Creating a Movement: Vision not Causes

For a long time I viewed climate change as an issue apart from politics. I always saw that it impinged on a wide variety of areas from health to conflict and biodiversity but none the less i saw the issue as an essentially technocratic one.

I have known people who are far more political than myself and regularly used the term 'ideological' as a pejorative, basically equating it with unreasonable.

However, it must be said that the reasons for being against climate change are the same as reasons for being against much of contemporary economics and that many causes of climate change can be looked at from a radical (root cause) perspective as symptoms of a larger problem.

Doing other than this is starting to look daft. To put it simply, when i hear someone from south America telling me about the wage-slave conditions that are leading to exhaustion and death, when i hear about chevron dumping oil in a rainforest because they can...i don't see the logic in saying 'that isn't my issue' it may be more convenient to think in that way: separation of issues allows better management of one issue? In reality issues are so intertwined that we have to move our lines. It is always a difficult decision, where to draw the boundaries on your concerns, if they are two broad then is that idealistic with a lack of pragmatism...if the bounds are to narrow then you are a special interest group ignoring values that you hold dear.


I have just read a fascinating article from the USA Is Environmentalism Dead, a follow up to Death of Environmentalism. These articles have won me over and the Progressive agenda is now my arena. The battle for all of us is the physical sustainability of our planet and the path there is broad and value based...above all we need to fight for values and not for causes.

In fact there may be differences in my views and those of other self-described progressives as i think that much of current capitalism has to be torn down. Many of the existing institutions and corporations.

For now, i am however, content to call myself a reformer rather than a revolutionary.

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