You Say You Want a Revolution

Here's an inspiring call to arms for the environmental movement from James Speth in Yale Environment 360. Posted in 2008, it still resonates today, maybe even with more urgency because what he describes is still sorely missing. Poets, priests, and philosophers carry us out.

"The environmental agenda should expand to embrace a profound challenge to consumerism and commercialism and the lifestyles they offer, a healthy skepticism of growthmania and a redefinition of what society should be striving to grow, a challenge to corporate dominance and a redefinition of the corporation and its goals, a commitment to deep change in both the functioning and the reach of the market, and a powerful assault on the anthropocentric and contempocentric values that currently dominate.

The best hope for real change in America is a fusion of those concerned about environment, social justice, and strong democracy into one powerful progressive force.

Our environmental discourse has thus far been dominated by lawyers, scientists, and economists. Now, we need to hear a lot more from the poets, preachers, philosophers, and psychologists. 

If there is a model within American memory for what must be done, it is the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. It had grievances, it knew what was causing them, and it also knew that the existing order had no legitimacy and that, acting together, people could redress those grievances. It was confrontational and disobedient, but it was nonviolent. It had a dream. And it had Martin Luther King Jr.” 

Read his full rousing post here.