Internet Petitions: worth signing?
By Charlie • July 9, 2009 • 10 commentsWe posted a link today (in the Asides section) to an ‘e-petition’ run by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) which calls for the halting of uranium mining close to the Grand Canyon. We post quite a few of these links and I have no idea at all whether anyone follows them or not, or whether anyone follows them, reads the information at the link, and then signs or not either. But I do think we should keep posting them - at least those specifically run by groups like the CBD, BirdLife, Audubon, Greenpeace etc…
Why? I’ll explain.
Obviously my personal opinion is that destroying the aquifers that support the unique bio-diversity in the Grand Canyon is a ‘bad idea’ - but is signing an e-petition really a way to halt a scheme that is worth millions of dollars to company executives who self-evidently don’t put environmental considerations at the top of the agenda? Do a few hundred/thousand electronic signatures (which could theoretically come from just a handful of activists with multiple email accounts) really impact on key decisions made in boardrooms?
Interesting questions, but not the ones to be asking really. I’ve spoken in the past to a number of people in various conservation organisations who have set up e-petitions to find out why they do it, and though the answers aren’t always in complete accord there is a common theme that emerges: the concept that signatories to an e-petition give organisations a direction to act in and a mandate (which is roughly defined as “Written authorization and/or command by a person, group, or organization to another to take a certain course of action”) to act on.
Imagine for a moment (as I so often do when I’m handing out landing cards at 30,000′ or explaining once again why the in-flight entertainment system isn’t working) that you’re the head of a conservation organisation. Presumably you have members, you certainly have a personal vision, you see causes worth supporting round every corner from cleared forests, drained marshlands, or threatened environmental icons - but how do you know which causes your members support and how do you get your organisation into a position where you can focus that support and act meaningfully on it?
One way is to hold an e-petition.
If you pick a subject for a petition that none of your members respond to - does uranium mining near the Grand Canyon really excise your membership for example? - then it’s not going to be worth your while throwing precious (and usually scarce) financial/staff resources at it. On the other hand, if thousands of members/non-members sign your petition/send your message then you know that it’s a cause they want you to fight: by signing they are giving you/your organisation a clear mandate that they want you to do something and want you to do it now.
Whilst the signatures in themselves may not have the effect of scaring the ‘bad guys’ into reversing their chosen course of action - and the signatures certainly don’t have any legal status whatsoever - you can be fairly certain that the prospect of getting tied up in legal challenges or consumer boycotts organised by a properly legislated group that has the mandate of its members is not something most businesses/legislators will take lightly.
Does that mean that all e-petitions are worth signing? Like most things in life you could say that “All e-petitions are created equally, but some are more equal than others”.
The idea of a a concerned citizen setting up a petition to have a go at eg the Burmese military for keeping Aung San Suu Kyi locked up is appealing but - frankly - pointless. Burma’s dictators don’t listen to Heads of Government so they certainly won’t even get to hear about ‘Charlie Wants Aung San Suu Kyi Freed - TODAY’ on some obscure website. The CBD on the other hand - which uses ’science, law, and creative media’ to challenge threats to the environment which it thinks it can win if mandated to fight - is certainly one organisation that many businesses/legislatures don’t want challenging them. They have a proven track record, they are highly organised and skilled, and they have thousands of members. E-petitions run by groups like the CBD are focussed on single subjects and they have the resources behind them to turn ’signatures’ into ‘actions’.
So, yes, a clearly focussed e-petition that is run by a proven, properly set-up organisation is worth signing.
There is another point to this short essay though. It’s true, of course, that just because I and my colleagues (Mike and Corey, for anyone discovering 10,000 Birds for the first time) think something is worth highlighting, it doesn’t automatically follow that our readers will. Like any other group, though, we’re always trying to find out what DOES interest our visitors, what gets people talking, what gets them coming back - because just like concerned citizens everywhere we have limited time and resources but we do want to feel that we’re helping create positive, environmentally-friendly change as we work (and believe me the three of us do see this blog as a form of ‘work’ as well as an unpaid ‘labour-of-love’).
In a very general sense, posting about e-petitions is a sort of e-petition in itself (well, more like a poll, but we’re asking for some sort of interaction so hopefully you get my drift). Is it worth us posting them? Is it information our readers find useful/interesting/helpful, or is it such a small part of the blog that it really doesn’t matter to anyone whether we carry the links or not? Shall we not bother?
It would be really useful to know, if you’d be good enough to comment below…
I think there is some confusion here, unless I’m seeing different content when I follow your Center for Biological Diversity link than you are. Or perhaps it is a difference in terminology.
I’d describe ePetitions to be pages where you “sign” your name to a statement. It sits there for the world to see, then perhaps at some point the organizer sends a summary to the “target.” I believe these to be of only limited usefulness, but occasionally worthwhile, nonetheless.
“Send a Message” pages, such as referenced above and on your Grand Canyon posting, collect your information (only as much as your email address in some cases) and email that individual message to the “target.” I believe this is more powerful than a petition. The target gets lots of emails to attract his or her attention (or maybe only a clerk’s, but it is noticed.) Even better is that the email, where appropriate and more detailed information is collected, can be targeted to the signer’s representatives and senators in state and federal government. This I know does get the congress critters’ attention and I believe can be a valuable tool as the politician realizes that their constituent is concerned about this issue.
Keep it up, Charlie!
