how very rude of you.
>
>1) Every conscientious environmentalist I know argues that the chief culprit
>is the U.S. (sometimes this is extended to the major industrialized
>countries in general). So no, the progressive wing of the environmental
>movement does not "tell" the rest of the world that it must sacrifice living
>standards while they sit comfortably at home.
That's not my experience, and your implied distinction between 'the progressive wing' of the environmental movement and its other admits as much.
But why don't you translate your rather vague generalisations about 'the chief culprit is the US' into specific policy proposals. Then nobody would doubt your sincerity.
Let me, if you will, draw out the conclusion of what you are saying. You think that the US consumes too much, and I presume would like to see it consume less, no? If that's the problem (personally I don't think so) then there is only one solution: reduce consumption by cutting wages.
After all, that's what wages are, the consumption fund. Whatever mechanism you choose - higher taxes, reduced production etc, the final effect will be the same, wages will command less in terms of goods and services.
So, if you call for a cut in US wages I'll take seriously your rhetorical attacks on US consumption. Otherwise I have to assume that it's just rhetoric, and the consumption that you want to see held down is third world consumption.
>
>2) Yes, the big environmental groups are largely corporate-funded and
>corporate in outlook. This says nothing about the millions of grassroots
>activists that are generally more progressive in outlook, and could be
>swayed to a red-green vision if idiots didn't sit around denouncing them as
>part of the problem.
I think it does say something. It says, to borrow an old saw, the dominant ideas of the age are those of the ruling class.
You reveal something of yourself with the old dream of the red-green alliance. I take it you mean that you do not believe that the arguments of the left are compelling, so you hope that you can garner numbers by passing yourself off as green. If so, I think you are kidding yourself if you think that my mails on LBO are the barrier to the radicalisation of that movement. May I suggest that it is the intrinsic prejudices of that audience that makes them indifferent to your 'vision'.
In message <Pine.GSU.4.21.0104041457510.27135-100000 at garcia.efn.org>, Dennis Robert Redmond <dredmond at efn.org> writes
In response to my
>> It was only in the defeat of the labour movement that more radical
>> activists - like yourself - adopted the banner of restricting
>> consumption, in an unconscious adaptation to that strand of elite
>> thinking.
>
>Where do you get these one-liners, out of a Cracker Jacks box? Central
>Europe has some of the most powerful unions around, plus tough enviro
>laws.
Germany's trade unions were annihilated under Fascism and reconstructed by CIA and AFL tutelage post-war. The Cold War anti-Communist laws ensured that they were deeply conservative organisations. The green movement in Germany has its origins in the counter-culture reaction against the post war settlement of which the unions were a part. Unfortunately, lacking any base in the working class it rapidly spun off in a reactionary direction, i.e. austerity and constraint.
>Big biz has *always* fought enviro regulations tooth and nail,
History says otherwise. Individual capitalists often bridle at specific regulations, but the drive for regulated capitalism does not come from anywhere but business itself. As a rule it is big business that craves regulation as a mechanism to raise the threshold of entry into markets against competitors.
>and
>will continue to do so, because it regards nature as raw material to be
>processed, as opposed to a resource to be valued, treasured and
>maintained.
Nature is a raw material to be processed, and a resource, not therefore to be valued, treasured and maintained, but used. -- James Heartfield