated save-the-polar-bears school of thought. Complaining about pollution, deforestation the general lack of ecological sensitivity has been the mainstay of the environmental movement for decades, and the newest generation of leaders seems bent embracing this well-beaten, circular path.

Serious change will require a broad-based consensus, one that goes far beyond college campuses and the coasts. And building that consensus will require a sensitivity to the complexity of environmental policy, a frank recognition of the need for trade-offs, and a willingness to work with many diverse groups and coalitions. The conference organizers made a concerted effort to move in this direction. Saturday’s morning sessions included time for “affinity groups” where diverse students could gather together and build communities. Expert discussants are encouraging students to move forward with pragmatic campus reforms. The Energy Action Coalition, who put together the conference, consciously reached out to a wide range of schools, including commuter colleges in the south, community colleges in the south-west, and state schools from around the country.

The tie-dyed filled rooms suggest this effort was largely wasted. The lack of diversity could be read in a number of ways. Perhaps outreach was still limited, or the location in Washington encouraged more Northeasterners. The more likely explanation, however, is also the more depressing one. The environment is still a special-interest issue, one that appeals to relatively narrow electorate. Needless to say, the Phish-show like atmosphere of the conference doesn’t inspire much hope for the future. Perhaps flying in dedicated activists to an environmental lovefest isn’t the most productive step forward.