Actual Leadership

A kindly Washington reader writes: “What would it take to get some actual leadership on these issues instead of press releases and endless studies?” 

I am momentarily struck incapable of thinking or writing.  Then the moments drag into hours. This really is the big question. 

OK, well, first of all, it’s worse than agencies just issuing press releases and endless studies.  And let’s note that studies at least have the merit of providing us with fodder for our efforts to enforce the Clean Water Act in court and make agencies do their jobs.  But these days, it’s also a wide array of communications—ranging from idiotic tweets to fancy “story maps”—from the Washington Department of Ecology suggesting that the agency is doing what the public expects it to do.  

That perpetuation of the hoax that “we’re from the government and we’re here to follow the law and protect human health and the environment” is one of the biggest hurdles we face in bringing about true environmental change.  Most citizens do not know that just because an agency has the word “environment” or “ecology” in its name that its main goal is to avoid the laws, not carry them out.  So those news releases (and tweets) form a protective cocoon around the agencies that are not doing their jobs. 

I don’t tend to think that citizens who have discovered the truth about the agencies and are sickened by it should be focusing political pressure directly at those regulatory agencies, as much as they deserve it.  I don’t think, for example, that there is any number of angry letters aimed at Ecology or the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality that would outweigh the political strength of the logging industry, agriculture, cities, and industrial polluters plus all of the state legislators who are keen to keep those pollution sources happy (and their donations rolling in).   

I am more inclined to believe that politicians—who, after all, have political ambition and a desire to be remembered for other than their sins—are the most likely targets.  They are, by definition, our leaders.  That’s another way of saying that if you want Ecology to do something to clean up pollution in Puget Sound, aim your ire at Governor Inslee, and if you want the Oregon DEQ to do something about, well anything at all, aim your ire at Governor Brown.  Fifty letters landing in a Governor’s office is a more powerful punch than the same fifty letters in some agency office.  (The same would go for a mayor versus the director of a sewage utility.) 

That begs the question of the relationship between Governors and the regulatory agencies in the executive branch.  Over the years, some people have suggested to me that Governors have a lot of sway over the heads of these agencies that serve at their pleasure.  Others say that Governors are helpless to force the bureaucrats to take action.  I’m more inclined to believe that Governors like to act as if they are helpless because it’s a matter of no-buck-is-gonna–land-here political expediency.   

In other words, it takes activists, political organizers, and ordinary citizens to make a stink and focus that stink on someone who owes some measure of accountability to the public.  And that takes persistence because that someone is going to get a short list of talking points from the failing agency to say “look, we have this all under control, don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”  And said citizens will have to refuse to take “no” for an answer, dig in deeper, and, frankly, be willing to get meaner.  This is not for the faint of heart.  It’s not nice (although it can be a lot of fun).  You might even meet your future spouse in the process because there is nothing like finding that you have a shared sense of commitment to your values.