Two discussions of the subject of trust came to my attention today. The most prominent was that of Alan Greenspan who told Congressional committee of his mistake leading to the current economic fiasco. He trusted the executives of major banks to act to protect their shareholders. They did not. You know the rest of that one, at least as far as the millipede we call the economy has dropped it's shoes.
Then, I found a discussion of the problems the environment where after years of environmental activism, the planet is in worse shape today than ever before and issues a call for a new Green Politics. This time the author, James Gustave Speth, finds a misplaced trust to be contributory to this situation. He cites another.
For example, Mark Dowie in his 1995 book Losing Ground notes that the national environmental organizations crafted an agenda and pursued a strategy based on the civil authority and good faith of the federal government. "Therein," he believes, "lies the inherent weakness and vulnerability of the environmental movement. Civil authority and good faith regarding the environment have proven to be chimeras in Washington." Dowie argues that the national environmental groups also "misread and underestimate[d] the fury of their antagonists."Speth defines his new politics as confrontational, disobedient but nonviolent. It might just work if we had a new Dr. Martin Luther King.
