Couple that with our system of gerrymandering, where the pols pick the voters before the voters get to pick anyone, and you have a country with about as many contested elections as the old USSR.  Sure, you can vote for Congress or your state rep, but the odds are better than 95% that you are in a district that has been drawn to elect someone from one party or the other, and the odds of an upset are slightly longer than the odds of winning the lottery.

Those two factors produce a money shower for the designated party candidate.  That is, lobbyists and the corporate donors whose money they channel hate truly contested seats, because then they have to give to both sides.  From their perspective, a proper district is one where--short of their guy being caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl --they know who will win several years in advance.
That money doesn't determine the winner (the makeup of the gerrymandered district did that); but that money determines (in the scientific sense of that word) the priorities of the person eventually elected.

(For example, consider Michigan: voted for Clinton/Clinton/Gore/Kerry + two Dem Senators + Dem Governor just reelected over a VERY rich right-winger -- and still saddled with a 9-6 GOP US house district advantage and a GOP-controlled State Senate, both thanks to their map drawn after the 2000 Census.)

Add to this the fact that our system of privately funded elections compels candidates to remain ever vigilant to any fluctuations in the value of their stock on the only market that counts--the market of big donors.

The press cooperate and promote the system as is by essentially using money-raising ability as the proxy for suitability for office.  They simply ignore the least funded and shower attention on the best funded, which perpetuates the cycle further (press attention = credibility = donations = press attention).

Go to any of several websites that offer a survey designed to judge YOUR views of the Dem presidential candidates, for example (http://www.selectsmart.com/president/2008.html) and take the survey -- it then tells you which candidate best matches your views.  So if you think that picking the candidate to support has anything to do with advancing positions you like, that's a way to find out who supports your views.

But many (if not most) people are shocked to find that their views are best represented by some unknown candidate that the media writes off entirely.

So, anyway, in about 95% of US Congressional and state legislative districts, the real election is the primary, and the primary is almost purely a money thing.  Pretty unusual to have serious differences on environmental issues in either Democratic or GOP primaries.

Then, to all that wonkery, add the fact that the environmental challenges of the 21st Century are orders of magnitude more complex and difficult than were those of the 1960s, problems that could be solved, in many cases, just by being less grossly and obviously stupid.  And we still had the cash to deal with the problems without too much discomfort.

The real question facing any politicians dumb enough to talk about it today is whether we can continue to have our system of state capitalism and a livable planet; that is, the only way a politician in either party can make the environment an issue is to take a position in the primary that distinguishes him or herself from her same-party peers.  The only allowed position is some variant of this:  "Yes, there are many serious challenges, but if you elect me then, together, we will harness the best minds, the most innovative technologies, and we will create good-paying jobs in high-tech fields that we can't even imagine today, and we will keep our economy growing and make our environment better at the same time."

And unlike with unions or civil rights, the environment doesn't offer many clear-cut pro vs. anti environment votes.  That is, there aren't any Wagner Act or Civil Rights Act votes where the chips are down and you can see which side people are on.  Was the Energy Policy Act of 2005 a pro or anti environment bill?  How about the new farm bill?  There will be so much in it for so many people that just about everyone will be able to say that their vote for or against it was a vote for the environment.


The 5% Project

As the Chorus sings in "Marat/Sade": We want a revolution -- now!

Fecklessly, perhaps.

Environmental issues are of course victims of the system that we have installed.  But consider also even less popular issues, which mean a great deal to some of us, such as overturning the Defense Of Marriage Act:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editor ...

Funny how the old political witticism has the boy alive and the girl dead.  As though the opposite situation would not much matter.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

From this base, they reached out into the mainstream culture and have dominated political discourse for the last several decades. Under Bush, they controlled all three branches of government (for a while).

The liberal-left and environmentalists do not have the same depth of strategic thinking. Thus far, they have not displayed the same level of commitment - though global warming and President Bush seem to be pushing them to get more serious.

The lessons seem to be:

1. Think deep and long-term.
   
2. Build coalitions.
   
3. Build institutions.

I am not at all enthusiastic about jumping into electoral politics. Better to be part of an organized group (think tank, lobby, social club, etc.) whose support is courted by the various parties.  

