In a BlueOregon guest column, Pat Hayes from Prospect, Oregon discusses BlueOregon: Urban Greens vs. Rural Progressives.

He makes some a pretty broad generalization:

When I first worked in the woods, loggers, miners, mill workers, farmers and ranchers voted moderate to progressive D. There was a wise and healthy distrust of management, financiers and the mercantile class who voted moderate to conservative R. Now the former vote solidly and consistently conservative to lunatic fringe R, having been sold down the river by urban and green interests for absolutely no discernible or logical reason.

Pat offers no specifics are offered to back this up.

However, he does make a good point about the iimportance of operating from inside rural communities:

We have the opportunity to develop resilient and adaptive communities, but it cannot be achieved by organizations headquartered in Portland or Eugene. Come and live with us in Burns or Lakeview or Nyssa. Help us educate our folks to move from logging to Linux.

Evan Manvel of 1000 Friends of Oregon chimes with a more nuanced analysis:

The urbans and greens have been there to fight against the larger forces that led to unemployment in the rural areas — that is, exporting jobs oversees, replacing humans with machines, big box retailing, etc. The green press was full of stories about the corporate timber owners who bought up companies only to outsource and replace workers with machines, even with record timber cuts and record timber profits.

And the greens have been the backbone of support for land use planning, which does its best to keep those nasty wine-sipping liberals from converting productive farm and forestland into tract housing. There are groups like 1000 Friends of Oregon or Pacific Rivers Council, who opposed Measure 64 (the clearcutting ban) in 1998. Both 1000 Friends and the Oregon Environmental Council have farmer advisory groups, and have worked to create partnerships with cattlemen.

And then there are progessive groups like Oregon Rural Action, Rural Organizing Project, and others, who are NOT based in Portland or Eugene (to be fair, 1000 Friends has six offices around the state, and other groups have offices in Medford, Klamath Falls, etc.)

Instead, I think that the media (and others) have been attracted to the areas of conflict between certain urbans and greens and the value-driven rural folks. There are certain folks who HAVE worked hard to pass measures that would significantly change current farming and forestry practices, via initiatives, legislation, lawsuits, etc. And apparently those folks have managed to drive away a key constituency of progressivism.

But in the end, the rural and the urban areas aren’t as different as they are similar. In each place, out of any three people, one’s a conservative, one’s a liberal, and one’s in-between. We would do well to remember that person in the middle, who, as you say, can become an ally if we take the time to work together.

To me, this kind of dialogue does point out the need for the environmental community to invest more time and effort in developing leaders from rural communities and putting them front-and-center in the public dialogue.

The Tyee offers a nice analysis of the dynamics surrounding the clean air fight around the Crofton pulp mill in Duncan, BC.

The article briefly mentions ONE/Northwest ally Matt Price, who has been working with the mill’s labor unions and environmentalists:

Some are making an effort to find common ground between the greens and the blue-collars. Duncan environmentalist Matt Price organized a low-key conference the day before the all-star concert. The message from the two unions representing workers at the mill: We know the company better than anyone and have no interest in poisoning ourselves or our children. Plus, don’t threaten our jobs. They, too, see a villain in the piece.

The article is also interesting because it highlights the need for lots more work on the labor-environmental relationship:

Davies, a millwright at the mill and one of 674 workers represented by the PPWC, admits any alliance with environmentalists will likely be an uneasy one, with each side suspicious of the others’ motive.

As if to highlight the mistrust, Davies was interrupted in the middle of an interview by a burly man who barked, “Christ, man, we’ve got an air pollution problem,” before embarking on a rant about creosote.

It was like having a drunk at the next table overhear a single word before launching into a diatribe. The environmentalist took a breath after saying, “The company, goddamn, they’re ruthless.” The man then introduced himself. He was Paul George, founder of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee and the husband of Adriane Carr, the B.C. Green Party leader who was attending the conference.

Winning the Oil Endgame is the latest book from Amory Lovins and his gang of innovative energy/sustainability thinkers at Rocky Mountain Institute.

Winning the Oil Endgame offers a coherent strategy for ending oil dependence, starting with the United States but applicable worldwide. There are many analyses of the oil problem. This synthesis is the first roadmap of the oil solution– one led by business for profit, not dictated by government for reasons of ideology. This roadmap is independent, peer-reviewed, written for business and military leaders, and co-funded by the Pentagon. It combines innovative technologies and new business models with uncommon public policies: market-oriented without taxes, innovation-driven without mandates, not dependent on major (if any) national legislation, and designed to support, not distort, business logic.

Pretty big promise on arguably the most important issue of our age. I love the positive, solution-oriented language that is explicitly designed to feel welcoming to business leaders. These folks are masters of framing, and it’s a pleasure to watch them work.

They also get big points for making their entire book available as a free PDF download. Shows they’re both tech-savvy AND serious about getting the ideas out there, not just selling books.