Policy 12/08/2011

• In 2012 you can waste your vote on Obama or…

  tags: policy

  • In 2012 you can waste your vote on Obama pretending that the Republicans have shackled him, but as Paul Hawken points out, he could always use his voice if he had some backbone. People like Hawken and McKibben have earned my respect from their actions – they will be the ones who help address climate change. Do you really think Obama will?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ8scoNnGS8
  • Hi Leif. I think to take this position one has to accept that changing the political status quo will take more than the 2012 election. It could take 1-2 decades of serious effort, the force of the entire Occupy generation spent in this one …thing. But we can’t address climate change without a working government. So we have to get good government.

    The Democrats simply can’t address climate change. This needs to be the great call in 2012, for any candidate at every level, and the great decision-maker: can you or can you not address climate change? When I say to people don’t vote Obama or don’t vote Democrat, I’m also saying throw all your energy into studying and working in politics from the most local council race to the national, and work every day, not just once every 2 or 4 years. This way, even if we get Republicans we still know the challenge is to field our own independent candidates.

    I truly believe that people who vote Democrat out of fear pf the Republican alternative are being gamed by a very cynical system.

  • I also believe that people who vote Democrat out of fear of the Republican alternative are not helping to address climate change. Out of good intentions unfortunately they’re helping to delay solutions – and we know what this means, it mean…s disaster. So if we seek true solutions to climate change, and if we understand how urgent the need is, with no time to waste, then we have to start changing our long-held political habits. The Republicans are corrupted by ideology and corporate money. The Democrats are only corrupted by corporate money. But both parties are sufficiently corrupted by corporate money that this world will burn before any regular political solution emerges. It HAS to take our action, we HAVE to get political, and we HAVE to throw the Democrats away as a solution because they’ve failed consistently and nothing will change them except to see that we have the power and the will to take them out of office. Did you read Tim DeChristopher’s piece on this concept?

    http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-11-14-letter-from-a-climate-activist-in-prison-tim-dechristopher

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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