Bart
Energy Bulletin

HOMAGE TO MARAT
From "Marat / Sade"
(Adrian Mitchell / Richard Peaslee)
Peter Weiss

Four years after the revolution and the old king's execution
Four years after I remember how those courtiers took their final vow
String up every aristocrat
Out with the priests Let them live on their fat
Four years after we started fighting
Marat keeps on with his writing
Four years after the Bastille fell
He still recalls the old battle yell
Down with all of the ruling class
Throw all the generals out on their arse
Good old Marat by your side we'll stand or fall
You're the only one that we can trust at all
Four years he fought and he fought unafraid
Sniffing down traitors by traitors betrayed
Marat in the courtroom Marat underground
Sometimes the otter and sometimes the hound
Fight ing all the gentry and fighting every priest
Businessman the bourgeois the military beast
Marat always ready to stifle every scheme
of the sons of the arse licking dying regime
We've got new generals our leaders are new
They sit and they argue and all that they do
Is sell their own colleagues and ride upon their backs
And jail them and break them and give them all the axe
Screaming in language that no one understands
Of the rights that we grabbed with our own bleeding hands
When we wiped out the bosses and stormed through the wall
Of the prison they told us would outlast us all
Marat we're poor
And the poor stay poor
Marat don't make
Us wait anymore
We want our rights and we don't care how
We want our revolution now
Why do they have the gold
Why do they have the power
Why why why
Do they have the friends at the top
Why do they have the jobs at the top
We've got nothing
Always had nothing
Nothing but holes and millions of them
Living in holes dying in holes
Holes in our bellies and holes in our clothes
Marat we're poor
And the poor stay poor
Marat don't make us wait anymore
Poor old Marat they hunt you down
The bloodhounds are sniffing all over the town
Poor old Marat you work til your eyes turn as red as rust
poor old Marat
We trust in you ....

(Contributed by Ae & Vs - May 2004)

 Artist Song Name Composer Composition Instrument

And elsewhere:

Marat, we're poor, and the poor stay poor.
Marat, we won't stay poor any more.
We want our rights, and we don't care how.
We want a revolution ... now!

And:

Poor old Marat, in you we trust,
you work till your eyes turn as red as rust.
Yet while you write, they're on your back,
their boots on the staircase, the door flung back...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

The challenge as I see it with green politics is because people generally recognize the scale of the problem (even if they don't have the order of magnitude right, they appreciate that it's hard to get to work without gasoline).  Which makes them demand a credible map of how we might get there before they accept that this isn't just pie-in-the-sky dreaming.

And for the most part, the politicians don't have a map - which is in part the fault of the enviro community.  Every president says we're going to be energy independent, and no one believes them, since every president leaves office with us a little less energy independent than when they came in.  Similarly rosy projections about how we could reduce carbon emissions don't work unless you can tell a story about how we're going to get there, using big, macro level changes.  Don't tell us that the solution is to turn the thermostat down, because we're smart enough to know that our individual actions on that score are insignificant, and how hard it is to get collective action.  Do tell us how you're going to initiate regulatory reform to incentivize big scale behaviors.  The reason I say that the enviros are partially responsible is that so few of the stories we tell get beyond the personal.  "I drive a Prius" is a personally noble thing to say, but to the outsider doesn't get interpreted as "...therefore, so must we all" nearly as often as it gets interpreted as "well aren't you a bit sanctimonious?"  Which is not in anyway meant to knock those of us who've made positive changes in our personal lives, but simply to point out that our messages have to show a path.  Start a business that leverages your beliefs.  Do the Bill McKibben thing and rally people to change the message.  Get your town/city to enact changes that multiply across all it's citizens.

And then tell the world about the map you've found (and how accurate you've found it to be!)

Often times, the most environmental statements on this measure come from the most unlikely sources - and sources that might well be pilloried in the environmental community - like when BP or Dow announces that they're actually saving money by reducing carbon.  These stories are our maps, and they are the maps we should be articulating much more loudly than our own personal virtues.

It only works to take over the ruling party from the inside.  Staffers/lobbyists work this way.

And it is necessary to take over before the party comes back into power.  The only way a green movement can take over is from the grass roots up.

Supplant the staffers/lobbyists already there.  I have seen new people hired from the grass roots.  Maleable people are hired, those seeking power without principle.

One would need to downplay ones principles to infiltrate from this angle.  It would be a tough way to make a revolution.

But this is the time/election cycle to strike.  It appears that the party with a weaker corporate affiliation is about to rule.  Probably for only 2 years.

Why is record breaking money raising happening right now?  Why are democrats out fund raising pubs?  The corporatistas see the change coming and are throwing money and shills into the mix at record levels.

Remember Hillary's attempt at national healthcare?  Remember how it failed?  Michael Moore says it was blocked by democrats.  Key democrats bribed by the healthcare, drug, and insurance  industry.  Look at democrats running for president touting ethanol and nuclear power and clean coal.

If we are going to make a stand for renewable energy and conservation it is now we must act!  Gotta get into your local party and start to create the impression that the only way to win the next time is to deal with GHG climate disaster.  Convince the operators that this IS a voting issue.

