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The Promise of Green Politics
Environmentalism and the Public Sphere
by Douglas Torgerson
240 pages, Duke University Press, 1999, Paperback, $21.95
Politics today is dominated by business news and the stock market. But those in support of green politics ask whether the profit of some should continue to be the bottom line of political deliberations. In The Promise of Green Politics Douglas Torgerson advances a concept of politics that emphasizes ethics and discourse as well as strategy.
Torgerson argues that in a world stuck in administrative and scientific gridlock, the theatrical, comic aspects of green politics are as important as other, more goal-oriented, aspects. In creating new ways to speak about the environment, Torgerson argues, the green movement offers creative ways to reconsider larger issues of political theory and action.
Praise for The Promise of Green Politics
"A clear and major advance . . . . The Promise of Green Politics represents a new generation of green political thought that moves beyond earlier texts, which were mostly concerned with staking out the territory. Torgerson tackles many--perhaps most--of the key issues and questions left hanging by others and does so in sophisticated and convincing fashion."—John Dryzek, author of The Politics of the Earth
"A detailed and penetrating exploration of the relationship between the means and the ends in green politics. Torgerson offers a fresh synthesis of, and a new angle on, many of the ongoing environmental debates, from sustainable development and ecological modernization to questions of political strategy and lifestyle."—Robyn Eckersley, author of The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty
Quotes from The Promise of Green Politics
"A sense of crisis has surrounded green politics since its inception. Its ideas throw the future of humanity into question and raise the prospect of catastrophe—perhaps the very extinction of the human species—unless there is a profound change in the way human beings interact with the rest of nature. No matter what human beings do, their domination over nature is to be remarkably short-lived: progress is coming to an end less than a cosmic blink after it was first hailed as humanity's great mission. The environmental crisis thus heralds a turning point in the confident expectations of the modern age.
"Arising in an atmosphere of crisis, green politics seems to fit
the story line of a tragedy. The consequences of failure are unthinkable,
but the possibility of success often seems remote; a remorseless destiny
unfolds despite heroic action. The tragic mood is intensified by the frequent
moralism and desperation of some green discourse, in which the undeniably
high stakes mix with a crusading sense of high purpose. The human forces
threatening nature and the human niche within it are denounced while counterforces
are called to heroic resistance." pp. 83-84.
"What would be the consequences of viewing green politics more as a comedy than as a tragedy? The very suggestion might seem frivolous, but the advantages of thinking in terms of comedy rather than tragedy were strongly suggested by Joseph W. Meeker's The Comedy of Survival, which appeared during the early phases of the green movement but has unfortunately not received the attention it deserves.
"The problem with an unequivocal endorsement of a comic politics seems obvious. Without clear principles to guide action toward appropriate goals, there is a risk of ineffectiveness, opportunism, and cynicism. As Meeker himself emphasized, the comic protagonist is seldom much of a hero, and is more likely to be a rogue, rascal, scoundrel, knave, fool, picaro, tramp -- a survivor, perhaps at any cost. Comic politics, if it takes an ironic stance outside the spectacle of politics, risks a lack of concern about either principles or consequences, a lack of purpose."--p.86
"In suggesting a ecological model of 'comic integration', Meeker
looks back to 'medieval cosmology' and invokes the particular example
of Dante: 'An ecological model of the world will incorporate principles
of integration resembling those derived by Dante from his theological
model, including a holistic con ception of the world's structure . . .
and a capacity to think and live in the comic mode'. Dante explained the
title of this Comedy--labelled 'divine' by others after he was
dead--with reference to the classical idea that comedy moves from misery
to happiness. Dante's journey into Hell through Purgatory and up to Paradise
thus culminates in the felicity of comic integration. Meeker's comedy
of survival, which moves from ecological crisis to a felicitous ecological
integration of nature and humanity, is thus modeled on Dante's comedy
of salvation." pp. 87-88.
"Despite its tragic aspect, green politics also possesses a significant element of comedy, and this has persisted in the years since Earth Day. It was certainly an image of carnival that gained prominence in the spring of 1983 when twenty-seven members of the German Greens, shown in photographs worldwide, took their newly won seats in the Bundestag, 'forming a river of colorful sweaters, shirts, and dresses that flowed down the middle of the chamber between the tiers of black-and-white suited politicians.'
