Dear Environmental Organisations: You will not get one thin dime nor any of my time

I have had it with groups that supposedly want to save the planet. They are run by highly intelligent, clueless idiots. Perhaps the best indictment of their effectiveness is simply to look at the state of the planet they are allegedly trying to save: No honest person could say the Earth is in better shape now than it was when the eco-groups started more than 30 years ago.

The planet is more polluted, populated, deforested, desertified, fished-out, and generally raped and pillaged than ever, to the point that we are on the verge of civilisational collapse. Climate change is near terminal, and if that doesn’t get us (it will) we are running into Peak Everything.

And you want me to send you a cheque for how much? Don’t call me, and I won’t call you. The only group I am now part of is the BCSEA (British Columbia Sustainable Energy Association, but everyone knows it by its acronym), where I am a Director. The BCSEA focuses on energy solutions, which we will desperately wish we had developed sooner as oil prices creep up.

Not only are eco-groups wasting money on Executive Directors who are not getting the job done, they exist only on the backs of volunteer labour. It’s the new slavery, as a friend put it. Save-the-Planet groups take well-meaning people and burn them out in useless campaigns. They turn off even more people hungry for change when they urge them to come out to meaningless rallies. Candlelight vigils against global warming? What the fuck is that supposed to do?

In business…well, I was going to say these Executive Directors would have been fired, but these days they are more likely to be bailed out and give themselves massive bonuses for their screw-ups.

The environmental movement gets nothing more from me – no money, no time, no air time on my radio show, no space in my blog – until they wake up. You have failed. Utterly. Maybe, just a thought, consider changing your strategy? Maybe re-evaluate what works and what doesn’t? Because the facts speak for themselves: most of what you do is not working.

The time is long overdue for environmental and social justice groups to work together with climate change at the top of everyone’s agenda. If we don’t stop climate change, there will be a lot fewer starving babies in Africa – because they’ll be dead. There will be no need to Save the Whales, because either they’ll be dead or we will. Quite possibly both. And if we do actually come up with a realistic plan to fight climate change, that will do more to save babies and whales then anything else we’ve done in the last 30-plus years.