350.org

Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan -- the site of the Occupy Wall Street protests for the past month -- is a pretty desolate place to camp out: it’s fenced in by glass towers, paved with granite slabs, and landscaped with a few spindly honey locust trees. There’s no grass or fresh water, not even a drinking fountain, though there is a tiny flower garden that the protesters do their best not to trample. The park itself is only 33,000 square feet, little more than half the size of a football field. Tourists gather at a safe distance around the park’s border and snap photos of the 5,000-some-odd protesters as they sprawl, stretch, pace, paint signs, bang on things, drink bottled water, and, occasionally, roar. It feels at times less like an acampada than a zoo.

But don’t let that fool you -- this arguably is the most technologically sophisticated protest in history. Twitter-born, optics-aware, and social-media savvy, the Occupy Wall Street activists have managed to capture the nation’s attention and spawn copycat protests around the world. And so it was both fitting and charmingly absurd on Saturday afternoon when author and climate activist Bill McKibben -- staging a "teach-in" on climate change at Washington Square Park before the Occupy Wall Street general assembly -- had to resort to the most analog form of amplification imaginable: the "human megaphone," whereby members of the crowd repeat after him, like members of a gospel choir, to transmit each phrase of his speech to those out of earshot. (Police had prohibited the use of megaphones.)

"The reason it’s so great…" McKibben said, his long thin arm chopping at the air like a scythe.

"The reason it’s so great…" the crowd echoed.

"That we’re occupying Wall Street…"

"That we’re occupying Wall Street…"

"Is that Wall Street…"

"Is that Wall Street…"

"Has been occupying the atmosphere!"

"Has been occupying the atmosphere!"

"The sky does not belong to Exxon," McKibben continued. "They cannot keep using it as a sewer into which to dump their carbon."

McKibben (who is also an OnEarth contributing editor) had come to drum up awareness among the occupiers about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry dirty crude from the Canadian tar sands to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, creating a serious danger to communities and drinking supplies along the way, as well as the global climate. That very day, The New York Times had reported that the State Department had outsourced an environmental impact study of the pipeline to a firm that had long been cozy with the oil industry. (Or, as McKibben bluntly summarized in his teach-in, "The whole thing was rigged.") The timing of the disclosure could not have been more auspicious: Here was documented proof of how the one percent bend the political system to the detriment of the other 99.

Days before his visit, McKibben’s activism group, 350.org, had staged a well-attended protest at Zuccotti. Afterward, I talked to Phil Aroneanu, 350’s co-founder and U.S. campaign director, to find out if environmental protesters felt aligned with the larger movement behind Occupy Wall Street.

"A lot of people actually came up to us and asked, 'Why are you here?'" Aroneanu recalled. His response to them was simple: We’re a climate change advocacy group. The reason that we haven’t had any change on climate change is because coal companies, gas companies, oil companies, and their Wall Street financiers have rigged the system and bought out our politicians.

"It seemed to make sense for everyone that I talked to," Aroneanu said. "Whether they were from a union or occupiers or from community groups, they were like, 'I totally get that.'"

But the question is not whether the environmental movement can be absorbed by the chimerical Occupy Wall Street movement; the question is whether Occupy Wall Street can benefit the environment.

***

Anyone who has seen the panoply of cardboard signs carpeting Zuccotti Square -- espousing the legalization of marijuana, poking fun at Chris Christie’s weight, eroticizing peace ("Shoot sperm not bullets"), demanding student loan relief, and begging to get Arrested Development back on network television -- knows that these occupiers are an inclusive bunch, perhaps to a fault.

Last Saturday I spoke to Michael Lavelle, a financial advisor for a life-insurance company who had driven down from Boston to hoist a sign reading "End Fracking Now" in the park. Yet far from focusing on environmental issues, our conversation quickly veered into a lengthy detour about the 9/11 Truth movement, the neurologically deleterious effects of aspartame, and how America needs to abandon its support of the state of Israel. "I’m a proponent of all the issues that are on the table right now," he said.

This isn’t open-mindedness. It’s ADD.

Not coincidentally, it’s also built into the structural DNA of the Occupation movement. When the anti-consumerist activism group Adbusters first put forward the idea of "occupying" Wall Street in the manner of Tahrir Square, it did so with a chaotic model in mind: rather than a "pack of wolves" with a strict hierarchy, it wanted to move like an amorphous "swarm."

What we are seeing in New York and across the country -- and increasingly, the world -- is that swarm in action: occupiers gather, debate, and, over a number of weeks or even months, hope to reach a consensus. "Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum -- that Mubarak must go -- over and over again until they won," the Adbusters website says. "Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand?"

Throughout the occupation, any number of activists have put forward their personal demands, which have included stricter financial regulations, universal health care, open borders, stronger union rights, and the abolition of "personhood" status for corporations. One widely circulated list of demands even included -- nobly, but naively -- "one trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants."

Over time, Adbusters hopes that this Cambrian explosion of demands will evolve into one elegant ultimatum. In its missive, the group makes it clear what it hopes that demand will be: "a presidential commission to separate money from politics."

It seems this proposal has since been lost in the ensuing storm of media coverage, or maybe it was deemed too tame by the protesters themselves. "I love the idea of occupying Wall St," wrote one commenter beneath the Adbusters manifesto, "but the demand for a presidential commission is lame…. Do you think all those people in Tahrir Square wanted a freaking commission?"

And yet if you talk to the serious environmental activists down on Wall Street, many agree that this one demand -- the decoupling of corporate influence from government policy -- would be a quantum leap forward for the environmental movement. This is because, as Phil Aroneanu pointed out, when environmental nonprofits lobby against the interests of polluters and industry, the playing field is never level.

"On the climate bill, the environmental groups spent more money than they’ve ever spent before, and they still got outspent eight-to-one by corporate interests," he said. "The cards are stacked way against groups that are trying to bring progressive change in this country. So I don’t think you’d hear a lot of complaints [from environmentalists] if you decided to remove money from politics. Activist groups are way better at organizing people than they are at raising money."

Julien Harrison, an environmental activist who left his home in Oregon to join the occupation two weeks ago, said that addressing this power imbalance was his first priority. "There’s a systematic problem [with our environmental policy], and that problem lies deeper than just needing stricter regulations," he said.

It lies smack in the heart of Wall Street, he argued.

"If you’re an environmentalist, you should also be concerned about these issues of democracy, of equality, of political corruption," Harrison said. "All of our struggles ultimately are connected. Our success lies in us coming together."

As the last 27 days have made clear, though, just coming together isn’t enough. The Occupation continues, with more people swarming to Wall Street and spinoff protests in other cities every day. But winter looms. To effect a lasting change in this country -- economic, ecological, or otherwise -- the occupiers will need to evolve into something a little more coordinated, something with thicker coats and sharper teeth, and finally, resolutely, pick their prey.