Environmental Trojan horse - Learning Alliance seminar - column

National Review, August 4, 1989 by D. Keith Mano

CATALOGUE EDUCATION has been one of the more persistent urban phenomena in this decade. Most courses are practical: a lot on computer use, cash management, real estate, grant writing. There are the usual idiot topics as well: rune-stone magic, astral projection, how to flirt, strip-tease, remember a joke. Nothing better represents the peculiarly American enthusiasm for overnight self-improvement. A two-session course is rare: at Discovery Center or Learning Annex, "matriculate" and "graduate" mean the same thing. Half-notable personages teach-not because they're paid much (they aren't), but because the contingent PR is enormous. Free catalogues turn up everywhere (I got one, under the transom so to speak, while using a public toilet). Most courses are amateurish, structureless, and unsatisfying -held typically in a plaster-pocked junior-high classroom. Sit from 7 through 10 P.M. at some eighth-grade desk and you know why the Swedishmassage session has been so popular.

Liberals, for whom any sort of school program is an excuse to electioneer, co-opted catalogue education almost at once. And around 1985 the high-leftist Learning Alliance was set up. As one Alliance editorialist wrote: "We seek to create an education program . . . designed to inspire and empower those who participate in it." Empower-you're familiar with that word by now. For the Left, human beings are a breed of un-plugged-in appliance. Liberalism is seen as enabling voltage. To enable further, prices at the Alliance are prole cheap and graduated-$5, $10, $15. "We ask folks who are doing all right financially to pay our middle or, if possible, our higher fee." But no one will be turned away. "We hope that this collection of programs leads you to take action in some form." An un-actedupon life is not worth living.

Along with the predictable self-help curriculum-bicycle repair, mask making, spring herbal medicine-the Alliance has a syllabus of politically correct courses. "Workshop on War Tax Resistance." "Strategies for Central American Solidarity." "Socially Responsible Investment." All about as provocative as a botplate in a rented room. With that course list you could expect the Learning Alliance to draw no better than dune drift would. But of 82 courses, 19-and those the best attended, I reckon-deal with an environment in peril.

It has been that way for the Left since Reagan at least. As coherent, motivating ideology, liberalism today ranks just below a Polynesian cargo cult. Even pro-abortion sentiment, once so, promising, proved sterile: it was a social, not a political matter, and its passion did not translate. Environmentalism alone can consistently empower (and emprofit) the leftist agenda. Liberals, therefore, have generated an extensive-and often commendable -conservationist effort. Much of this is cynical opportunism: an attempt to hamstring nuclear power or American capitalist expansion. Much has been pure alarmism. But one fact is clear: to do anything of a cooperative nature about the environment you must tolerate sordid contact with leftist agitpropwash. Money for Brazilian rain forests may end up in Nicaragua. Saving a whale might help undermine South Africa. Every tree planted in good faith could jeopardize SDI or Western Hemisphere security.

I took "How to Make the World a Better Place," taught by Jeffrey Hollender. Now there is no way I'll inconvenience myself for, say, the ozone layer. Even with a 362 cholesterol score I wouldn't forgo beef to save water and energy. But there is much you can do for the environment, Hollender told us, that doesn't entail living in pre-industrial America. A simple half-flush toilet dam made of aluminum won't discommode your commode: we're all using johns one could baptize with. An aerated shower or faucet head can be similarly economical. The most provocative item, though, is compact fluorescent lighting-which uses, yes, 75 per cent less electricity. CFL, now available, could save $30 billion per year in America alone, while reducing the world fossil-fuel burn by a gargantuan percentage.

I also learned what not to use at home: pump toothpaste dispensers (standard tubes require less plastic), aerosol shaving cream or deodorant, one-sided Xeroxing, styrofoam, plastic wrap (waxed paper instead), plastic soda bottles, plastic garbage bags (they biodegrade only after two hundred to five hundred years), disposable typewriter ribbons and Scotch-tape dispensers, paper plates, paper towels-in short, substitute glass or paper for plastic whenever possible, cloth or china for paper. Incidentally, the disposable diaper makes up 2 per cent of all American waste.

Enlightening and philanthropic material. But then . . . Hollender had been lecturing ftom a 25-page Xeroxed handout. On page 16, environmental concern became HOW TO DEFUSE NUCLEAR BOMBS. Followed by "citizen diplomacy": Central America from the Sandinista point of view. Followed by scathing invective against South Africa. And, to empower us all, a list of the top thirty corporate defense contractors. "We thought you should know," his preface said coyly. "And are willing to bet that by just reading the list actions will occur to you."