Gang Green struggles to accept Team Obama diffidence

Yeah, the "soft bigotry of low expectations" vis-a-vis the Bush Administration has finally worn off Gang Green environmental groups as the face the reality of President Barack Obama and Interior Secretary Kenny Boy Salazar on environmental issues.

They're still working to accept this reality.

And, here's why -- they're a bunch of fricking insiders!

Big Green's response to the failures of its strategies in Washington is, for the most part, disoriented silence. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) did not respond to requests for comment. Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), offered some thoughts in a widely read piece for The Huffington Post, in which he wrote, "While being more aggressive and vigorously fighting to achieve critical emissions reductions, we—the environmental community—must be more open." In an interview for this article Krupp said, "We need to do more to make existing laws function well. That means defending the EPA, working with states and public utility commissions. But we are also going to shift emphasis toward suing polluters even as we will continue to cooperate with corporations that are trying to reduce emissions."

There are structural factors, though, that will make it difficult for Big Green groups like the NRDC to join the Sierra Club and Greenpeace in a more confrontational and local approach. Big Green groups are heavily invested in fundraising (including from the fossil fuel industry) and DC lobbying. To get serious about organizing would require their leaders to first fire all their lobbyists (who are often their friends) and then probably fire themselves. As one leader, speaking off the record, put it, "It would mean they'd have to totally restructure themselves away from getting Senator Scott Brown to say this and not that. Their priorities would have to be something other than rubbing elbows with lawmakers." Greens need a presence in Washington, but it will produce nothing if the movement is not willing and able to threaten industry and mainstream politicians with serious disruption—meaning slow, expensive court cases, loss of profits, public humiliation and electoral defeat.

Smaller enviro groups have recognized the stupidity of chaining themselves to the Democratic Party.

And, they're not the first "special interest" to see that. Back in the 1940s, United Mine Workers boss John L. Lewis warned about the same thing.