Enviro group president bashes green movement for ‘shrillness’

Late last year, Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp suggested it was time to take the gloves off – at least one anyway – against industry following the Senate collapse of climate change legislation.

On Monday, he slugged environmentalists too. Greenwire (subscription req’d) reports from Laguna Niguel, California:

Environmental groups have too often approached climate change politics with an air of disdain for their opponents, and that must change if major federal legislation is going to advance, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund said yesterday.

With neither a comprehensive energy policy nor a carbon cap-and-trade bill moving in Congress, EDF President Fred Krupp said advocates must reassess their strategy and perhaps adopt a less arrogant approach that takes into account all sides of the global warming debate.

"There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language," Krupp said yesterday, during Fortune magazine's Brainstorm Green conference here. "In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can't take the attitude that we have all the answers."

Krupp went on to suggest that the movement he has been part of as chief of EDF for 26 years would be well served to heed lessons learned over the past several years, which saw the optimism of a Congress and White House controlled by Democrats give way to a newfound hostility to climate policy after Republicans dominated the 2010 midterms.

Krupp penned a Huffington Post column in November that said EDF – which is known for playing an inside game that seeks compromise with corporations – would have to “recalibrate” its “historic interest in cooperation over confrontation” at times.

His critique of the environmental movement Monday wasn’t out of the blue – Krupp’s November column also suggested the green movement needed to reconsider its approaches.
 
“In short, while being more aggressive and vigorously fighting to achieve critical emissions reductions, we — the environmental community — must be more open. Our response to this political problem must be to engage more widely and listen more carefully, not dismiss or belittle those with whom we disagree,” he wrote at the time.