"Carmivalesque gestures abound in various venues, often deliberately
designed to counter the tone of tragic seriousness as well as to mock
some of the all-to-human incarnations of the administrative mind. A citizens
group stages a funeral for a dead river. Environmentalists at a formal
public hearing don humorous hats to underscore their point. Protestors
against the clear-cutting of an ancient forest sleep in hammocks that
hang from the trees to be logged. The gestures include the actions of
such groups as Greenpeace, long a leader in carnivalesque tactics: the
unarmed Rainbow Warrior sailed off to confront a modern navy;
inflatable dinghies harass mechanized fishing fleets and whaling vessels;
irreverent banners hang high from the towers of a supposedly secure nuclear
power plant."--p. 93.
"Green politics is not tragedy or comedy. Tragedy and comedy are
narrative genres or, as Durrenmatt puts it, 'formal concepts, dramatic
attitudes, figments of the aesthetic imagination.' Politics is not simply
a narrative genre. Political action and judgment cannot be reduced to
the idea of tragedy or comedy, or to some combination of them. Nonetheless
narrative ideas, particularly with intimations of emerging order or disorder,
do enter into political action, shaping orientations, expectation, judgments,
and interactions in ways that may often elude the actors themselves."
--p. 97
"Dryzek's aversion to spirituality in the green apprehension of nature
is linked to his reasonable concern that cultural tendencies in a spiritual
vein, as they become fixed in dogmatic faith, have proven to be at odds
with a rational form of life. Dryzek's recourse to 'agency' in nature,
however, seems to assume that it could be apprehended and interpreted
in a literal fashion as something objectively given. It may well be that
the participants in a rational form of life would come to regard the principle
of agency as a more convincing interpretation of nature than one based
on images of an ancient earth goddess. However, both a model of climatic
change and a concept of agency--no less than goddess imagery--remain cultural
constructs that retain distinctly metaphorical features that cannot be
neatly reduced to a strict, literal correspondence with an objectified
nature in itself." --p.121
"Drawing attention to manifest injustice rather than proclaiming an ideal
of ultimate justice to be righteously pursued, the movement has allowed
for an exchange of diverse perspectives. This was especially evident at
the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. The
summit significantly brought urban-based African American activists together
with American aboriginal activists. By Paul Ruffin's account, the effect
of the encounter was dramatic. After he had long felt bitter about the
typical focus of white environmentalist concern, his exchanges with aboriginal
participants allowed him for the first time to feel 'the moral imperative
of protecting animals and trees and land.' In the end, the summit's 'Principles
of Environmental Justice' not only supported 'ecological unity and the
interdependence of all specie,' but also proclaimed 'spiritual interdependence
on the sacredness of Mother Earth.' The open-ended notion of environmental
justice, in other words, allowed for mutual questioning, a discourse in
which participants could perceive and transcend the narrowness of their
positions without abandoning their key insights and commitments. Such
a discursive enhancement of standpoints within environmental justice also
suggests a broader potential for enriching discourse in a green public
sphere." --p.150
"Anyone who battles a monster had better take care, Nietzsche once said, not to turn into a monster. An uncompromising green politics intent on ecological resistance threatens to succumb to a kind of resentment that, in the end, could undermine not only the intrinsic value of political action but anything further one might hope to gain from politics. A resilient green politics, though it offers neither a grand scheme nor much in the way of tragic heroism, is nonetheless consistent with the character of a green public sphere." --p. 168
Table of Contents of The Promise of Green Politics
- What is Green Politics?
- Strategic Perplexities
- The Greening of Public Discourse
- Green Dissent & Policy Professionalism
- Comedy & Tragedy in Green Politics
- The Ethical Connection
- The Green Public Sphere
- Green Politics & Public Life
About Douglas Torgerson
Douglas Torgerson is Professor of both Political Studies and Environmental and Resource Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. He is the author of Industrialization and Assessment: Social Impact Assessment as a Social Phenomenon and coeditor of Managing Leviathan: Environmental Politics and the Administrative State, in addition to The Promise of Green Politics.