Monday, February 13, 2006

Getting the Green back in the Green Party

I have used this forum to comment on the fact that the Green Party of California appears to have lost interest in Environmental Issues. This is especially true of issues that are evidenced in rural areas of the state. One person forwarded a notice about Global Warming to a GP email list today and added this comment. "Why isn't the GP organizing demonstrations and policy statements about this? We have lost our environmental focus."

It is not just because most members are from urban areas. Kevin McKeown responded to the elist with a reference to the Sustainable City Plan for the City of Santa Monica where he is a council member. I havn't made it all the way through that, but it seems to be right on track. It focuses on urban environmental issues. That is the right thing for local involvement and all Greens should be advocating for a local version of this.

Kevin went on to comment that "our California cities are where the MOST environmental work needs to be done." One way to look at this is to examine the fact that people cause environmental damage and most people live in Cities. It is, however, necessary to understand what rural and urban mean in a quantitative way. According to the California State Rural Health Association and the California Communities Program at UC Davis, California is highly urbanized.

  • California has 58 counties; only three are entirely urban. Fifty-five of California’s counties have substantial rural areas
  • Twenty-nine of California’s counties are considered totally rural.
  • 94% of the population live in urban areas, while just 6% of the population (1.8 million)live in rural areas
  • 32% of the rural population live in counties that are at least 91% urban.
I would disagree only somewhat with Kevin's conclusion. The biggest environmental challenges are coming at the intersection between urban and rural areas. This is where sprawl is happening. It is also where impact of the Endangered Species designation is getting it's focus, as developers fight all efforts that might constrain their right to build whatever will be most profitable in the locations that would be the most profitable, no matter what the impact might be on the rest of us. But that is only part of the problem.

The other thing is that most urban Greens will focus on the social justice issues that they hear about every day, to the extent that environmental issues never make it up to the level of getting excited, upset, pissed off enough to do something. To begin with, most environmental issues can not be really understood without some study. Who really knows what should be done to ensure that the environment of the California Delta is protected, that the agricultural grocery cart of the Central Valley gets enough irrigation water and the elite of suburbia can water their lawns and fill their pools? Who really knows what actions we, and collectively we through our government, should be taking concerning Global Warming?

So, we just argue about things that we can easily grasp, personalities, tactics, the keep score or settling scores of political life and meanwhile those who can claim to be stakeholders in the planning process will make all of the decisions. When it comes to water, we are all stakeholders. When it comes to clean air, we are ALL stakeholders.

It may be time to listen to Al Gore, if you don't fall asleep. Global Warming is real.

4 comments:

Wes said...

Lisa, no one doubts your dedication to the cause and the hard work that you put in. But here are some other thoughts.

Greens have a hard time building a local organization because they are not deeply involved in local issues. Tip O'Neil said that All Politics is Local. When a group chooses to follow the latest big national issues as the basis for their existence, then they will live and die accorind to the swing of public opinion on those issues. If we were to invest the same energy into the building of a sustainable community in Pomona, for example, then there is a base for continued, ongoing action and a development incubator for the leaders of the future.

Wes said...

I will continue research this question. It may be that the organization will become more sophisticated in it's appreciation of just what is an environmental issue. When we buy in to the "tree hugger" labeling ourselves, then the bad guys have already won.

I would suggest that all Greens who can find Bruce Babbitt's new book, Cities in the Wilderness, read the portions in chapter 2 that deal with sprawl in Tucson. It clearly tells you just how much water, development and property rights determine what happens. We Greens are so naive about our own issues.

Roger, Gone Green said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Roger, Gone Green said...

Wes: LA Greens do a pretty good job of balancing enviro and social issues. Although I had concerns about the event that proved relatively groundless, LA Greens focused a recent large public appearance on non-auto mobility -- an urban enviro issue that impacts Global Warming, and takes some pressure off of wild lands for oil and gas production.

Meanwhile, in LA County most Greens I know understand that environment and social issues are linked, like all other aspects of life. (I see you found the Grist article).