JJB Blog

There’s a fascinating interview with Jeffrey St. Clair in the Palestine Chronicle. St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long it Looked Green to Me: The Politics of Nature, which describes itself as a “comprehensive seven-part reader on environmental politics. Covering everything from toxics to electric power plays, St. Clair gives you a shocking view of how money and power determine the state of our environment.”

Topics covered in the interview: why Kerry is the same as and often worse than
Bush on the environment, why the big environmental lobbies are ineffective, and
Nader and the Green Party’s role in politics.

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20040821044758232

Some excerpts:

In its zeal to become a Beltway player, the Big Greens have ceased to be truth-
tellers. For example, the [Big] Greens say Bush has turned his back on the Kyot
o protocols. True enough. But they neglect to say that Kerry turned his back fi
rst, voting against Kyoto while he was a senator and Clinton was president. Thi
s is to say that Bush was tight with Ken Lay and covered for Enron. Right on. W
e all know Bush, the inveterate nick-name dropper, dubbed Lay “Kenny Boy.” But
they over look the fact that Lay and the Kerry’s are also very good friends and
frequent dining companions. Moreover, Ken Lay was recruited by Teresa Heinz Ke
rry for a seat on the board of her environmental foundation, where he was assig
ned the task of heading the foundation’s global warming task force. They charge
that Bush, fully marinated in crude oil, wants to open the Arctic National Wil
dlife Refuge to drilling. Horrible, but true. They say that Kerry opposes this.
And that’s true, too. But they elide the fact that Kerry told Teamster’s presi
dent Jimmy Hoffa that while he won’t drill in ANWR, he does plan to drill “ever
ywhere else like never before.” Where would everywhere else include? The coasta
l plain of Alaska, offshore waters of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky
Mountain Front, the red rock country of Utah, the deserts of New Mexico, the Po
wder River Basin of Wyoming. There’s more. Kerry met with the American Gas Asso
ciation a few weeks ago and pledged his support for a Trans-Alaska-Canada Natur
al Gas Pipeline that will cut across some of the most incredible tundra and tai
ga on Earth — a project that will dwarf the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. No one amon
g the Beltway Greens even squeaked. This amounts to a grand and debilitating hy
pocrisy.

- - - - - - - - - - -

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, the founding purpose of the Green pa
rty was to be a party of resistance. It was never about party building, or gett
ing school board candidates elected, or anything but being a monkeywrench again
st a corrupt political system. Once the Greens decided to play nice, they cease
d to exist as a force of opposition. Why be a Green when you can be a Dem? Why
be a Dem when you can be a Republican? The only choice now is not to vote. Stay
ing home on Election Day under these circumstances [is] … an act of supreme r
esistance, particularly against those hysterical Dems who yelp that this is the
most important election of our lifetime. Bunk.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I think Ralph [Nader] played coy for too long. Then he was baited into running
by the very smear artists who spent three years mugging him. They really undere
stimated what Ralph is made of — which just shows that they are as stupid as t
hey are politically corrupt. He wasn’t going to stand by and allow a bunch of p
olitical thugs and liars to besmirch his character. Then he was betrayed by his
own political progenies, including the Green Party, which he almost single-han
dedly built into a national force. Ralph is a lawyer and a good one. He lives b
y rules and plays by them. He’s not a monkeywrencher or revolutionary or even a
radical. He believes in ethical government, despite all the odds. … I take F
oucault seriously. Politics is really about power. The only power the Left (loo
sely speaking) enjoys these days is the power of negation. We can’t elect Nader
or Camejo or Jackson. But we can defeat bad Democrats, like Gore and Kerry. Un
til the Democrats bend in our direction or a new political party rises to chall
enge them. And it doesn’t take much, other then courage, to make this happen –
an all out anti-war & anti-free trade campaign waged in Florida, Ohio, Michiga
n, Oregon, New Hampshire, Maine and New Mexico. Those are the states that matte
r. Those are the states that will force the power elite to deal with the Left.
Until that happens, the Democratic Party will continue to move to the right, ou
tpacing the Repubs on several issues … NAFTA, welfare deform[sic], eviscerati
on of the Endangered Species Act, the drug war, logging the national forests (t
he ANNUAL cut under Clinton was three to four times the TOTAL cut under Bush fo
r his first 3 years) and, most recently, their ridiculous objections to the Bus
h plan for withdrawal of US from Europe, which signals the end of NATO.

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…for the past 30 years, the federal courts have drifted steadily to the right
. The “right” is probably the wrong term since true conservatives are supposedl
y suspicious of unbridled executive authority. This judiciary is exceptionally
tolerant of almost any decision made by the executive branch. So the courts are
becoming a much tougher venue to wage [environmental] battles.

- - - - - - - - - - -

[The Big Greens] have refused to act as honest brokers, as non-partisan defende
rs of the planet. Instead, they seduced their own members into believing that a
change in the White House will lead to a change of direction in environmental
policy. That’s the crucial lie. And it’s a big one and a dangerous one. On pape
r, Kerry is marginally better than Bush on the environment. But where a unified
resistance has confounded many of Bush’s plans, Kerry will face little resista
nce. In fact, the Big Greens are likely to be complicit, as they were during Cl
inton time. The press will play along. And that’s when the real damage will be
done. Then we will be left once again with that thin green line of defenders, E
arth First!, people in neighborhoods fighting power plants and landfills (the d
readed NIMBYS) and the like, who put the needs of the earth & the lives of thei
r children above the niceties of two party politics. Cherish those people: they
are our only hope.

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