Wether drought and fire or flood and storm, we need to connect these local weather problems with soaring gas and energy prices, GHG, and perpetual oil war.  Make the impression that people will vote on these issues a self fulfilling prophesy.

It's a very difficult task.  And it needs to be done in a way that doesn't alarm the defensive nerve endings of the ameoba-like beast that is party bribery/politics as usual...until it's too late.

Yes indeed canis, vive la re'volution!

(For a guide to this method study pat robertson's decades long campaign to take over local government by installing wing nut fanatics on school boards.)

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

All the organizing can help.   But we buy 1 trillion dollars in fossil fuels in the U.S. every year.    That's a lot of money to lose to a bunch of environmentalists who want to shut them down.     That's money to pay for people to not let them get shut down, and it's lot's of people who will work to make sure they don't lose their own jobs and will work to not let you shut them down.  

The only possible political thing to do?   Pay for the carbon capture from coal plants with government money.    That way they can still sell the coal and people will just have to compromise their ethics for getting the right thing done.  
Coal companies and employees will just fight you otherwise.

It's hard to get people to change their mind if their livilyhood is involved.   There are just to many people making money on selling fossil fuels.  Until the non-carbon groups can balance the carbon groups we're screwed.

The bottom tier of politics is full of jobs that environmentalists could use to make a huge difference (town, village, and city councils and county commissions all present a panoply of important issues:  land use, transportation planning, waste management, etc.); some states elect such offices as drain commissioners and soil conservation district officers.  You can spend a life in those jobs doing important work or, if you like, use them as entry points to contest for partisan jobs further up the ladder.

However, instead of pursuing the real bottom rung jobs (typically unpaid, non-partisan), many enviros talk about "starting at the bottom" when discussing a seat in Congress or, at the very least, a seat in the state legislature.

I should note that it's not entirely a failure to understand where to start.  There are structural factors that work against enviros who want to participate in elected local government.    

Corporations that profit from environmental exploitation have a natural farm system for their getting their people into the bigger jobs: big companies support their people running for the smaller, local jobs, and small businesspeople often take them as suitable ways to promote their businesses.

Enviros elected to public office, on the other hand, can easily find themselves at odds with their day-job employer if they promote an environmental agenda.  Or they work for government in some capacity already and thus are barred from many of the elected positions they might run for.  So where a small business person (say a realtor or contractor) can run for any seat any where, an enviro working for city government would have to give up the job to run for city council.

The 5% Project

http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp?fr_story=56d0a6bc58 ...

To wit:

Andrew Revkin:    Is climate change the perfect political problem? It's difficult to communicate, and to legislate, takes place over a long-term time scale, with outcomes that will always have some uncertainty....how do you deal with that?

Bill Clinton:     The real challenge is to make this a voting issue. We now have a big majority of people who think that climate change is real, and we have a big majority of people who favor some action on it. This is a voting issue in Europe. Can it be made a voting issue here in America?  

I think the answer is yes, because we already know enough to know that climate changes are already underway and they can't be good. And we already know enough to know that there things we can do that will generate economic opportunity and reduce social inequality and that can't be bad.

The German Greens, for example, despite their small size, were critical to a ruling coalition, and thus were able to exercise a great influence on German policies.

In America, we get wild, schizophrenic shifts in governance from tiny changes in the electorate.  Since at least 1994 the country has been, overall, nearly evenly divided, but the control of Congress has shifted radically twice.  In the US, a difference of just a few hundred votes here and there and you've got a complete reordering of the national legislature.  In a proportional system, the changes are much less radical--you only see the big swings in elections when the electorate has already made the shift.  

We wind up with changed "leadership" but essentially similar members, so the change in leadership has very little benefit.

The 5% Project

How many of you turn out to vote for state judges?

How many of you turn out to vote for town board representatives or the local equivalent?

How many of you attend town board meetings or the local equivalent?

How many of you know who sits on your state supreme court, county board, and town board?

Political change starts locally. If you are not participating in local elections, if you cannot even identify who your local reps are, then... to quote another person who comments on this website... might as well STFU.

However, since we are in this particular political system, the way that change has generally happened in American history is the following: the apparatchiks of the Democratic have to become scared to death that they will lose control of "their" party because some huge wave of, generally left-wing, political activism is threatening them: this is what happened with the Populists, the Progressives, and the various left-wing/union movements of the 1930s, and also the environmental/african-american/women's/etc movements of the 1960s.  

So this would indicate that the threat that the Democratic party will be overwhelmed by, at the very least, people worried about global warming/environmental issues (much less other issues, like poverty/racism/health care) would have to be believable.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/8/1/102827/5574

... and there was little more response than the sound of crickets chirping.

