to lowans, found their drinking water laced with pesticides, to Southern Californians who found their skies full of more poisons than ever, millions of people who had previously thought little about ecology came to rank it among their most pressing concerns. But this surge of ecological anxiety has yet to register in America’s political system. You are still likely to hear more discussion of serious topics like the greenhouse effect at cocktail parties and coffee shops than in the halls of Congress. Our politicians —including many liberals who are elected and reelected in part because of their "strong” environmental records—are unwilling to admit that society’s continuing devotion to rampant consumerism, out-of-control technology, and growth-for-growth’s sake is beginning to boomerang on us. Many average Americans, however, feel the cost of life in the fast lane outweighs the benefits, especially now that more and more people are being left behind by the American Dream. In ways both conscious and unconscious, millions of people are beginning to dispute the long-held belief that BIGGER, NEWER, FASTER is BETTER. This attitude is finding a political outlet in the emerging, world-wide Green movement. Green politics moves beyond the conservative, liberal, and socialist view that the “good life” can be best achieved through limitless economic growth. Greens believe the cost of continually chopping away at nature and at traditional community life — leveling forests, synthesizing new chemicals, moving people off the land, shuffling families from one place, to another—is too high to justify the resulting profits and jobs. There must be a better way to provide for the needs of all society without setting the stage for ecological disasters and steady decline in the quality of our day-to-day lives. Green politics grew out of the environmental movement. But while environmentalists—and the liberal Democratic politicians they generally back .The Greening of America —seek to solve ecological problems through government regulation, Greens probe deeper into the root causes. In the case of toxic wastes, the environmentalists’ solution has been a Superfund to undo the damage already done at dozens of designated toxic dump sites. They also push for better laws governing how toxic wastes should be disposed in the future. Greens heartily support these measures but they also investigate just how and why toxic wastes are created. Since the plastic and chemical industries are largely responsible, a Green solution would emphasize substitutes for plastic and chemical products. Paper shopping bags, for example, work just fine. And in cases where plastics and chemicals cannot be replaced, Greens might suggest that we could easily do without some products—like aerosol cans. ut Green politics goes beyond simple environmental troubleshooting. It offers a vision of a more sensible, more equitable, more enjoyable society. Disarmament, women’s rights, and a fairer distribution of wealth are Green goals just as much as clean air and organic farming. Greens talk not only of better pollution control devices on autos and expanded mass transit service but also about refurbishing our cities so that people can stroll to many of their destinations, perhaps passing through woodlands or striking up conversations with friends along the way. Greens promote not only safer working conditions and fairer pay scales for workers but also cooperative ownership and more opportunity for leisure time. Although the pursuit of these goals might lower many people’s standard of living (and thd higher it is now, the more it might be lowered), Greens argue that the richness of people’s lives would increase. Greens draw inspiration from sources as varied as Neolithic huntergatherers and punk rock singers, with particular emphasis on Eastern religion, feminism, America’s tradition of social movements, anarchism, and the way of life practiced by Amerindians and other indigenous peoples. But the Greens’ strongest ties are with the counterculture and New Left movements that erupted during the 1960s. Indeed, the Green movement might be looked on as the new New Left, although its followers have traveled a wide assortment of paths since 1968. In fact, some of the Greens’ most enthusiastic backers weren’t even out of diapers when Martin Luther King was assassinated. The movement is a hodge-podge of meditators and antimilitarists, folksingers and solar engineers, Goddess worshippers and church-going Presbyterians. Yet you needn’t burn incense, read Herman Hesse, or destroy your bras in order to be a Green. All it takes is a concern a*bout your own future and the direction of human civilization. This concern can take the form of organizing a recycling drive as well as laying your body before a bulldozer. Green politics invplves joining a carpool at work as much as running for city council. Indeed, many people hard at work in Green politics probably as yet have no more than a passing acquaintance with the term. Although the number of people who identify themselves as “Green” today is miniscule, don’t underestimate the cumulative power of people’s newfound concern for the Earth. The heightened ecological awareness that many Americans experienced during 1988 may provide the groundwork for a powerful political force in the 1990s. Although environmentalism was sired in the U.S., Green politics first appeared in West Germany. In 1983 a rag-tag committee of feminists, New Left holdovers, anti-nuclear protesters, and Third World, solidarity activists joined forces with a few middle- aged farmers and middle-aged nature lovers to initiate a longshot campaign for the German national legislature. Running on a platform of four key values—ecology, social responsibility, nonviolence, grassroots democracy—this new Green Party stunned the nation by winning nearly a million votes and gaining 27 seats under Germany’s proportional representation system. Four years later, their vote total was up to 3.12 million—ten percent of all ballots cast —and 44 Greens (half of them women) now sit in the West German Bundestag. Although the German Green Party has often been hampered by bitter internal disputes between members who concentrate their energies on winning tangible political reforms and those who seek a complete overhaul of society, it nonetheless has made an impact by forcing the larger Social Democrat and Christian Democrat parties to embrace stronger environmental policies. German Greens also inspired similar parties across Europe; Greens now sit in the national legislatures of Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, and Sweden. In Sweden alone, Greens hold office in 150 local communities. American activists look on the success of European Greens with a mixture of enthusiasm and envy. Green politics here is on a much slower timetable, partly due to our winner-take-all Congressional electoral system and partly due to our more conservative political climate. The American Green movement was formally launched in 1984 at a small meeting of activists held in St. Paul, Minnesota. Acutely aware of how poorly political programs imported from Europe have fared in the past, the group stressed its American origins by naming itself the Green Committees of Correspondence (CoC) in homage to the Colonial-era organizaby Jay Walljasper Illustration and Design by Eric Walljasper Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1989 33
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