Friday, July 27, 2007

California Charming

  • The most recent edition of High Country News takes a jaundiced look at our green as a dollar bill governor. Editor John Mecklin finds exactly the right description (of Schwarzenegger with Tony Blair) in his editorial.
It was a typical Schwarzenegger performance, by which I mean to say it was charming and, as is too often the case with the telegenic former Terminator, unrealistic. Discounting asteroid and comet strikes, there are two primary threats to humanity’s existence: nuclear war (which Schwarzenegger will have no chance of addressing outside the four corners of a movie screen) and global warming, which he could address, but is instead using as the set for his latest politico-cinematic feature, Arnold Against the Hotness.
This supports the longer cover story: "Hydrogen Highway Revisited" which provides a does of reality.

Once more, someone has to be calling the Governator on his slick promotions before he promotes us all into oblivion. It is a role that is perfectly suited for the Green Party if only the GPCA were willing to be the vehicle for this effort. We all saw what the California Nurses Association did with Arnold. I believe that the Green Party should be making a similar effort to take him to task for promoting policies of ecological collapse while touting his own green-ness.

The list of failures waiting to happen increases with every new challenge he faces.
  • Water solutions that will destroy the delta.
  • Cap and trade system for CO2.
  • Maybe a new forest fire control policy for Tahoe (yet to be specified).
The time for this action is now.

2 comments:

Lisa said...

Nice to see you still posting, Wes.
I have the utmost respect for your ideas and actions. We both know the internal working of GPCA, and our scant resources, all volunteer except one or maybe two paid stipends.

I went to the CA Nurses Association website and they have 6 statewide offices. Presumably they have staff and a budget that the GPCA could only dream of. And being a union, they could mobilize numerous foot soldiers when they took on Arnold.

So, it is not a fair comparision between what the GPCA should be doing and what CA Nurses did.

It doesn't mean we can't dream though. Say we got together 5-10 top activists in the GPCA on this issue. What, other than issuing the GPCA press releases(which we do quite well), would you have us do?

Cheers,

Lisa
myspace.com/losangelesgreens New!

Wes said...

First, such a group would need some official status as associated with the Green Party. Look at the active working groups / committees and find a place to land.

Then, an action list would have to include the following besides giving Cres more work to do.

- developing / recruiting a specific expertise in each area to consider: water, energy, global warming policy, sustainable architecture, etc.

- tracking every major thing that the governator does... and responding to his hypocrisy.

- preparing and publishing actionable tasks (e.g. Letters to the Editor, letters / phone calls to legislators, etc.) This has to end up looking like there is broad an interest in solutions as we can make it appear that there is.

Stage one event - try to get funding from GIWG.

Make a stir in Riverside.