Holy Earth!

Rethinking Revolution

Back in the ‘60's, when the modern environmental movement came to life amidst a general countercultural uprising, there was a lot of talk about "revolution" as the next logical step toward creating a humane, just and ecologically sustainable society.

The "revolution" of that era was not specifically defined, but ranged in concept from the "free speech revolution" of campus activists in Berkeley; to the nonviolent "revolution of values" articulated by civil rights crusader Martin Luther King; to the "liberation movements" of women and gays; to the anti-Vietnam War "revolution in the streets" led by Yippies like Abbie Hoffman and sung about by rock troubadours; to the "armed revolution" advocated in this country by groups like the Weathermen and the Black Panthers, and carried out in the Third World by guerrilla armies of peasants in actual revolt against colonial oppression.

The symbol of the raised fist and the stylized portrait of slain guerrilla leader Che Guevara became icons recognized around the world.

In the intervening decades, a corporate backlash against the anti-materialist and anti-consumerist values of the ‘60's has cynically trivialized the idea of "revolution." Along with other symbols of the counterculture --like peace signs, psychedelic flowers and Volkswagen buses -- "revolution" has become just another slick advertising buzzword, its meaning reduced to little more than a variation on the traditional Madison Avenue theme of "new and improved." This particular commercial phenomenon has been dubbed by one critic as "the commodification of dissent."

In last month’s Highlands Voice, I discussed the anti-environmental blitzkrieg of petro-president George W. Bush’s first few months in office, which has awakened the sleeping giant of the American public’s environmental sentiments. The Toxic Texan’s energy plan brought environmental issues front and center into the media spotlight, and his approval ratings down.

Bush’s policy blunders have opened up a political opportunity for us greens. And not a moment too soon -- especially here in West Virginia, where our new governor seems no less inclined to cater to industry than the old one; where a right wing federal appeals court has curtailed our ability to seek judicial redress of grievances; and where a states’ rights-oriented federal EPA can no longer be counted on to check or balance business-friendly state regulators.

(Fortunately, one positive development in the past month was the decision by Vermont senator Jim Jeffords to abandon the Republican Party and become an independent. With Democrats now in control of the US Senate, and Jeffords himself as chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, the environment is under somewhat less of an imminent threat than it was a month ago.)

I ended the column last month with a question: what can environmentalists make of the opportunity that the current national focus on green issues presents us? My answer is complicated, but it can be reduced to one word.

Revolution.

Now before you dismiss this as the pipe dream of an aging radical, or the hallucination of a broken-hearted idealist, please indulge me with a few moments to explain.

In his book, "Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence," historian Garry Wills explored the 18th-century intellectual world that formed the context in which the Declaration was written. Wills shows that, for the nation’s founders, the word "revolution" had a different meaning than it does for us today, when it has become almost synonymous with the terms "revolt" and "rebellion."

The respectable citizens and upright businessmen who comprised the Continental Congress "were willing to call their actions a revolution precisely because it was an orderly and legal procedure," Wills writes. "The first English meaning of "revolution" had been astronomical--the revolving of the heavens." He cites a 1775 pamphlet, in which John Adams "appeals to" the principles of the Revolution "to justify American acts as nontreasonable." Adams’ reference here was to the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, in which, by the action of the English Parliament, "one king was replaced with another (as bodies change position in celestial revolutions)."

To Adams, "revolution" most often meant "the right of representative bodies to decide the legitimacy of executive acts." Wills buttresses this reading of "revolution" by turning to the staunch British conservative Edmund Burke, who wrote of the 1688 Revolution that it "was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties." Wills’ interpretation is that, for the founding fathers, "true revolution is a constitutional development -- the extraordinary act that is needed to maintain the flow of ordinary ones."

It is in this archaic, 18th-century sense of the term that I suggest "revolution" is the most effective strategy environmentalists can adopt at this time. Why do I say this?

We live in a uniquely unprecedented and unparalleled historical moment. We face challenges that no prior humans have experienced. Never before have so many humans inhabited this planet. Never in human history has the planet’s environment been so endangered by human activity, nor has the atmosphere been so unbalanced, nor have plant and animal species disappeared at such a rapid rate. We live in a time that biologists call "The Sixth Extinction." (The fifth one was the dinosaurs.)

This is also an age of unprecedented advances in technology and communications, and thus of global awareness. Yet never before have humans witnessed, on a global scale, this degree of concentration of wealth and power, nor this level of inequality between rich and poor. Certainly no earlier humans have experienced as sophisticated a propaganda system nor as powerful a military system as exists today to keep these global inequities in place. And historians calculate that in no century in humanity’s past has as much innocent blood been spilled as in the one that has brought us to this present moment -- a moment that might be called "after the end of history."

At this sublime moment, with capitalism triumphant and America regarded as "the sole remaining superpower," there is nevertheless a creeping dissatisfaction with both the fruits of capitalism and the limitations of modern democracy, both here and abroad. There’s a disturbing sense of, "Is this all there is?" This vague spiritual discontent is reflected in the sullen polarization of our politics and in the nagging questions about its legitimacy; in the spreading anti-globalization movement; and in the nascent backlash against the rampant commercialization of everyday life. Four out of five Americans told a recent Business Week poll, "business has gained too much power over too many aspects of American life."

Given all these circumstances, how far can we be from a "paradigm shift?"

Here in West Virginia, most environmentalists realize that we can no longer afford to separate environmental issues from the issues of jobs and economics, transportation and agriculture, tradition and history, health and safety, and especially politics and community life. The "single-issue politics" of the past served to focus our attention. But it also fragmented our vision, and we don’t have time for that anymore. We need to reconnect our world.

A call to revolution will challenge the imaginations of those who share our beliefs, but who have lost faith in the capacity of the politics of the present to bring them into being. I say let’s give them a glimpse into the future. The trail is already blazed.

Next month: Strategy and tactics.