in their midst. Brice plunged into the available research and was stupefied. Like many of a scientific bent, Brice had thought that nuclear power meant progress, that it was inevitable, and that science would solve its problems. Safety had been the only concern. What emerged, as the French ecology movement massively regrouped around the nuclear issue, was the beginning of their politics, their program. “The nuclear question forced us through a necessary stage,” says Brice, “in the sense that in bumping up against something hard again and again you slowly come to understand the shape of a political movement. The nuclear controversy introduces the question of the kind of world we want to live in, as well as questions of what and how we consume, but most especially, who and what has the power to control human life. Because any question of energy is a question of the organization and control of power distribution. Nuclear energy implies giantism and rigorous control, control from afar, the capacity to start you up or to stop you or even kill you, from a distance. Of course, the human scale demands decentralization of power. Solar energy could provide individual autonomy or local autonomy, as desired.” The nuclear question quickly offered its even more violent face in 1972 when an Australian named Peter knocked at Brice’s door in Paris to say that he was there in the name of the Australian people to ask that the French stop their atom bomb tests in the South Seas. “You don’t even know it’s going on!” said Peter. “You don’t even care! It’s tens of thousands of kilometers from here! But it’s right on top of us!” Brice installed him in a room and began putting Peter in touch with people. A coalition of 20 organizations — trade unions as well as parties — was formed to protest nuclear testing, and Friends of the Earth ended up occupying Notre Dame, alongside the Socialist Party, to show foreign tourists they disagreed with their government. Peter and what eventually became Greenpeace were organizing an international flotilla of boats and ships to sail into the nuclear test zone to keep the French from detonating the next bomb. Friends of the Earth suggested that a representative from the coalition should be sent along. All the other organizations in the coalition, which were part of what is essentially the classical “left,” were uninterested, thinking it a strange idea indeed to send someone somewhere on a boat! As Brice puts it, “We were disappointed by their attitude, but just then we heard that Jean- Jacques Servan-Schreiber (editor of the French equivalent of Newsweek — L’Express) had spoken out against the tests. Peter contacted him and we learned that, besides him, there were several others willing to go on one of the boats, a retired army general and a prominent Catholic Monsignor, for starters.” There were incredible problems putting together such an international flotilla on a kind of soldier-of-fortune mission, but within France, Brice was constantly and publicly cautious of talking in the usual political categories. “With the Left, we smashed up against hard lines, or else difficult personalities. Their responses seemed ritualistic and inert. I couldn’t help thinking about it a lot.” But Brice and the strange assortment did go to the south seas test zone, sailing from New Zealand, adding prestige and press attention to the dramatic first act of a new international political network. Interestingly enough, the domestic ecology front blossomed soon after that in the finest pluralistic fashion. Small and then larger groups sprang up all over France, and the entire movement connected with Friends of the Earth met often locally and internationally. When Pompidou suddenly died in 1974, the moment was nigh to run a candidate for President. Author Rene Dumont was chosen. Accompanying him frequently during the campaign, Brice found him brilliant, inspiring, exemplary. After the presidential election, says Brice, “we bettered our organization for two years, developed extensive research and team systems, wrote books. The teams were well oiled ... everything functioned beautifully.” At the time, Brice worked as proofreader and science writer at the slick ecology magazine Sauvage, uniting work and politics. Brice first found himself put forth as a political candidate on the parliamentary level, and it was then that Aujourd’hui I’Ecologie (Ecology Today) developed the axioms of its program. With each successive candidacy, whether for parliamentary or municipal office, the politics was oriented towards localities, neighborhoods, and Brice’s locality was the Latin Quarter. Life for him and for the Parisian ecologists was not so terribly far removed from the great lessons of May 1968. And it led Lalonde all the way to a breathtaking presidential candidacy in 1981, against Giscard d’Estaing and Franpois Mitterand, in which the ecology presence unbalanced old party alignments. HEAD SHOP ‘‘Have you been studying Astrologyfor years and can’t get it together? Then Come See Us!!! Tami & Russ Ward ARCANE BOOK STORE Classes, Horoscopes, Books Tarot Cards, Workshops & More!!! Counseling & Questions Answered. 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