Shades of Green
Sam is lying on the bed next to me. Every ten minutes or so we do the basin-and-range ballet, ending in a rinse and a napkin. Sam is working though shades of green.
In France the parti écolo is also working though shades of green, and not without a little nausea and vomiting.
The political party was divided by the European Constitutional Referendum, with half choosing Neo-Liberalism with the promise of Pan-European ecological jurisdiction, like the EU-wide ban on Monsato's MON 810 maize (which was in the real press yesterday), and half not choosing Neo-Liberalism with the same sweetening. The journées d'été des Verts à Grenoble was spent finding a way to put the Referendum behind both the ouistes and nonistes, and figure out what écolo ment before the Referendum, and therefor, after the Referendum.
Two months later the bondo is showing through the paint, along with some cracks.
The shades of green available are (a) within the «vraie gauche antilibérale», Noël Mamère (ouiste), and conditionally allied with the PS, (note the presence of "vraie", or "true" left etc.), or (b) the «alliés inconditionnels du PS de François Hollande», Dominique Voynet (noniste). If you need an American translation, that's "Libertarians instead of Unions" vs "Unions instead of Libertarians". Sort of.
Noël Mamère, who ran in the 2002 Presidentials, is currently the Received Wisdom favorite, over Dominique Voynet, who ran in the 1995 Presidentials.
Unfortunately for the RW producers and consumers, the parti écolo is not defined by the political party. A lot of ecologists in France have concerns other than the 5% bogie, or the political form of European unity. One is Yves Cochet, Député de Paris (14ème arrondissement, my old neighborhood), and far and away the better candidate. He's also a mathematican working as a programmer, and got started in the aunti-nukes, which makes him look pretty good to me.
In 2007 Cochet is running as the "candidat de l'écologie politique". He's written two books, "Sauver la terre" (2003) and "Petrole apocalypse" (2005), and he's been running competitive campaigns for over a decade, getting elected to the Rennes city council, Deputy from Val d'Oise, and Minister of the Environment. I hope to read the former and read and review the latter (hint to well-heeled readers), but he's posing the $60/bbl-plus petro-economy question, and neither the RNC nor the DNC strategists are looking beyond incremental +/- deltas in CAFE standards, which should zero out the share price and head count of all American auto makers, regardless of political affiliation.
On a personal note, Duncan Black (Atrios) caught my attention recently with a minor throw-away remark on Escheton. Something to the effect that environmentalists were catastrophic millenarians (Global Warming), like the end-of-oil millenarians, and other millenarians. We're not catastrophic millenarians, we had our reality-based catastrophic millenaria five hundred years ago when Christobal Columbo and Co ran aground on the back of the turtle, and faith-based millenarianisms simply are un-Indian (Wovoka's Ghost Dance cult excepted).
The Greens, and the Dems, in the US, need to think though our post-{2000|2004} electoral issues, and whether, and how, sustainable development planks exist in our parties platforms. That is why what happens inside the ecologist movement in France matters in North America. Either we see the needle or we maintain the illusion, at whatever cost, that there is no needle.
Sam is now a pleasing shade other than green, and talking about things other than his "hiccups".