The New Environment Protest

It's About Demanding a Say in the Future of the Planet
by Kevin Danaher

When it comes to rebellion on the streets, I must confess a prejudice. In a
pitched battle between children armed with banners and spray paint against
highly trained police and military personnel with a large array of deadly
weapons, I tend to side with the kids.
As a child, I was taught about an instance of property destruction known as
the Boston Tea Party and it made a positive impression on me.

At recent street protests in Quebec and in the late-1999 Seattle protests
against the World Trade Organisation, this 50-year-old was out on the
streets with the young people. I was very impressed by their analysis, their
courage, their creativity and their heartfelt desire to protect other
species from the human onslaught.

Why would these young people be rebellious? Maybe it's due to things such as
seeing the major biological systems of the planet collapsing while an oil
company cowboy in the White House pulls the US government out of the mild
Kyoto Accords because it might disrupt the profits of his benefactors.
Contrary to media suggestion, the youth-led movement for global economic
transformation is not 'anti-globalisation'.

There are really two varieties of globalisation: élite globalisation (which
we oppose) and grassroots globalisation (which we promote). The top-down
globalisation is characterised by a constant drive to maximise profits for
globe-spanning corporations. It forces countries to 'open up' their national
economies to large corporations, reduce social services, privatise state
functions, deregulate the economy, be 'efficient' and competitive, and
submit everything and everyone to the rule of 'market forces'. Because
markets move resources only in the direction of those with money, social
inequality has reached grotesque levels.

The United Nations Development Programme reports that the richest 20 per
cent of the world's people account for 86 per cent of global consumption and
the poorest 80 per cent of the world's population struggle to survive on
just 14 per cent of total consumption spending. This is why tens of
thousands of children die needlessly every day, because resources
distributed by market forces automatically bypass the poor.

But there is another kind of globalisation that centres on life values:
protecting human rights and the environment. Grassroots globalisation
comprises many large and growing movements: the fair trade movement,
micro-enterprise lending networks, the movement for social and ecological
labelling, sister cities and sister schools, citizen diplomacy, trade union
solidarity across borders, worker-owned co-ops, international family farm
networks, and many others.

While these constituents of grassroots globalisation lack the money and
government influence possessed by the corporations, they showed at the WTO
protests in Seattle that they are able to mobilise enough people to halt the
corporate agenda in its tracks, at least, temporarily.

There is a big question confronting us as we enter the twenty-first century,
which is: will money values dominate life values or will the life cycle
dominate the money cycle? The great spiritual leaders of all cultures have
been clear that the best path in life does not consist of amassing material
goods. Jesus used violence only once, against a specific occupation - not
Roman soldiers or tax collectors - but bankers. Paul of Tarsus said: 'The
love of money is the root of all evil.' Confucius said: 'The superior person
knows what is right; the inferior person knows what will sell.' Even George
Soros, the billionaire financier, admits: 'Markets basically are amoral.'

Here in the United States, large sections of the public are increasingly
critical of corporate rule and its consequences. A recent business magazine
survey revealed that 74 per cent of the public believe big corporations have
too much power, and 73 per cent believe top executives get paid too much; 95
per cent of those polled agreed with the following statement: 'US
corporations should have more than one purpose. They also owe something to
their workers and the communities in which they operate, and they should
sometimes sacrifice some profit for the sake of making things better for
their workers and communities.'

Let's be clear about the 'free market'. It is an ideological construct that
does not exist in reality. All the countries that successfully
industrialised did so through state intervention, with government playing an
active role in directing investment, managing trade and subsidising chosen
sectors of the economy.

The temple of democracy has been taken over in recent decades by the
transnational money-changers. Large corporations dominate national
governments and they dominate the secret global government (the World Trade
Organisation, World Bank, International Monetary Fund etc) that is being
constructed behind the backs of citizens. This explains why the rulers need
to hide their rule-making procedures: if less than 1 per cent of the
population (millionaire corporate lawyers) monopolise the rule-making
process, they can't let the public know the details.

Would the policies of these global bodies be kept so secret if they were
really in the public interest. Wouldn't the corporate lawyers want to debate
openly with us opponents of corporate globalisation and prove their claims
that we don't know what we're talking about? Yet getting these global
financial bodies to debate in public is like pulling teeth.

We are now experiencing 'a constitutional moment'. Corporate interests are
writing a global constitution that elevates corporate profit-making above
the rights of citizens to protect their jobs and the environment. Whether
the rule-making takes place in the WTO, the IMF or in planning the coming
free-trade area of the Americas, the only people with a seat at the table
represent transnational corporate interests.

If workers, small businesses, non-profit groups and environmentalists are
not represented when the rules get written, then their interests will be
subordinated to those of corporate profit-making. Look around and you will
see mounting symptoms. The world economy produces more food per capita than
ever before, yet we have more hungry people than ever before.

The environmental crisis is evident in eroding topsoil, poisoned ground
water, melting glaciers, receding icecaps at the poles, a depleted ozone
layer, the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and unsustainable
patterns of resource consumption. In turn, these crises are producing a
moral crisis in which the affluent avert their eyes and pretend there is no crisis.

In the cities of rich countries around the world, in Seattle, Quebec,
London, protesters rage against an economy that turns every living thing
into dead money. These protests are the beginning of a movement that puts
love of life above love of money. If it is true that 'nature always bats
last', then the world view that seeks to ride with nature will outlast the
world view that seeks to dominate it and turn it into money.

Find details of the author's work on globalism at www.globalexchange.org

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001