Passions have been running high over at the environmental blog Gristmill. It all started when David Roberts criticized an environmentalist tendency that had become particularly noticeable recently: people were complaining cool new developments – a house that gets LEED platinum certification, Priuses, a carbon-neutral Super Bowl – because they weren’t environmentally friendly enough. He caught a lot of grief, and was back a few days later with a less ranty response that contains what I think is an excellent analogy for the environmental movement:

For a long time, environmentalism has been something of an insular, marginalized subculture -- think of the green movement as the chess club of the big U.S. high school. This has inculcated two negative habits of thinking.

First, many greens seem primarily interested in protecting our little circle of virtue -- as Randy put it, getting to heaven rather than changing things. This means that when the jocks and cool kids come around trying their hand at chess, they get savaged by defensive eco-geeks protecting turf. Interlopers are branded as fakers or ignoramuses. Only we know how to behave sustainably, and everyone who takes steps in our direction is greenwashing or posturing or missing the point or being superficial or flailing around uselessly.

There's more than a tinge of resentment to it: "look, we have our thing. You cool kids have ignored and insulted us all this time, you can't just waltz over now and adopt our thing."

For a while when I was in college, I was a vegan (and hung out with other vegans), so I’ve got some experience with the whole “protecting our circle of virtue” thing. Of course, environmentalists mainly want people to stop driving so damn and eating so much freaking meat because global warming is threatening to do some serious damage to our world. But when we as individuals go to all the trouble of giving up our cars or cutting meat out of our diets, we also want some recognition of what we’ve done. The desire for recognition of virtue is only human, but it can hurt the movement we care about if we don't keep it in check.

David explains why the cool kids vs. eco-geeks setup matters:

[G]reens have become far too accustomed to thinking like a marginalized subculture -- like, if you'll forgive me, losers. We're used to shouting from the sidelines, to having our warnings fall on deaf ears, to always being last on the average person's checklist of concerns.

But look around: everybody's listening. Everybody's trying to go green. We won. They're convinced. It's time to make the mental adjustment and start behaving like gracious winners rather than resentful losers. That means welcoming and encouraging people's efforts, working with them respectfully, without condescension or suspicion, to find more effective ways to continue down the path of sustainability. We've got to stop assuming, at the outset, that everyone's faking it for the cameras. Nobody's trying to give us a wedgie.

Consider, if you will, whether our first response to the news that the Super Bowl is offsetting its carbon emissions should be that the tree-planting portion of the offsets will not have the advertised carbon sequestration effects. Is that really the most significant thing about this announcement from an iconic institution of mainstream American macho bravado?

I would submit that it is not. I would submit that it pales in significance next to the simple fact that this paragon example of Americana is exposing tens of millions of people for the very first time to the notion that it's worthwhile to consider one's carbon emissions. Most people have only the faintest idea what carbon emissions even are, or why they're worth paying attention to. Now some of them, possibly millions, will know. I would submit that this is an unambiguously good thing, even if scientific investigation later reveals that the Super Bowl didn't actually reduce emissions one micron.

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Not everything's about measurable, tangible effects. Nor does everything need to be judged against the green ideal. The most important thing for greens to keep in mind is momentum. The ball's starting to roll in our direction; we should get behind it and push. We should cheer every development like this, because it increases cultural momentum toward sustainability. Once the ball is rolling along, natural U.S. competitiveness will come into play and people will try to out-green one another. Gadgets and services will come along to serve that goal. More verifiable methods of offsetting will develop. Lighter footprint homes will develop. Momentum is the thing. It builds on itself.

Over the past few years, both of my parents bought hybrid cars and told me that they did it because they were impressed by me not owning a car at all, and they figured the least they could do was get fuel-efficient vehicles. Now, I know that even if all of the Baby Boomers go out and replace their minivans with Priuses, it won’t stave off global warming. I’m proud of my parents for taking an environmental step, though, and I hope that maybe their greater awareness of fuel economy will inspire them to write their red-state Congresspersons about CAFE standards, or something like that.

A lot of the comments on David’s posts have been saying, “Yes, but that’s not enough!” The thing about the environment, especially global warming, is that we might not get Enough, especially if Enough means having people change their energy-sucking lifestyles – and if we’re not going to get Enough, I’d rather have Something. Sure, there are times when we have to reject a symbolic step because it will derail a more substantial one (for instance, we can’t let Bush get away with subsidizing ethanol at the expense of conservation and solar), but there are plenty of cases when we can make the effort to be welcoming rather than judgmental. Or, as David puts it:

Our tribe must unlock the circle, cast open the doors, put out the welcome mat. We must spread the message that everyone can be a little greener than they are now, and that every little bit of greener is worth celebrating. It's fun and cool and interesting to get greener. It's rewarding; it will be rewarded. We don't want people peeking in the doors to be confronted by an array of dour, humorless, judgmental faces.

We're all green now. We need to get used to it as much as everyone else.