Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 12:28:56 -0800 (PST)
From: Dennis R Redmond <dredmond-AT-gladstone.uoregon.edu>
Subject: M-I: Re: final thoughts for the year


On Fri, 19 Dec 1997, Gary MacLennan wrote:

> But as I see the young people of Australia are extremely
> sophisticated when it comes to environmental matters.  They are massively
> well informed.  I would venture to say that they are among the most
> environmentally aware in the entire world.  The Environment movement is
> divided between the professional lobbyists and the Green Party people.
> They are both different shades of "realo".  By and large they have little
> interest in socialist thought.  The Greens talk about redistribution but
> they totally lack a class analysis of capitalism.

We're working on it. Most Green groups in America are starting, slowly and
painfully, to make the links between neoliberalism and the rape of the
ecosphere. It's not so much that the Greens are all petty bourgeoisie --
none of the Green activists I know in Oregon own/operate their own
business or are rich, wealthy, powerful rentiers -- as that the ecological
crisis is innately transnational, and the Left has done a pretty shitty
job of combating global capital on its own turf, or even explaining how
the system works and what we need to do to fight it. When people don't
have an adequate analysis of the system, they start inventing
nonsense about Gaia and eco-harmonic vibes. Thus the necessity for more
Green Left Weeklies. Still and all, the very fact that the idea of a Green
planet has taken such deep root in our nascent global culture points to
serious resistance to the neoliberal party line; the Nintendo kids dream
of East Asian socialism.

Incidentally, do the Greens/Rainbow Left have any representation in
Parliament yet? (I'm not up on my Oz-politik). 

-- Dennis



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