-Caveat Lector- -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Driving to Doom Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 13:39:51 -0500 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Lorna Salzman) To: Flying to and from South Africa, where my husband and I just spent a month, I had occasion to read various British newspapers. While the big headlines were about the US election morass, the above titled article, by Peter Preston of The Guardian on Nov. 20th, hit a hard note with me. It should be read by all Greens and especially by those who have shunted ecological concerns to the back burner both before and during the elections. I would like to quote some of Preston's statements because they echo, though more eloquently, the same things I have been saying about the US Green movement for many years. First, Preston talks about the debacle in The Hague regarding the utter failure to deal with global warming. No surprise of course; even the 5% the US conceded is nowhere near the 70% reduction in CO2 emissions that credible scientists say must be achieved. Says Preston: "Unless the new rulers in Pennsylvania Ave, whoever they turn out to be, can be persuaded to wake up and shape up, then we might as well not bother. A world environment policy without the polluter-in-chief is a hole in the head and a hole in the ozone layer. ....George W. Bush says he does not believe in global warming. Al Gore believes all right, yet he hasn't managed, over eight years in power, to do much about it". Nothing new there, you Greens say. But hold on. Preston then goes on to say this: "Hang on though! Isn't there, at last, a strong, growing American Green party now? And didn't it, in many ways, shape the whole presidential debate, raising causes that others feared to touch?...Nader, with his calm fury and idealism, brought in hundreds of thousands of young people turned off by standard campaigning. He was an energising force (and a prophet his supporters keep comaring with Gandhi)". And then he goes on: "Fair enough. But I went to Nader's last great Washington rally, almost as the polls opened a fortnight ago, and sat through four hours of oratory and ambition. I did not once hear the words 'global warming' uttered. Nor "ozone layer". These were Green warriors who seemed more anxious to talk at length about statehood for the district of Columbia. These were environmentalists reserving their biggest cheers for legalising pot smoking." Preston continues: "Now, of course, Nader does have the requisite policies somewhere in the greenhouse. Leaf through his position papers and you'll find him endorsing the standard Ozone Action programme and shredding Gore as an "environment poseur" playing a cynical con game. But he made precious little of it, one brick amongst many, at the close. The "uncompromising political force" he aimed to create was more interested in enfranchising Washington voters. Which is why I worry so deeply about what democracy can address, and what it can achieve, in a true environmental crisis." Preston goes on: "There are 90 or so Green parties around the world..some, like our own Greens, rise and fall again. There is no pattern to the way they bring their message, THE MOST URGENT MESSAGE OF ALL (Salzman caps). The end-of-the-world message. They dont know whether to be part of the process, or the heart of the process or standing outside it, proclaiming doom. ...When the case for higher fuel taxes had to be made (he) didnt hear much cheeping from the British Greens." Preston continues: "There must, I think, be a parallel staring at boots in America today...There is no tomorrow if you dont talk greenhouse gases today. But the voters dont want to listen and even prophet-politicians like Nader who seek their vote dont tell them in terms. Less petrol at a greater price? Forget it. When gun holders vote Bush, as they did, to hang on to their guns, what chance that car owners will vote to make their own lives more difficult?...democracy shies away because the hard questions cant be put". I have asked myself during the Nader campaign just why Nader - like the ASGP itself which couldnt bring itself to feature an environmentalist as a key speaker at its convention, and in particular the late David Brower who managed to live six months past that convention date - has soft pedalled environment. Surely not because he feared alienating some constituency; his constituency of college students and young activists is more gung-ho on environment that most of the ASGP people. And surely he had nothing to lose seeing as he stuck his neck far out on anti-corporate themes and the like. But whatever the reason for this, it matters less than what the US Greens and Green parties do and say in the coming years, and it matters less than the fact that unless the Greens push themselves as carriers and warriors for the environmental message, that message will be drowned out or suppressed. NO ONE ELSE WILL CARRY IT. If Nader didnt, the next Green candidate is even less likely to do so. It is notable that the US Green manifesto is the only one in the world that doesnt make rescuing the planet its main objective. The simple and brutal fact is that there is a huge potential environmental constituency out there that is waiting for aggressive uncompromising no-holds-barred leadership and action on a myriad of environmental issues - global warming, loss of biodiversity, genetic engineering, energy, overfishing, water supply and purity, agriculture, you name it. If the Greens dont give it, the (Green) party is over. I am not sure it isnt over already. I worked from the mid seventies to the mid eighties under the leadership of Dave Brower, surely the most committed, knowledgeable, inspiring and uncompromising environmentalist of this century, in an organization that was arguably the key national group that slowed up nuclear power and which sued the Federal government to stop genetic engineering. This organization, Friends of the Earth, had at its best days 30,000 members, a fraction of those in the Sierra Club or National Audubon Society. Yet with its far flung branches, field reps, advisers like Amory Lovins, leadership like Brower's, it was as respected and influential as the lawyer-driven groups like NRDC and EDF. It never held back, never sold out, never compromised. It took the leadership against the Alaskan oil pipeline (we lost) and against the SST (we won). Above all it was respected and in turn respected its membership and constituency. Today FOE is a small organization in Washington DC (I can tell you that history some time) and the Beltway Biggies like NRDC and EDF and Audubon, etc, have usurped the political process in Washington, selling out their own constituency for grants, access, status and privilege. Many people take it for granted that the word Green is synonymous with environment. Shows how much they know. They dont know that Greens have been intimidated by the pathetically small but obnoxiously loud so-called Left, Marxists, identity politics gangs, New Agers, purported feminists, peaceniks, and all the others who have intimidated Greens away from a strong pro-environment stance towards the Prison & Drug & Vegetarian anthem, away from confronting the many-headed global ecological crisis, towards a diffuse and clouded chorus in which the words "environment" and "ecology" get drowned out by clenched-fist rhetoric about every little slight that any individual has suffered in that drama called Real Life. Do I sound callous? No, just blunt. This is what has been accurately described as Re-arranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic. Or as Thoreau said, What's the use of a house if you havent a tolerable planet to put it on? Or: why pull drowning people out of the water if you only plan on poisoning them to death tomorrow? If Greens have any future in US politics, it is by pulling out of this muck, this sodden mixture of xeroxed Internetted abstract social compassion, scattershot anger and outmoded leftist rhetoric that lifts things like vegetarianism and brutal cops to a level equal to that of global warming, nukes in space and habitat destruction. If Greens have any future in US politics, it will be ONLY - I repeat, ONLY - through grabbing the environment banner, holding it high and front where the Marxists and Identity Politics gangs cant reach it, and holding it long enough for the general public to recognize who is holding it. If Greens dont speak the message loudly and clearly, if they adopt their "aw shucks we dont want to scare people" attitutde, if they dilute the message with all the laundry list items of the so-called social justice movement, if they back off from the expectations of the public and get cold feet, if they mess around in long meetings and workshops correcting the grammar and inserting the PC phrases their colleagues demand, they will fail.. and they will deserve to fail. Lorna Salzman Lorna Salzman [EMAIL PROTECTED] "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved" (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species). "Evolutionary history should provide the primary basis for assessing biological integrity" (Paul Angermeier & James Karr, BioScience, vol. 44 #10, Nov. 1994) (re Economics): "There aren't many other specialties that are more abstract and out of touch with the realityof Nature.." (Gus Steeves). <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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