Remember, there are very powerful forces at work out there to make environmental activists look like loonies and eccentrics in order to discredit them. It doesn't surprise me that the mainstream look down on them having been appeased into non-action by propaganda. If you go to such an event you'll probably be impressed and forever changed by how well educated and informed the activists are, and by how the media have falsely portrayed them.
I think you misunderstand completely why people tend to dislike environmental activists.
There may be mainstream media propaganda against such folks. I know many who would argue the opposite. But any influence the media has over the issue pales in comparison to simply (1) knowing what the stereotype of an environmentalist is (save trees, save animals, don't hunt, don't burn, etc.) and (2) seeing some of the more outrageous-looking activities of activists. By outrageous-looking, I'm not talking about ELF. I'm talking about folks chaining themselves to trees and such. Believe me, going to the events to try to understand activists stands just as good a chance of making the situation worse, should many people realize that their beliefs about environmental activists are pretty reasonably accurate. Why? Because the motives of the activists just flat don't matter to most. It's their actions, and the immediate impact those actions have on others (and the uncaring way such actions are perceived as being done) that matter.
People can get on board with clean air and water. When you start stepping on their lives to "save the planet" from alleged ills that they're expected to take university-level classes to fully understand (never mind prove,) they're not exactly going to be very welcoming.
In addition, the mindset that animal rights or environmental care (again, let's exclude actual overt pollution, here) trumps individual liberties and property rights is a totally alien one to a broad spectrum of society, at least in the U.S. So when someone sees folks attempting to interfere with their normal activities--logging, mining, developing land, any of a number of "environmentally-impacting" jobs--they'll first wonder what such people are smoking. But that quickly turns to rage when they see these (to their mind) lunatics actually impacting their legitimate livelihood and/or desires. Were such confrontations to start with a conversation, there would probably be no change, but at least a first step would be made, with further steps to come later. And the deep-seated backlash of people who feel you're throwing slanted theories and alien emotions at them while trying to coerce them to act upon those theories and emotions could be avoided.
Westkybitcoins,
It's not clear to me that you really have a deep understanding of environmentalism. Let's review some of your opinions, and get educated.
No.
I'm speaking to matt608 of the opinions of people who think of environmental activists as kooks. Continuing to act in a manner that disregards their rights, property and views while claiming an educated high ground is only going to perpetuate, or worsen,
their the activists' standing in society.
Activism is a role played by a certain group of people. It has negative and positive effects. But look at the title of the thread. It says 'environmentalists', not activists.
Yes, but the tangent that our conversation went off toward was focused specifically on activists, and in fact, the article focused specifically on activists.
Participants held strongly negative stereotypes about such activists, and those feelings reduced their willingness to adopt the behaviors that these activities promoted, reports a research team led by University of Toronto psychologist Nadia Bashir.
In one, the participants228 Americans recruited via Amazons Mechanical Turkdescribed both varieties of activists in overwhelmingly negative terms.
It further found participants were less interested in befriending activists who participated in stereotypical behavior (such as staging protest rallies), but could easily envision hanging out with those who use nonabrasive and mainstream methods such as raising money or organizing social events.
Just saying.
It's important to understand the difference, and who and what environmentalists are. They're not just the conscious person who recycles bottles and cans and drives a Prius. And they're not just activists. Those two groups are the least important groups of environmentalists. The third group are those people who have a large set of knowledge on the subject of the environment. They may be scientists, professors, speakers, philanthropists, lobbyists, executives of conservation organizations, or, retired activists, now engaging in real projects, such as the rewilding of North America using GIS databases. They are field research specialists, urban planners, entomologists, climate scientists, architects, ecologists, writers, botanists, hydroponics researchers, and so on. They are people doing herd studies in Africa, people reintroducing the wolf into Yellowstone, researchers studying trophic cascades in the northwest, people engaging in coral reef studies, educated CEOs of particular clothing companies, researchers of island biogeography, individuals developing methods for sustainable salmon fishing, documentary filmmakers...
While technically I agree with you, that everyone should be judged according to their own actions and not those of others, there's always going to be a degree of conflation between different subsets of a group that centers around specific core interests and concerns. Anyone who claims to be an environmentalist, or who is involved in overtly environmentalist activity to a large enough degree that others can make the association, is going to be lumped in with the (highly visible) activists, and is going to be assumed to be of a similar disposition unless they show otherwise.
For that reason, activists being more conscious of the impact that their attitudes and actions have would help. The "treehuggers" could acknowledge that should they get their way, they'll put people out of a job and make their life immediately worse, with nothing of real benefit gained within their lifetime, in the view of those impacted at least.
Really, were all politics to be divorced from the issue entirely (including no new laws stepping on other's rights to bring about the results that environmentalists see as beneficial) I could easily see even the yokels I know actually having a degree of (initially begrudging) respect for the environmentalist mindset, and being far more willing to consider their admonitions.
After all, people don't generally "hate" nutritionists. But were they to be put in charge of determining what others ate and drank, or were there activist groups calling themselves nutritionists that held protests outside of fast-food places and tried to forcefully disrupt "Candy Day" every Halloween, that would probably change pretty quickly, and I doubt that all the education in the world--or even the fact that self-proclaimed nutritionists weren't doing such things just the year prior!--would matter.
It sucks, but that's human nature. I'd think the only thing that could really be done for a group/movement/mindset that has such "bad actors" would be for every member to distance themselves as far as possible from such people, denounce them, and refuse to give them a "place at the table" or even any sympathy. And let the media know the ostracism is occuring. May seem harsh, but unless a sufficiently large percentage of the population is overtly environmentally-active already, I don't see any other efforts working.