Well said, Gar. I find myself agreeing close to 100%.  Some thoughts:

A good model might be that of the Popular Front of the 30s and 40s, in which a spectrum of political groups were able to work together on those issues they agreed upon -- for example, to fight World War 2.

There are many more potential allies than those now considered "progressive." For example, in the UK, the Tories are taking some very green positions, putting pressure on Blair and Labor.

Or in California, Republican governor Schwarzenegger is bucking the neo-cons, with a fairly green agenda.

I monitor papers and statements coming from the military, and at least some sectors are suprisingly aware of fuel and environmental issues. Same with the intelligence community, I would suspect.

One thing to keep in mind is that current direction of the Republican Party is an aberration - much more extreme and polarizing than traditional Republicans. In the 60s and 70s, Republicans often were involved in environmental causes.  

Caroline Casey (the Visionary Activist) emphasizes the importance of learning how to be a good ally. We've got to re-discover that skill.

great post, Gar.

It's worth noting that some of these other issues -- economic justice, public financing of elections, health, etc. -- are not just nice allies for environmentalism, but really elements and/or prerequisites of it. I'm a bit of an Aristotelean unity-of-the-virtues type -- I think we get a healthier society or a sicker one, and "issues" involved in making it healthier are not necessarily easy to separate out in practice. Our issues overlap more than the siloed nature of our advocacy groups would indicate.

www.grist.org

   Let me join the chorus of praise and concordance.

   But instead of saying a "left" cause, you might insist that the "left" is the new center.

patrick

I'm in total agreement.  The only way for the rank and file to be recognized by the powers that be is for them to become a power on their own.  Organizing within One Big Union with a Preamble like this is a great way to begin:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

Mike B wrote:
<<
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
>>

Bravo!  Francis MacDonald Cornford, great scholar of ancient Greek philosophy, said somewhere that even as we think less of Plato and Aristotle for accepting slavery as a necessary fact of life (and he might have included some New Testament authors as well), so future generations will think less of us, for not resisting the conventional idea that a person's livelihood should depend on working for a wage.

Agreeing with Gar, our David Roberts wrote, "It's worth noting that some of these other issues -- economic justice, public financing of elections, health, etc. -- are not just nice allies for environmentalism, but really elements and/or prerequisites of it."

It is interesting that David, ever following the money, a large part of Gar's concern, to be sure, yet has nothing to say about the important social-justice issues that Gar also emphasizes.

Also, we might ask: Is the "unity of the virtues" approach, the idea that environmentalism has "elements or prerequisites" that are not immediately obvious to many environmentalists, so very magnanimous, in the best Aristotelian sense, that it might also include a committed concern for animal welfare?  Jason Scorse's notoriously ugly style in forcing that issue won no friends; nor did it deserve to.  But that cause does indeed have more attractive spokespersons.

It is curious that Gar ends by asking, "Should we network with these primarily, or should we not also network with those?"  I have no problem with politicking, schmoozing, lunching, happy-hour-ing, looking for a majority, discovering common interests, discovering how we possess "elements or perquisites" of one another.

But who are "we"?  Gar seems to be addressing a readership of self-identifying environmentalists, with environmentalism representing their primary set of values.  But is that realistic?  How many readers of Gristmill are really like that?  Do we not have all kinds of other concerns and values as well?

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

>audience

Grist is an environmental magazine. A great many prominent figures are calling for people to drop everything else and concentrate mainly on global warming to the exclusion of other issues. The readers of Grist are likely to encounter that viewpoint  - within Grist itself if nowhere else. So I think it important to confront that particular viewpoint.

>revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system.

I'll agree that class is the undiscussed elephant in the living room in American politics, and that since I implicitly brought it up, I should have discussed it explicitly. Don't think 19th century rhetoric is the best way to present it, especially 19th century rhetoric about a revolution that is not going to happen in the U.S.  anytime in the forseeable future.

We absolutely need to address class issues if we expect to address climate change realistically, which is something that most environmentalists seem oblivious of. Even those who understand the reality of environmental racism don't seem to get the class thing. Not all poor people are people of color. Not all white people are wealthy or even close to being wealthy. They aren't all even middle class (a class that is quickly disappearing anyway).
    As I've pointed out elsewhere, grassroots movements need funding, lots of it to succeed. Funding comes from wealthy people or foundations supported by wealthy people. In my experience, it is extremely difficult to raise substantial money for grassroots efforts. Instead they are supposed to be supported by volunteers, underpaid staff, local donations, and prayers. The big money goes to the big groups tackling sexy issues in splashy, public ways (the most bang for the buck). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt things have changed all that much since my non-profit days in Vermont a few years ago. Oh, we also had several trust-fund "babies" who could afford to work without pay. The culture was like this: If you need to earn a salary then you need to get a "real" job, not expect your nonprofit work to support you. Since I was seriously committed to the work I was doing while raising 3 boys alone, I was often on the receiving end of such comments, despite the overwhelming opinion of my colleagues that the work I was doing was necessary and valuable. Yes, it was frustrating and yes it often pissed me off. I also ran into situations where if I had been a single mom of color I would have qualified for financial assistance to present my work at conferences, events that I was actually invited to because my work was considered so "valuable". But since I am not a woman of color the assumption was that I could raise the money myself or somehow have it magically appear in my (non-existant) bank account. So yes, there was a real understanding of the economic plight of people, especially women, of color in environmental circles but not the class issue which impacts every race to some extent. I didn't make an issue of it because I didn't want to be labeled "racist" by some of my white-so politically-correct colleagues, and as luck would have it family circumstances demanded that I pack my bags, and my kids, and move to Maine to take care of my disabled sister. I have no idea how things would have eventually worked out had I remained an activist in Vermont.
    Now, dealing with the very real danger of climate change I see the same thing happening. Once we get beyond replacing light bulbs and curbing consumption we need to begin the real work of lifestyle transformation. And this does take money, at the community and at the individual/family levels. We need to public transportation where none exists (like where I live), and where it does exist it probably needs to be expanded. We need to seriously retrofit our homes and businesses which takes money. Not just tax breaks because if you don't earn enough to pay taxes then they don't help much. Incentives that benefit higher income and wealthy people don't have any impact on those of us at the lower end of the income ladder. And proposals for increased taxes on fossil fuels or carbon taxes, if they are applied equally across the board, will seriously hurt lower income people and people living on fixed incomes who are already paying a higher percentage of their income on energy.
    I'm in the process of trying to figure out what changes I can make in my two-person household that will make us part of the solution and not a lesser part of the problem. My dream would be to move to some kind of community where we shared things like cars, plows, washers/dryers, gardening, splitting wood and other labor, but not a community that tells me how I have to live, what I can and can't eat, what my spiritual beliefs should be, etc. Co-housing would be close to ideal except for the fact that it seems one needs to be quite wealthy to buy into it. No way is my house worth what I'd need to get for it to move into any of the co-housing projects I've researched thus far. So I'm continuing to research and I'm hoping that in the next two to three years I've found an answer my sister and I (and the Earth) can live with. I have to believe that if environmentalists took on issues relating to class my search would be more successful.

