You either agree with the premise that we are running out of time to save the planet or you don't. There's no "triangulation" here. It makes no sense. If global warming is a very real and imminent crisis, if our fish supplies are either disappearing or so badly poisoned and polluted it's not safe to eat them, if fossil fuels are rapidly dwindling, and if our food supply is being "privatized" by massive agribusiness, then we need to start making some very serious changes. Unfortunately, "big changes" are too often seen as incompatible with our political process. Can you imagine calling for massive cuts in the defense budget to fund mass transit? Can you imagine real urban planning to place employers closer to where people live to cut down on fuel use? Can you imagine rationing and other restrictions on our wasteful lifestyles? Do you think campaign advisors are being paid to recommend risky ideas like those?
Of course, the question remains, which is the real risky behavior? Finger-in-the-wind, play-it-safe political parties who put winning above all else are prohibiting the kinds of changes we desperately need. Some say, well, we have to get Democrats elected before we can see these kinds of changes. I'm all for electing Democrats who are pushing for these kinds of massive reforms. The problem is, they aren't. They are mired in incrementalism because they see a political value in "the political center." Political compromise MAY be good politics; there is absolutely no reason to assume it defines good policy. These are truly desperate times. What's at stake today is our ability to sustain ourselves on the planet. Or do you disagree?
The truth is, what Democrats are doing today is not laying an adequate foundation for the kinds of changes we need. It will take time to educate Americans about the sacrifices and turbulence the future, by necessity, will bring. Our bloated lifestyles, however much we may cherish them, are not sustainable. Is there political risk in being the bearer of bad news? Of course there is. But with every risk, comes potential benefits. In this case, we have no choice. My view of the politics is that, if the case is presented with integrity and clarity, the American people will reward the Democratic Party. What we're seeing today is unacceptable. What we're seeing today is putting the politics ahead of the policy. This cannot continue. In time, it will not continue because the urgency of the situation will demand answers. Democrats could really be "save the planet" heroes if they would step up to the plate and look beyond the next election. It is our job to encourage them to do that.
Do you support the following goals of the "Solartopians" (
http://www.solartopia.org/)?
source:
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2007/1547In the global campaign to save the Earth, a shared vision is vital.
“Solartopia” foresees a democratic, green-powered 21st Century civilization. Our economic and ecological survival depend on it.
Technologically, the vision rests on four simple pillars:
1. Total renunciation of all fossil and nuclear fuels. In a sustainable, survivable future, they are a 20th Century pox, neither green nor clean.
2. All-out conversion to renewable energy, led by the “Solartopian Trinity” of wind, solar and bio-fuels. Mother Earth gives us the natural power we need.
3. Complete commitment to maximum efficiency, including revived and solarized mass transit and passenger rail systems. Our automotive “love affair” is a hoax.
4. Zero tolerance for production of anything that cannot be re-used or recycled, including chemical-based food. Solartopia is an organic, post-pollution world.
Solartopia can't happen without transcending some primary barriers:
5. Corporations can no longer enjoy human rights without human responsibilities. Revised corporate charters must break the grip these giant economic organizations have held on our political, economic and ecological systems.
6. Population is the province of women, who in Solartopia are empowered, educated and equally paid. In synch with Mother Earth, they bring us the number of children She wishes to accommodate.
7. Where everyone has a right to the basic necessities of life, including free education, nobody starves. The Solartopian rich may be plentiful, but no civilization thrives unless all have access to sustenance and dignity.
8. Big Money is barred from the campaign process. Free and fair elections and referenda power non-violent community-based evolution. The universal right to ballots on recycled paper means accurate vote counts and recounts for all.
Solartopia demands that business serve society and the planet, rather than vice versa. Capitalism may be one thing, but Enron cannibalism is quite another. Balancing competition and the profit motive with human and ecological need, the Solartopian vision demands accountability, efficiency, service and justice.
The switch to renewables defunds global terrorism. Atomic reactors are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction. Shutting them ends the fear of apocalyptic disaster by both terror and error. Transcending coal and cars cures much of global warming.
But everywhere we turn, the King CONG corporations build barriers. They use government subsidies and media disinformation to prolong their failed investments in obsolete technologies and the fossil/nuke fuels that run them.
Inseparable from those fuels are authoritarian power structures that produce wars for oil, financial imbalance and social chaos, leading to biological extinction.
Harvey Wasserman (www.solartopia.org) is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
