[permaculture] All At Risk - Enlist the Land

Brent McMillan brent at gp.org
Mon Oct 27 21:45:08 EDT 2008


In response to RE: Turning Your Lawn into a Victory Garden Won't Save 
You -- Fighting the Corporations Will
Following is from my column, "Thinking Out Loud" in Green Pages

All at Risk - Enlist the Land
http://greenpages.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/thinking-out-loud/
By Brent McMillan, Political Director Green Party of the United States

We are currently witnessing a massive corporate green washing.

I have been involved in farming for almost 25 years now. Each year when 
I fill out my tax forms, on the Schedule F: Profit or Loss From Farming 
I check a box, “All investment is at risk.” For many of us in the Green 
Party we realized, long before most Americans, that all is at risk. 
Those that think that they will be able to keep what they have, as we 
move further and further into corporatism, are in denial.

How has American culture moved further and further from sustainability, 
democracy and community and become more and more corporate based? Food, 
transportation, housing, and media, all have become dominated by 
corporate interests. This didn’t happen over night, it happened 
gradually. Like erosion, this process of gradualism breeds complacency; 
that is there is no response until the last piece of foundation sand and 
rock gives way and the house it was supporting just topples off the 
cliff. No one feels a sense of urgency as it occurs over the years.

My Celtic forebears in Scotland learned an important lesson. They were 
invaded many times and often outnumbered. They learned when you’re 
outnumbered enlist the land.

They found that if you could find a pinch point in the landscape and get 
there first you could stop a larger force from advancing. I won’t go 
into the gory details here of how they did it. But there is an important 
lesson there for us greens. Currently we are badly outnumbered. Yet the 
need for our beneficial presence in the culture is immense. For us our 
pinch point is global warming, climate change, the collapsing U.S. 
dollar, peak oil, peak everything. We need to position ourselves there 
now. We need to be building and living working models for how to remain 
human as these issues play out. We need to be communicating the 
solutions that we have learned through our experience. This is not a 
technical problem. There is nothing new that needs to be invented. This 
is a cultural problem. It is a question of will.

We are currently witnessing a massive corporate greenwashing. 
Corporations realize they cannot ignore these issues so they are paying 
them lip service, but have no intent of substantially changing. They 
say, yes peak oil is coming. Climate change is happening therefore, let 
us drill offshore now and build more nuclear power plants for the 
future. They are fundamentally incapable of grasping the full nature of 
the problem.

When I lived in Washington State I would go to a place called Ocean 
Shores where there is a jetty built by the Corps of Engineers years ago. 
Its intent was to keep silt from accumulating in a nearby harbor so 
shipping could get through. When I go there I am struck by the arrogant 
thinking that we could control the Pacific Ocean. I watch as the waves 
crash into the jetty and spray goes a hundred feet into the air. As a 
result of the man-made jetty the coastline north of there is eroding. As 
a result of this erosion condominiums and hotels are slowly but surely 
falling into the ocean. Now there is real power.

I frequently meditate on this idea, “There are those that say they know 
but don’t do. They don’t know.” What do you know that you should be 
doing but have found that you’re just not there yet? What do you need to 
get there? The solutions often lie in community. ‘I’ can’t do it, but 
‘we’ can. Community solutions are often cooperative in nature. In 
Seattle, we saw the development of Voluntary Simplicity Circles. In 
Washington, D.C. I have seen the beginning of support groups for people 
who are working to “unclutter” their lives. Who is your support group? 
Who are the people who have got your back? If you start making a list, 
it might pleasantly surprise you.

Brent McMillan contributes a regular column for Green Pages. He can be 
contacted at brent at gp.org. Or share your thoughts at the Green Pages 
blog: www.gp.org/greenpages.



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