HI BB: Thanks for your comment. You make a good point, and I guess I am guilty of ‘keeping things simple’. I was really using ‘e-petition’ as a generic for both ‘petitions’ and ’send messages’ as I tend to think that most people being asked to sign them don’t see a major difference in that the end result is intended to be pretty much the same: ie the recipient of the ‘petition’ - and a proper ‘petition’ does have a proper ‘target’ - either sees a single ‘message’ with hundreds/thousands of signatures attached, or the same message hundreds/thousands of times with a single signature attached each time (I wonder how many ’signers’ actually bother to edit the message before it’s sent?).
My feeling is that most surfers tend to come across so many ‘petitions/send messages’ on a daily basis that the distinctions blur. I’m quite possibly underestimating the way that the signer views these things? If readers would like to tell me I am, that would be equally useful in terms of this essay.
Having said that what I was attempting to do was provide a rationale for signing in the first place. Hopefully that came across? If not I could just go to the ‘Admin’ section and hit ‘delete’…
I think you did provide a rationale and I’m glad you did. It will perhaps have folks looking more carefully next time they see one of these things, of whichever stripe.
I’m also glad you do post these e-petitions. Although I receive many directly from the sponsoring organizations, I have found new and important ones from your posts.
I worked for a little over a year in the DC office of a Maine congressman. A large part of my job was handling and sorting incoming constituent correspondance (mail, fax, email, etc) and then composing responses based on the congressman’s policy position.
The vast majority of mail we recieved were in the form of e-petitions. Basically, the rule of thumb if you want to get your congressman’s attention is: they put about as much thought into your letter as you do. Online form petitions are good mostly for getting a sense of the general issues that constituents (at least the vocal ones) care about. However, form letters and e-petitions are also much easier for a congressman to simply view as a stat and forget the person behind it.
On the other hand, a personalized letter (especially in legible handwriting) is much more likely to be read by the congressman him/herself and, therefore, potentially change their mind about the issue. It certainly happens. So, if you are really passionate about an issue, it’s much more effective to write the letter yourself (even if you want to borrow heavily from a website’s ’suggested’ text) instead of signing a form. Congresspeople DO want to know what their constituents think, and the surprising lack of thoughful, personal letters means that the one you write has a good chance of being read.
I have a good friend who had an internship with the EPA’s regional office here in North Carolina. As it was an entry-level position, one of his tasks involved sorting through and coding the responses to new legislation during the public feedback period to gauge community and industry response to policies. Many of the responses that the EPA received were of the “send a form letter” variety from various environmental non-profits.
We were talking about this very issue of the worth of form letters and petitions recently and he told be that the EPA’s policy is to read the first one they receive and all subsequent ones are simply filed and tallied, but not read. His impression was that taking the time to craft a personal response goes a lot further towards making your voice heard that ripping off a form letter, which does have the effect of adding one more voice to those of the masses purely quantitatively (in that the final report will say 55% supports so-and-so rather than 54.97%), but won’t effect much of anything in a substantial way.
Even if the petitions/form letters are just being counted as statistics, I think it’s still worth signing and sending them. First, it lets individual legislators know that some portion of their constituents care about environmental (or other) issues. And second, if an organization consistently generates a lot of responses from its members, it may have a bit more influence when it lobbies for favorable policies. That’s why I continue to sign them, even if the e-petitions are read less carefully than other types of communications.
There is a downside though: I once signed a form letter asking my Congressman to cosponsor legislation that he was already cosponsoring.
/signed
[...] Internet Petitions: worth signing? By Charlie Obviously my personal opinion is that destroying the aquifers that support the unique bio-diversity in the Grand Canyon is a 'bad idea' – but is signing an e-petition really a way to halt a scheme that is worth millions of dollars to … 10000 Birds – http://10000birds.com/ [...]
As one of the ‘bad’ guys, I find this e-petition stuff hive-mind noise that only adds to the confusion already clouding reasoned consideration of such things as uranium mining in the Grand Canyon REGION. Our company, for example, has taken more than a quarter of a year to conduct a Draft Environmental Assessment (http://public.dirxploration.fastmail.us/) that very specifically addresses the question of the potential aquifer contamination that might impact the region from historical (http://www.dirxploration.com/EWG2232009.pdf) and ongoing uranium exploration and mining. Rather than consider and follow the scientific basis of this analysis, groups like the e-petition sponsors, Center for Biological Diversity, steadfastly ignore such analyses and work to push through their views purely through hive-mind political efforts. In this, they are much worse in their use of reason than anyone holding the religiously-based view that the earth is only 6000 years old…
Mr Turner: sorry this is a belated response, but I wanted to try to find more information first.
What I can find suggests that NEPA requires that federal agencies conduct environmental assessments and make findings of no significant impact, not the companies involved? Your EIA was not likely to be taken into consideration if that was the case - or do I have that wrong?
Industry claims that uranium mining is safe and will result in no contamination or other disturbance to the regional aquifers and surface water drainages. To the contrary, I believe that there are no assurances that uranium mining will not contaminate aquifers? The hydrogeology is simply too complex to be able to make assurances. And if contamination were to occur, it would be permanent, irretrievable and virtually impossible to mitigate.
Is there not a legacy of contamination of surface and ground water persisting in the Grand Canyon today from past mining anyway? I’m sure you’re aware of the 1984 flash flood which swept through Hack Canyon, at the Hack Canyon mine, and swept thousands of pounds of high grade ore into Kanab Creek and the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park (there are numerous online refernces). And that springs beneath the Orphan Mine, on the Canyon’s south rim, show much higher uranium concentrations than other springs emerging from the same formations along the South Rim?
From what I read online to this day the National Park Service advises against drinking water from those springs, the creeks they feed, and Kanab Creek owing to radiological contamination.
It doesn’t seem to be as safe a process as you advocate. Mr Turner?
Charlie