Gar writes: "A great many prominent figures are calling for people to drop everything else and concentrate mainly on global warming to the exclusion of other issues. The readers of Grist are likely to encounter that viewpoint  - within Grist itself if nowhere else. So I think it important to confront that particular viewpoint."

Amen!!!

SMLowry's story -- really, just an episode from her larger story -- is, to no one's surprise, powerful and engaging.  She clearly has lived enough, to start working on Volume One of her memoirs. : )

Is John Edwards the only presidential candidate talking about class, right now?

Of course, there are a few Representatives who have dedicated themselves to that issue, e.g. Charles Rangel, and Barney Frank.  And in the Senate, Edward Kennedy touches on it from time to time.

Has anyone read Barbara Ehrenreich's brutally depressing "Nickel and Dimed" as an environmentalist text?

How about this as a platform plank, both pro-environment and anti-class-inequality: Every municipality (or however you want to designate a district) must work to ensure that there is affordable housing for all residents; and every municipality must work to ensure that there is made available regular, convenient, affordable public transit, between places of residence and places of commerce/business/industry.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

A referendum on renewable energy utility rate policy and tax credits to consumers on every state ballot!  That's grassroots.  What better collaborative forum on this than Gristmill?

Reform has marched state by state onto the federal scene down through uS history.  Anti-slavery, women's suffrage, minimum wage most recently, now healthcare.  

Next comes renewables used efficiently.

Impelled by utilities paying homeowners, farmers, and small businesses for renewable power and government diverting subsidies from big energy companies to investors in plugin vehicles,solar, wind, and biogas systems and conservation.

Get a coalition like the minimum wage activists did.  Get a referendum on each state ballot.  Might convince politicians that renewable energy reform would be a good campaign issue.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

if a federal program existed to supply (for free) low-income individuals (or families) with a renewable energy generator?  A windmill in the backyard, some solar panels on the roof... it would have the potential to supply them with free electricity and also potential income in selling electricity back to the grid.  Hence, efficiency is encouraged because the less energy your household uses, the more money you would make selling your electricity.

I suppose it would be more difficult in urban areas, but I don't necessarily agree with "one size fits all" programs anyway.  

The reigning attitude in America is "apres moi, le deluge," in short, I don't give a damn about the future past the short term.  Perhaps it will take some sort of tremendous economic disaster, an "Argentina moment," to wake America up to the fact that it is no longer immune at home from the disasters that the rest of the world experiences as commonplaces.  But it will happen, sooner or later.

The history of capitalism is a history of "capitalist discipline," of the spreading of forces of commodification, marketization, and alienation into the deepest recesses of nature.  Since capitalism, at this point, has gotten into the DNA itself (via genetic engineering), it has become like a cancer that is metastasized.  The spread of "capitalist discipline," then, has a rather limited longevity.  Don't count on the system surviving into the long term.

The scariest aspect of this all, however, is that the intelligentsia, the folks who have studied all of this and who should know better, still imagine that American society will change very little over the coming decades.  In real life, however, we can expect something like the disaster that hit New Orleans to spread across America as global warming deepens, while the real estate market in several American cities teeters on the edge of collapse and the position of the US dollar in world currency markets grows increasingly shaky as US aggregate debt balloons out of sight.  Our "Argentina moment" rushes at us, though our intelligentsia appears rather unprepared to seize it.

http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/

Economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, social justice. We can't achieve any of these in isolation.  Each depends on the other two.  And yes, Caniscandida, I would include ethical relationships between we humans and other animals in that mix, file it under environmental common sense.

I mean how we would expect the universe to shine benignly upon us when we treat other animals like sh_t is completely beyond me.

That sentiment is also part of the IWW Preamble.
Is living in harmony with the Earth possible within a system which commodifies everything, including the Earth?

Won't it be too long to wait, if we have to come up with schemes which will appeal to "cost-efficiency" logic?

The relentless drive to make all human creations and Nature into saleable objects is incompatible with human survival at this stage of historical development. We either face that reality or we gradually grind our way to barbarism as the chaos of global warming envelops us.