Environmentalism: A Cause That Involves Us All
It’s the 100th birthday of Orson Welles, best known for his film “Citizen Kane.” Welles said:
I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won’t contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.
This is a concept worth noting for environmentalists, a group with no leader, no constitution, no membership cards, no annual dues to pay. If it is in fact a “group” in any sense at all, it’s a collection of more than 200,000 different assemblages of people all over the world whose missions are some form of environmental and social justice. The overall idea, i.e., protecting the quality of life on this planet now and into the future, is one that, if it takes root and prevails, will do so only because it truly did become a “social act.”
