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Burgers With a Conscience?

New scorecard rates corporations on their actions to fight climate change Which fast-food joint has the most cred on climate change — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or Burger King? A new scorecard […]

An eco-lexical eco-spasm for the modern eco-age

With apologies to “green” and “enviro,” there’s no doubt “eco” is the supreme prefix of the environmental movement. Photo: iStockphoto According to the Oxford English Dictionary — the Bible of […]

Convincing evidence for the central role of protest and a troubling cost-benefit analysis

The most important and relevant research for U.S. environmentalists is being conducted by Jon Agnone, a sociologist at the University of Washington. Agnone studies sources of environmentalist power -- the first social scientist to undertake a systematic analysis. His comprehensive findings are summarized in "Amplifying Public Opinion: The Policy Impact of the U.S. Environmental Movement" (PDF), appearing in the June 2007 issue of Social Forces.

Agnone compared the relative impact of public opinion, institutional advocacy, and protest on passage of federal environmental legislation between 1960-1998, using a sophisticated analytical model and data drawn from The New York Times.

Three key findings in this first-ever quantification of environmentalist power upend conventional political wisdom:

1. Protest is significantly more important than public opinion or institutional advocacy in influencing federal environmental law. Agnone found that each protest event increases the likelihood of pro-environmental legislation being passed by 1.2 percent, and moderate protest increases the annual rate of adoption by an astonishing 9.5 percent.
2. Public opinion on its own influences federal action (though less than protest), but is vastly strengthened by protest, which "amplifies" public support and, in Agnone's words, "raises the salience of public opinion for legislators." Protest and public opinion are synergistic, with a joint impact on federal policy far more dramatic than either factor alone.
3. Institutional advocacy has limited impact on federal environmental policy.

Agnone's findings demonstrate that protest is neither a historical phase of the environmental movement nor a peripheral tactic: it is the central basis of environmentalists' power. As Agnone notes, "these results lead to an important conclusion: when both protest and public opinion are at high levels, they jointly influence policy makers in ways that would be impossible if each existed without the other."

When we stopped protesting, in other words, and began to rely on advocacy and mobilizing pubic opinion alone, we threw away our single most important lever of influence. The accompanying chart shows the correspondence between declining trend lines of environmental protest and passage of federal environmental law:

We Had Joy, We Had Funds

Grist wraps up summer fundraiser with one final plea A new study shows that donating to charity activates some of the same pleasure spots in the brain that eating and […]

Antonio Diaz, environmental-justice advocate, answers questions

Antonio Diaz. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I work with a San Francisco-based grassroots environmental-justice organization called PODER: People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights. I’m the […]

WHO says dirty air and water kill 13 million people a year, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: OK, We’re Moving to Iceland Don’t Count Your Hatchery Salmon Before They Hatch, or Even After Buffalo and Behold How […]

We’ll Give You the Shirt Off Our Back

Grist fundraiser wraps up, still needs your help It’s almost time to hang up our summer fundraising efforts — and we’re so clothes to our goal we can practically taste […]

Yeah, Right, and Pluto’s Not a Planet

Research team says Amazon River is longer than the Nile Every so often, a news story comes along that is so astonishing, so monumental, that it shakes the foundations of […]

North Pacific Fishery Management Council protects seafloor habitat areas in Bering Sea

It's official -- and unanimous. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to ban bottom trawling of some 180,000 square miles of previously unexploited ocean floor in the Bering Sea, particularly in the North.

The area is home to 26 species of marine mammals, including whales and walruses, as well as 450 species of fish and million of seabirds that flock to the region from all seven continents.

Starter Kit Your Engines!

It’s not too late to win a chance at a Grist green-living kit Perhaps you’ve noticed that we’ve been raising money over the last week or so. If you’ve already […]