This is the third part of a three-part feature. Also see "Responding to the Reapers" and "Is Enviromentalism Dead?."

Is the environmental movement committing suicide? It seems that with every passing week we have more voices being added to the view that environmentalism is dead or dying. But as Mark Twain remarked upon hearing the reports of his own demise, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

With all that has gone on over the last four years (and even further back than that), there certainly is ample evidence to cause us, as members of the movement, to feel as if something is wrong with what we are doing, or at least the ways in which we are doing it. As an environmentalist, here is my view on what some of those things are.

The environmental movement uses divisive language. If we step back from some of our own rhetoric and attempt to listen to it as it might be heard by others who are not part of the movement (and that is a large number), it often comes across as alien to their values and to their religious faith. *Environmentalists tend to use language that divides immediately and automatically because we communicate outside of our movement in the same ways in which we communicate within it. * That is a mistake, and is not a way to move forward.

As the linguistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein put it, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Unless we can come up with practical ways to speak to people using ordinary language that makes sense to them and matters to their lives, our words will not find empathetic ears but deaf ones.

Environmentalism needs to be a mainstream movement. In relation to the last point about the language we use, we also need to seriously grow the ranks of our movement, both at the grass roots level and more broadly within the political realm, across party lines. Environmentalists all too often come across to other people as elitist, superior, and out of touch with the realities of their lives. My experience has taught me that we are sometimes less tolerant than we think we are, and not nearly as inclusive as we should be.

Our environmental problems are so big at this point in time, and getting bigger all the time, that we can’t win this with half or more of the country against us. But many of us will not “condescend” to reach out in a broader sense, particularly if that means crossing a partisan divide, which leads me to my next point.

Environmentalism has been co-opted by the progressive movement. I make this last point as a progressive myself; anyone who knows me knows what my personal politics are. But a major mistake we’ve made, in my view, is in allowing our personal political dispositions to infect environmentalism to the point of turning it into the progressive movement itself, which it didn’t used to be, and shouldn’t be today. If it remains as such in the future, I think environmentalism will be dead.

In allowing environmentalism to become almost the exclusive preserve of the Democratic party, of the liberal and progressive political forces in this country, we have simultaneously estranged at least half of this nation. It need not be that way, and if we want our movement to move forward into the future, we need to end this partisan practice.

We should not allow a tendency toward liberalism to alienate conservatives, who have an interest in our environment too. We should not allow a tendency toward secularism to estrange people of obvious and prominent religious faith, where stewardship over creation is, or could be, a deep and shared value between us.

To put a finer point on it: There is no reason specific to the environmental movement that our cause has to be directly linked to abortion rights, or gay marriage, or universal health care, or gun control, or affirmative action, or secularism -- or anything else that progressives hold dear, myself included. By allowing the environmental movement to be co-opted by the larger progressive movement (which is our base), we have at the same time excluded about half of this nation, as they have come to identify environmentalism as a liberal cause, as a leftist special interest group, which makes it foreign to them.

Some environmentalists have a tough enough time forming alliances with sportsmen, for example, especially hunters, because of their disagreement with killing animals, and a distaste for guns, and often because sportsmen may be predominantly white males. But let me say this: Not only should we be allied with hunters, we should be talking to groups like the National Rifle Association. All other things being equal, the NRA is a natural network for the environmental movement; but because of our other politics, there is no way that would happen.

So I believe that our paramount problem is that we have approximately half the country against us. And what is wrong with our environment is so serious and so big that there is no way we can win without a majority. (I'll go even further and say that this issue trumps all the others because we are literally talking about the viability of life on Earth, especially when we are talking about climate destruction. If we can't sustain life we won't have the luxury of having any other problems, if you know what I mean by that.) And I don't mean the same nominal majority that responds to polls upwards of 80% in favor of a clean environment; as you know, when ranked by importance that subject is rarely in the top set of issues for people, and they don't vote motivated by it.

We need to mainstream environmentalism, and we do that by decoupling it from the progressive movement so that it becomes nonpartisan and user-friendly for both halves of the country, who all reside in the same environment, which is the only one we have, or will ever have. That means, based on my analysis, that rather than environmentalism being dead, it needs a new lease on life -- it needs to be even more specifically defined as a movement than it has been over the last several years.

The viability of the environmental movement moving forward will be decided by how many of us remain willing to call ourselves environmentalists, who are willing to protect the permanent values of something we all should share as common ground in this country, and I mean common ground both figuratively and literally. For that to take place, we’ll need to be united, not divided. We are ecologically united by our environment, and there is something perverse about being divided by that.

I, for one, am proud to continue to call myself an environmentalist, and am not willing to allow others, who are battle worn and fatigued from what we have all gone through over the last few years, to sound my death knell. To paraphrase the NRA, “They’ll have to pry my catch and release fly rod from my cold, dead fingers.”

We’ve all been battered and bruised by what has happened to our planet, and some of the scars run deep. But those scars run deep enough, I believe, to show that we can still bleed, that there is yet a pulse to be taken, that the green heart of environmentalism still beats.

The Japanese have an old saying: “When you’re knocked down nine times, stand up ten.” Rather than being dead, I think environmentalism is standing up again, and taller than before.

Aron M. Thompson is a board member of ONE/Northwest.