September 2000

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Green Politics 2000: The Enigma and the Advocate

Kim Carlyle, who lives a low-impact lifestyle in a solar home in the mountains of Western North Carolina, speaks, writes, and conducts workshops on global warming, energy efficiency, air quality, and simple living. He helped found Quaker Eco-Witness, serves on the steering committee of Friends Committee on Unity with Nature, and is active with the North Carolina Council of Churches Interfaith Climate Change Project.

Throughout recorded history, our human species has prospered, using technology and trade to provide goods and conveniences and to prolong lives, but at a price. Our previous successes relied on the exploitation of new territories and the disposal of the polluting effluents of production into our ground, water, and air. But we have exhausted the supply of new territories to exploit, and the cumulative effects of our effluents have poisoned the planet. We have nowhere else to go.

As a biological entity, homo sapiens is as dependent on its ecosystem as the spotted owl but not as adaptable as the termite. And our culture and our political systems are likewise fragile. Russ Gelbspan in The Heat is On writes, "Long before the systems of the planet buckle, democracy will disintegrate under the stress of ecological disasters and their social consequences."

While the Democratic and the Green Party candidates for President have demonstrated that they recognize these concerns, the Republican candidate has such a well-documented environmental record that his candidacy does not really merit consideration here. The GOP platform regards the environment as a commodity and can only relate to it by using business terminology. We must "treat the natural resources as assets," it states, and the "government should provide market-based incentives to develop technologies" to save the environment. Of course, the platform calls for "voluntary programs" which I'm sure will be as effective as voluntary taxes might be.

So environmentalists are left with just two serious candidates to consider: an enigmatic environmentalist/politician in Al Gore, and a proven populist advocate in Ralph Nader.

The Democratic candidate is an enigma. Early in his career, he helped initiate the cleanup of heavily polluted industrial areas know as Superfund sites and he was among the first to raise awareness of the catastrophic implications of global climate change. But then, as Vice President, he devolved into a politician, promoting world trade and putting his concern for the environment on a distant back burner. It's true that he was constrained in his subordinate position, but environmentalists expected more.

Meanwhile, in Ralph Nader of the Green Party we have a candidatewhose personal integrity and long career as a consumer advocate speak volumes. Nader speaks a different language, an assertive dialect we might recognize as "truth to power."

While the Democrats echo the Republicans on weak, "market-based" solutions to our environmental problems, Ralph Nader is refreshingly direct and up front. "I advocate the immediate cessation of commercial logging on US public lands," he states firmly. In speaking on clean energy, his phrase "Congress should require..." contrasts sharply with the GOP voluntary compliance solution. And he minces no words in saying, "Air pollution is a form of domestic chemical and biological warfare."

In terms of specific environmental issues, we need examine only one, arguably the most serious threat to the world in the new century: global warming. This concern encompasses a broad spectrum of environmental and social ills. The droughts, heatwaves, rising sea levels, and destructive storms brought about by climate change will have unpredictable effects on food production, displace millions of coastal dwellers, and cause untold human suffering.

Global warming must be mitigated by reducing use of fossil fuels through energy efficiency and increased use of alternative, clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Shifting away from coal and oil combustion will not only reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, but will eliminate a great deal of soot, ozone, and acid that attack human lungs, pollute watersheds, and kill trees.

Demonstration against genetically-modified foods, Boston, 1999 © Linda Haas

A serious, long-term effort to stabilize the climate must address the problems of poverty and income disparity. People and governments struggling for survival do not have global warming on their agendas. For example, impoverished peasants slash and burn Brazilian rainforests, raise subsistence food crops until the poor soil is depleted, and move on to repeat the cycle--a practice that releases tons of stored carbon into the atmosphere.

But a commitment to alternative energy would address poverty by generating millions of new jobs throughout the world--creating a positive feedback loop in which solving the economic problem saves the environment and vice versa. A bonus of economic progress is that birth rates decline. Equitable distribution of wealth and stable population will ease tensions and lead to political stability. While this is certainly an oversimplification of complex, interrelated issues, recognizing the problem is the first step.

In 1995, 1500 climate scientists from across the world confirmed the fact that a "discernible human influence" was changing the planet's climate. Eight of the hottest years in history have occurred in the last decade. Demonstrating acute denial, the Republican platform says "...contentious issues like global warming..." are "not based on the best science" and "more research is needed." It says we should "increase domestic supplies of coal, oil, and natural gas" and "provide tax incentives for (their) production."

But now for the serious candidates.

Al Gore as author of Earth in the Balance, wrote that global warming was "perhaps the greatest danger this country has ever faced." But as Vice President , he spent less than a day at the 1997 Kyoto talks and submitted to the fossil fuel industry's demand that developing nations must be significant participants in emissions reductions. (Developing countries, rightfully concerned about fairness, feel strongly that the industrial countries responsible for high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide should bear the principal burden.) The Democratic platform states that our country must reduce climate-changing pollution, but adds a condition: "while making sure that all nations of the world participate in this effort." This from a country (with less than 5% of the world's population) whose profligate consumption of energy annually spews forth millions of tons of greenhouse gases (more the 25% of the world's total).

The Kyoto agreement was also weakened by decreasing emissions reduction targets and by including the shell game of emissions trading. (Emissions trading is a scheme whereby countries that reduce emissions below their allocated limits can sell rights to pollute to those that exceed their quotas. The plan is fraught with problems: establishing baselines, negotiating quotas, monitoring compliance, resolving disputes. For example, this loophole would allow industrial nations to buy pollution credits from former Soviet Bloc countries whose reductions are the result of economic collapse.) Gore seems to have become the type of politician he criticized in his book, whose tactic is "rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change."

Ralph Nader states his position clearly and does not bow to the powerful special interests. He recommends clean energy and improved fuel efficiency to fight global warming, demanding "the elimination of all subsidies for fossil fuel." He calls for ratification of the Kyoto agreement with genuine compliance by this country saying, "The US commitment must be real so other nations, especially the developing nations, follow our lead." And anticipating potential loopholes for industry to exploit, he adds, "There should, however, be no misleading bookkeeping...or buying phony emissions credits..."

Nader also understands that the agreement is just a first step. "Most importantly," he says, "the Kyoto Protocol must have provisions to make sure the agreement is adequate or commensurate with the threat. A seven percent reduction is just the beginning and the Protocol must be flexible enough to incorporate future scientific discoveries that may very well tell us that we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions to far [lower] levels at a more rapid pace."

Both candidates have stated strong positions on the environment. One candidate has consistently shown integrity and resistance to powerful influence. I lean toward integrity.

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