Alan Lipietz – Green Hopes (1993)
Politics – 160 pages – my copy (paperback) bought for 50p from Plymouth Library, late 2009
- 3 nods
Politics – 160 pages – my copy (paperback) bought for 50p from Plymouth Library, late 2009
- 3 nods
The subtitle of Green Hopes – The Future of Political Ecology – interests the reader of 2010 primarily due to the book’s age. Written in 1993, detailing the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the reader of 2010 can look back on the past two decades to see if Lipietz’s predictions have come true. The early 1990s was a different world in so many ways: before Blair, before 9/11, before the spin and the scandal. Yet one thing remains true, the Greens in politics remain a small, yet committed group, predicting their eventual flowering.
Translated from French, Lipietz’s book is one for all European Greens. It notes the then high point of Green feeling, before its dip later in the 1990s, calling itself a ‘New Political Force’. So much of the print resounds today: not enough people listen to the Green viewpoint, too few people worrying about the planet’s future. For the failure of the Rio Conference, we have the modern Copenhagen setting; for the fears of the Maastricht treaty, today we have the Lisbon agreement.
Lipeitz constantly refers to the old Left – the Reds – in an attempt to reconcile those disillusioned into the new Green movement. Political Ecology, he states, is the future of the Left, as are its values: Solidarity, Autonomy, Ecological Responsibility and Democracy. The writer forever drums in the message that ‘the environment is other people!’ (p.8), and although much is inspirational, there is also much within these pages that is stilted, some of its comparisons and references grown old and grey with age.
The Green reader of today will find much of the reading tough going – so much failure and unfulfilled hope. But the Green marches, or perhaps, struggles onwards – waiting for the day when the march will have its accompanying trumpets and fanfare. As Lipietz concludes himself: ‘Political ecology – the modesty of reason, the ambition of will’ (p.151).