Makes one wonder just how much the Grist monkeys are really interested in improving the world. Seem to derive more pleasure from whining than actually getting out there and changing the political climate.

Fossil employees do not necessarily support their industry, it is just a job.   Their preferences include better jobs, less dirty jobs, a stable future.  They do not want to hurt the futures of other people's children, of farmers, or the natural environment.  They certainly do not want mass extinction.

A few big shots may play hardball against progressive industrial change but I do not consider this to be the big risk for effectuating change.  I worry more about our social climate becoming destabilized such that the here-and-now eclipse climate discussions.  The press is currently open to us as other issues are not reported.  So we are left with soft news stories about Paris Hilton and green ideas.   Use this time.

The future news might be war with Iran, an economic collapse, huge storms, something called terrorism, stolen elections, or something else unexpected.  Creating organized change during chaos could be much more difficult.

When I lobbied WDC I found that I was granted forgettable high level meetings.  The stuff that sticks in WDC is the press from the hometowns of congress people.  Stay home and give your best stories to the local press.  Make them positive, concrete, and sticky.

I think there are real reasons environmental issues will never be in the top priorities of voters. For many issues, such as global warming, most of the harm is long term; and by the time the harm becomes short term, the solutions are long term. We humans mostly are not long term thinkers; spend too much time thinking about the long term and ignoring the short term, and you never make it to the long term.  So I think putting short term over long term is built into our culture, and possibly into our genes.

(One point where I think he's wrong is that he says that the Thatcherite policies "worked."  Actually the neoliberal policies had nothing to do with any increased wealth in the UK -- but the bounty of North Sea oil "worked" ... and now that that bounty is rapidly ending, we're going to see the UK wondering why those same neolib policies stopped working.)

The 5% Project

If our county raised a red flag about its own local risks, and if all other California counties assessed their own risks from climate change and raised their own red flags, the state would become more involved. If all state governments made a racket, our federal representatives would have to respond.

National politics is all about image and using the emotion of current issues to swing polls. It's not about leadership. We have to lead from the bottom up.

Barack Obama or Christopher Dodd better represent my views than John Edwards? I'll have to look at their platforms.

By the way, who is Duncan Hunter? He is clearly someone I would NOT want to have a beer with.

Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by the means it forbids: greater intervention on the part of the state

As Monbiot also points out, "Nowadays I hear even my progressive friends using terms like wealth creators, tax relief, big government...[etc]", and one also hears echos of these words that the neoliberal think tanks cooked up among Gristmillers.  It won't help to build a political movement if the government you're trying to influence is framed as justifiably impotent.  Maybe that's part of the cause of "eco-impotence", a feeling that it's not really worth it to try to influence the political arena.

But they did not anticipate the full effect of their plan...

(1) States are moving in to protect citizens. So instead of uniform high standards across North America, big business will soon encounter a patchwork of regulations for food safety, environmental protection, labor protection, social safety nets, and other regulations. This will, in the end, create greater headaches and reduce their profit margins. Oh well. This was supposed to be a union of independent states, each a laboratory for economic and social experimentation. Corporations should have supported high Federal standards. Would have made life easier for them.

(2) The effort to destroy confidence in government has extended a bit further than intended. The American people do not even have confidence in their Federal government to protect them from foreign enemies or negotiate trade agreements. If the trend continues, there will no longer be an interest in Federal government. The neocons hoped for a world without trade barriers, but they will soon see a world composed of many smaller states, each with their own interests, each with their own regulations, each imposing tariffs to fund protection of their citizens. Global capitalism cannot function in such an environment.

Just a theory.

The neocons have sown the seeds of their own destruction.

And when the faucet (funding by appropriation and grants) does flow, it is often for very strange commercial ventures such as maximizing ethanol - the alcoholic crutch of current politics.  Or coal, our newly cleaned and varnished buddy!  

The effect of all this was to push science, research, and initiative into the underground, rather akin to the days of the Prohibition or like the drug trade.  The only problem is, R&D doesn't pay for theory - it is cash poor.  That is why we only hear stories of a destructive nature, like NOAA scientists being silenced, reports deliberately revised by political wonks, dying species, and impending disasters.  There's no good news, like Holland harvesting power from the sea, and true success stories elsewhere.  

