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FP: I\e uc • .we ;*> .rcric*? C"
return, teq..rec: r f .*:« c~ ;u cj a com*
pony 5 r.'Lsrfc^ . j*:; re ^:n the long
te-m?
MH: Yes. ana as globauaaLon continues ana
the financialization of modern capitalism
increasingly dominates all the economies, this
will get worse. Now it's not even quarterly. It's
daily. They are watching their stocks all the
time.
FP: Like the Internet stocks.
MH: Again, that's why you've got to have
government. Over the last 20 years we've had the
ascension of utterly unregulated capitalism.
We've had a pretty good laboratory for observing
what happens when we have the so-called free
market. We see it in the environment. And also
in the media. There are complaints coming all
the time now from the right to the left of the
political spectrum about the tawdnness and sex
and sensationalism constantly purveyed in the
media. We act as if this is some kind of moral
failing on the media's part, when m fact it's very
concretely related to practical policy changes
that Ronald Reagan initiated in the ‘80s to
deregulate television and remove it from any
kind of public interest obligation: In essence, to
have an ultra-free market approach to the
media. All right folks, this is what you get.
FP: In the book you seemed almost surprised
at how normal people across the globe are aware
of environmental issues. Why did this surprise
you?
MH: I think of the woman in Entebbe.
Uganda, who talked about the ozone layer as
“that hole in the sky." First
of all, I come from a culture
where people are often satu
rated with media yet often
know next to nothing about
the issue, maybe because
they have the luxury of
their wealth wluch allows
them to De insulated from
the problem and not have t:
worry about it. But the
women in Entebce what
access to news did she have
m Uganda’ Basically a gov
ernment-run paper that's
roout four panes long. !t
ucesn t even come out m
Entebbe Ar.d she doesn t
nave -he money to buy the
paper. ! aon t know how she
knew what was going on.
Then there was a guy
who didn't make it into the
book, a wonderful squatter
who lived in the interior of
Brazil, in the province of
Goias. When he found out
that I had just been to the
Earth Summit, he started
peppering me with ques
tions. What had happened
there? How had Brazil
acquitted itself? And so
forth. He lived in a hou«e of
concrete blocks with a tin
roof, in the middle of
nowhere, without even a
radio. So how did he know
the summit was even hap
perung? And to be so animated about it! Yeah. I
was astonished. It stands in s»ich contrast to the
lassitude here.
FP- You say that change is difficult, but not
because people don't care. Polls consistently show
people believe in protecting the environment over
economics. But then you seem to blame some
people; they are not animated by a seme of
urgency. Don't you think that if people saw there
was a chance to win something, they would invest
in the effort? Were vou too hard on the everyday
arizen and not critical enough of how the system
makes change very d’^rult?
MH: I wish I would have been a little more
understanding about that in the book. People do
feel politically powerless all over the world.
However I must say I have '.ess tolerar.ee fc: that
feeling amcr.g my fellow Americans than, sav in
:..r.a As distcrtec as ou: political system ;s
here there a:e tar rnoie opportunities for effec- i
tive political action Here tnan in China, Uganda.
Russia oi most places aiound the planet.
Let me put it this way: If the idea is that
things look too hopeless to change them, well, if
that scares us off. then we are probably going to
fail the evolutionary test. When people say. "It's
hopeless," There's a part of me that thinks.
Well, buck up! Buck the hell up or you are
going down. I understand that money drives the
political system, but I still believe that at the
end of the day we may not have the money, but
we do have the numbers, as inert as the public
support for the environment sometimes is. That's
why the Republicans failed to overturn the envi
ronmental laws in 1995.
Two-thuds of the population, including a
majority of Republican voters, didn't want them
overturned. It shouldn't take much for activists
to build on that foundation and to keep the bad
guys from winning. Nixon got out of Vietnam
not because he wanted to but because people
were in the streets, people were writing letters,
people in all sectors of the society were doing
what they could do to oppose the war. They
changed the political context Nixon faced, so he
had to get out. Likewise with civil rights and
Kennedy. If you do the slow, patient, often
thankless work of political organizing, I think
you can win. Not every time, but you can win.
FP: You make the case that good environ
mental policy doesn't have to translate to loss on
the economic level. How do we get that idea
across? The UAW. the car makers and Clinton all
collude to protect the specieI tax pnvileges and
ignore the safety problems cf the gas guzzling
SUVs. It seems only government intervention can
slow down the SUV juggernaut but in theory if
will at the expense of the auto industry's prof
itability. How can we address that?
MH: Well, I do think that what l call the
global green deal — where government encour
ages a wholesale shift away fiom environmen
tally destructive technologies and practices
towards environmentally enhancing ones — can
be profitable for most of us. But we have to be
honest, it's not going to be profitable for all sec
tors of the economy. Oil and coal, for example,
are historically doomed industries. And we can
> continuer! on next paye
The Chinese government is
caught between the economic
costs of environmental damage
and the political consequences of
environmental reform.
-s —
1
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