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World Politics, Blame and the Environment
by Brian Risman, Publisher, www thelawjournal co uk - 25 August 2002
Page 2 of 7
However, all of the above is not truly new. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, urban smog problems were high-profile, though the full world impact had not yet been realised.
If the issues are not new, why have these problems been allowed to continue? There are several reasons, and these reasons are in danger of being played out once again in the current Summit.
One major problem in taking action is that the ecological movement has been couched in ideology, not practical issues. For example, in the 1970s, left-wing groups in the West adopted ecology as one of their causes. Accordingly, they insisted on blaming the capitalist system. Their approach totally ignored the ecological disaster developing in Communist-run Eastern Europe, where there was no free press to expose the abuses. Equally, the misuse of the environment in the Third World -- peasants burning wood for fuel and clearing, not to mention the land and resources being held by despots -- was ignored, or if mentioned was only attributed to the alleged crimes of Western capitalism. An example of this ideological bent occurred in Canada when a major grocery chain became the first to sell and promote 'green' ecologically-friendly products. This commendable move, however, resulted in a split in the ecological movement, because the major ecological watchdog group worked with the grocery chain in preparing these products. Ecological radicals insisted that the goal was to fight capitalism, not work with all parties for solutions.
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