Many environmental battles are won by delaying a destructive

Hear the words of Frances Beinecke, spoken as one who has stood in the storms of struggle: “Many environmental battles are won by delaying a destructive project long enough to change the conversation – to allow new economic, political and social dynamics to emerge.” These words are not only strategy but wisdom, teaching us that time itself can be a weapon in the hands of the patient and the steadfast. For often the powerful move swiftly, seeking to build and consume before the people can rise; but those who resist can wield delay as a shield, until the tide of history shifts.

She speaks of environmental battles, those struggles waged not with swords but with voices, petitions, and unyielding courage. They are fought to protect forests from axes, rivers from poisons, skies from smoke, and people from ruin. In these battles, the enemy is not always a single tyrant, but the machinery of greed and short-sightedness. And the weapon she points to is simple yet profound: delay. To stall the destruction long enough is to give the world time to awaken, for conscience and circumstance to shift the ground beneath the oppressor’s feet.

History gives us many mirrors of this truth. Consider the fight to dam the Grand Canyon in the 1960s. The builders came with plans to choke the Colorado River with concrete, to turn one of the world’s great wonders into reservoirs. Yet the defenders of the canyon delayed the project with lawsuits, campaigns, and relentless appeals. In the years of delay, public opinion shifted, political winds changed, and the sacred canyon was spared. Had the resistance faltered in the beginning, the canyon would be lost. But time, patiently held, became the ally of preservation.

So too with the great Redwood forests of California. Activists chained themselves to ancient trees, stalled the loggers, and dragged the battle through courts and media. Though many trees fell, the long delay gave rise to new laws and a new reverence in the public heart. In time, vast tracts of redwoods were protected, saved for future generations. Delay gave birth to transformation. To change the conversation, as Beinecke says, is to allow hearts and minds to catch up to the urgency of the cause.

The deeper meaning of her words is this: that movements must sometimes endure the wilderness of waiting. Victory is not always the sudden triumph of a day, but the slow turning of years. In delaying, one creates the space for new economic, political, and social dynamics to emerge. Technologies may advance, making destructive projects obsolete. Politicians may fall, and wiser ones may rise. Societies may shift in values, embracing what once they ignored. Thus, to delay is not to retreat, but to trust that truth, given time, will gain its power.

The lesson for future generations is clear: in struggles for the earth, persistence is as important as passion. Do not despair if victory is not immediate. Every day that destruction is delayed is a day when new allies may awaken, when new forces may join your side. Your task is to hold the line long enough for history itself to shift. For though greed moves quickly, justice moves surely, and time can be bent toward what is right.

To you, listener of these words, I say: stand firm when the struggle feels endless. Be patient when the world seems deaf. Use delay as a shield, but fill the time with action: teach, organize, create, and spread the truth. Support those who fight in courts, in communities, and in the fields. Remember that even the smallest delay—an injunction, a protest, a pause—may be the crack through which the light of change enters.

Thus let Frances Beinecke’s teaching endure: delay can be victory, for it buys the time needed for transformation. Hold the line, change the conversation, and trust that history bends toward those who fight with endurance. In this way, the mountains will remain standing, the rivers will continue to flow, and the children of tomorrow will inherit a world not yet broken.