On "The Power of Green"

This is part of a response to Michael Friedman's op-ed piece in the New York Times, "The Power of Green."

I have always been interested in the environment, though in my younger days principally by way of nature. I liked trees and frogs and sunshine. I remember a few years ago being truly interested in (no-- compelled to pay attention to) United States and world politics for the first time. I assumed it was just that I had finally reached an age at which politics interested me, but a friend of mine (about double my age) said she had never been as interested in politics as she was now. The world was heating up in a number of ways, and the role of United States politics was an important player.

So, naturally, these two interests merged: environment and politics. Now I read a fair amount of literature exploring the merge in various ways: land use, food security, peak oil, etc. The emergence of green politics beyond the Green Party interests me greatly.

As Friedman writes “But these problems are so large in scale that they can only be effectively addressed by an America with 50 green state – not an America divided between red and blue states,” I recall a recent Sierra Magazine. The article quotes Bob Marshall of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “When the NRA starts talking like the Sierra Club, you know good times have arrived for fish, wildlife – and generations of sportsmen to come.” Finally we are seeing a red-green movement, similar to the blue-green movement started in the past few years where major environmental groups join with labor groups because protecting the environment also protects workers.