Tom Friedman on the TXU Buyout
While I’m less enamored of Tom Friedman after reading his The World is Flat, I very much liked his New York Times editorial today assessing the turn in environmental activism symbolized by the endorsement by well-respected environmental interests of the KKR/Texas Pacific buyout of TXU. (Marching With a Mouse) While not discovering anything we haven’t seen coming for quite a while, Friedman recognizes that the days of environmental activism by the sit-in and the boycott may be ending. The preliminary negotiations between the prospective buyers and Environmental Defense (in the person of Fred Krupp) and the Natural Resources Defense Council set the stage for a new, and potentially more effective, approach to securing an environmentally sustainable future.
In early 2006, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus wrote a controversial obituary for traditional environmentalism in an analysis of the ineffectiveness of its inability to effectively confront the manifold threats of global warming. (The Death of Environmentalism) In Ecocritique: Contesting the Poltics of Nature, Economy, and Culture, Tim Luke took a more critical route in his deconstruction of various ecological advocacy movements. While it’s more than a little disheartening to realize that the most productive strategy against the inexorable environmental destruction of globalizing capital may be “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” it is encouraging to see that ED and NRDC have been listening. I’m a process kind of guy, but you can’t argue with the results. And the irony of TXU being beat at its own capitalist game is delicious!
All of this, though, begs the question: Can we effectively fight the ravages of late, fast capitalism from within the belly of the beast? Perhaps so, but the leviathan has a big head start.
Although I believe this is an improvement over what might have happened, had not ED intervened, I wonder if this is the beginning of a productive new era of cooperation between grassroots environmentalists and corporate polluters or the beginning of a sly cooptation campaign on the part of KKR?
Without meaning to disparage Fred Krupp’s character (which I believe is excellent), this sounds like KKR executives are probably up on their Sun Tzu and recognize the importance of courting “enemy agents.”
It reminds me of another famous (albeit fictitious) evolutionary shift away from primal and ecological respect. (Sorry, I couldn’t get it to go hyperlink in the chatterbox. You’ll have to cut and past into the browser)
http://www.palantir.net/2001/tma1/wav/dave.wav
That, of course, is part of the dialogue between the H.A.L. computer and astronaut Dave in 2001 A Space Odyssey–a very prescient and frightening critique of the role of technology in making moral judgments.
In the end, I doubt the efficacy of fighting this battle from within the “belly of the beast.”
Regards,
Arnie
Excellent point, Arnie! While the increasing degree of cooperation between environmental activists and capital may be necessary in securing some (as possibly opposed to no) concessions to ecological preservation, I see it as a slippery slope on which teeters precariously the future of our global environment. By agreeing to only partial environmental devastation are we wittingly accepting a less sustainable future? Is this the only way forward? I’d like to think not.