It’s strange: A win for the environment these days often requires defeating environmental groups. That’s because environmental groups are not always concerned about the environment; sometimes they’re self-perpetuation machines that run on outrage, and sometimes they’re a doomsday cult whose main product is TikTok videos. The movement has undergone a Great Schism — people who want to solve climate change have gone one way and people who want to cosplay tired hippie narratives have gone the other.
The permitting deal negotiated by several key senators has forced environmental groups have to pick a side. Several groups were embarrassed last week when Punchbowl News obtained a transcript of a conference call in which group leaders outlined a strategy of pretending to be open to the deal while working to kill it. That the groups opposed the deal wasn’t surprising — some environmentalists only get up in the morning so that they can complain about being sold out. But how they opposed the deal was unseemly; we saw how the sausage is made, and several groups got caught metaphorically shoving rats and dirty diapers into the grinder.
Now, several groups have sent a short, timid, and frankly odd letter to Democratic leadership urging a “no” vote. I don’t understand why these groups sent this letter immediately after their strategy was exposed; it’s like they tried to rob a bank with a squirt gun, and when somebody noticed, they said “Yeah, well…hand over the money or I’ll make you slightly wet.” Notably, a few large groups that were on the call did not sign the letter — the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and the National Wildlife Federation were conspicuously absent. Also missing were a few groups that weren’t on the call to begin with: The National Resources Defense Council, League of Conservation Voters, and Public Citizen did not sign. The letter marshalls tepid support for weak arguments, and the decision to send it suggests that the signatories might be something less than strategic masterminds.
