Green insincerity

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>>I don't see how Jim's challenge can be in good faith. And I don't see
>>how the responses to it make any sense at all. Steps will be taken when
>>there is loud public clamor, threatening disruption of business as
>>usual, for those "steps." For persons who are out of power to say, we
>>should do this or that, is academic in the bad sense (looking for
>>neither truth nor change) unless they have a scenario of how they would
>>achieve power to implement those otherwise empty engineering solutions.
>
>So, buddy, what's to be done? Can't propose anything until "we" have 
>power, but how can you gain influence, much less power, if you don't 
>have anything to propose. Sounds like a perfect prescription for 
>disengagement disguised as its opposite.
>
>Doug

Perhaps, problems (& solutions to them) fall into two distinct categories:

(a) problems (& solutions to them) that a political party/movement 
can tackle only after winning power (e.g., global warming);

& (b) problems (& solutions to them) that a political party/movement 
can use as organizing vehicles on the road to power (e.g., 
environmental justice, linking issues of safety and environmental 
regulations with politics of class and race).

(a) is abstract, while (b) is concrete and allows you occasional victories.

You go for (b) first to build a mass party/movement, and if you win, 
you may be able to go after (a).
-- 
Yoshie

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