Me, I'm an optimist.  Like a pendulum, inertia will swing back to where academic and applied research is once again free in the US, and produces solutions for a better mankind.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

While the project had not been designed to win elections in the short run, Kamarck found that it had done just that, "increasing the Democratic vote share beyond the bounce of a national tide favoring Democrats." Comparing Democratic results in '06 with those of the '02 midterms, she found that the average Democratic vote went up by nearly 5 percent in 2006. But in the thirty-five Congressional districts where fifty-state staffers had worked on the campaigns, Democratic votes had soared by an average of nearly 10 percent.

That popped into my head when I was reading some of the comments here about long-term vs. short-term and the particular problems of making environmentalism the basis of electoral politics in a system that rewards issue-free politicking:

In America, the the least important issues provide clear yes/no distinctions; the issues least amenable to offering clear yes/no distinctions are the most important to wrestle with.

Shorter yet:  if you need an activist group to tell you whether Yes or No is the correct environmental position, the bill is too complicated.  Environmentalism is FULL of difficult choices that make it almost inevitable that bills will not be easily (or correctly) reduced to "The green vote is ___."

The 5% Project

The biggest problem is that we have an aristocracy of economists in our country who have succeeded over the past several generations to lower social and political thought to their level. Everything is about the bottom line. All eyes are on the stock market.

The second problem is that the way economists look upon the world instantly shuts out a whole host of considerations that the environment is a part of. All economic activity, from making cars, to cleaning up after Katrina is economically good because it puts money into the economy.  There is no measurement of the social or environmental costs of this or that economic activity. It is also a view of the world through a soda straw.

Economists really do not think the future of the environment is relevant to their concerns. It is an "externality" ie something that can screw up their mathematical models, so it is ignored. Because they ignore it, the society ignores it.

Finally, economics is amoral. It is does not judge something as right or wrong, only if it contributes to efficiency, or the maximization of profits. If destroying the planet fit those criteria, economists would toast it.

Our cause must be a moral cause. Otherwise it will lose.  Otherwise it will never find its political voice, much less win political victories.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

I'm reading Rianne Eisler's latest book "The Real Wealth of Nations," which is all about how using an economics derived from a time when women were chattel is as crippling as a doctor using Galen's theories to treat the sick.  You might enjoy it.

The 5% Project

It is hopeful of RC to propose that the environmental cause could find strength in a moral grounding - but this may underestimate the extent to which economic rationality has usurped even morality.

Successful politicians, i.e. those with the power to implement systemic change, must be pragmatic and materialist in the service of pre-existing consolidated power ("special interests") in order to win and retain their positions (so here is where the structure of Americans politics DOES matter). They are not the types of individuals persuaded by moral appeals purely on the merits of those appeals. If they are moved by moral position at all, it is typically only when there is advantage for them (and their masters) in such a position.

Economics as a lobotomy on the collective mind of politics, civics and the humanities is an excellent analogy. But the conclusion that a moral appeal will restore the political body to a pre-lobotomized potential for reason may underestimate the true consequence of the procedure, and the significant steps that must be taken to regain the faculties of thought that have been lost.

Argument based on even the most impassioned and reasoned moral appeal (even one based in an actual universal truth of goodness were such thing to exist) will not have an effect if the listener has no capacity to process the argument on those terms. The internalization of economic reason into our civic society has made moral argument just another currency of exchange, one that is ultimately measured in the "free-market of ideas" where it may not carry as much value as the "pragmatic" or "utilitarian" argument. Before moral argument alone can produce change in politics/society, our politics/society would have to change to value moral argument - or what was once called "reason" before reason was lost to "rationality".

What society needs is a more reasoning view of the world, our place in it, and our impact on it. Any cause that requires refined thinking from a species of mammal that has long proven itself to be a slave to its worst impulses is facing an uphill battle (and a sense of impotence). This is no reason not to continue to fight the fight - but to fight the fight, one should seek to cultivate a reasoned understanding of the obstacles. The discussion on this post is how such understanding is cultivated. In this case - thought, and even disagreement, is indeed a form of progress.

"Conservasaurus Rex" is a terrific name for one looking down helplessly at the smallish beasts who are going to determine, negatively, his/her existence.  Economics does not dig down nearly deeply enough.  But then again, T. rexes had those skimpy arms, useless for digging.

The ever excellent Amazing DrX, wise observer of man and beast, says:
<<
But this is the time/election cycle to strike.  It appears that the party with a weaker corporate affiliation is about to rule.  Probably for only 2 years.
>>

To which I would add: Even if a Democrat wins the White House in 2008, Amazing is right, there may very well be an anti-Democrat sweep in 2010.  (Well, that is just a translation.)

Let us not tie ourselves down, however, to election cycles.  And the like.  When we unjustly bind ourselves that way, no matter the good intentions and the hopes of good results, we injure some good and beautiful intention of Nature, who loves justice more than we do.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.