(Page 3 of 21) - Paradoxes in Green Democracy authored by Wilson, Harlan.

1) A diagnosis of the current political situation indicates that there are indeed affinities

between democracy and greenery; but even more, there are affinities between authoritarianism
and brownness. The enemies of democracy are usually the same forces as the adversaries of
green politics. In the United States during the last 25 years, the enemies of both greenery and
democracy have increased in strength. Hence green democrats can't ignore them in the search
for proper ways of conceptualizing and envisioning a green future. To put it bluntly, perhaps
the greatest obstacle to movement towards environmental sustainability at present is the
domination of all three branches of the US national government, many state governments, and
many aspects of the political culture, by right-wing anti-environmentalists. This is not merely a
national problem either; it is a global problem.

2) In the long run, democrats need greenery even more than the other way around. This

is true for several reasons: a) Without a sustainable environment ('a planet to put democracy
on'), democracy cannot thrive. b) Certain tendencies towards unsustainability, especially in the
area of energy politics, even in the absence of crisis, threaten democracy. c) Most ominously,
any environmental crisis of national (or global) proportions is extremely unlikely to engender
responses that strengthen democracy, no matter how much theorists may say that participatory
and deliberative responses are the most effective at dealing with crisis. Moreover, these three
propositions hold most palpably for strong democracy. Meanwhile, it is not at all apparent that
the 'general public', divided as it may be by partisanship, identifies 'environmentalism' or
'environmentalists' with anything having to do with 'democracy.'

I am not arguing that the main reason to avoid environmental crisis such as massive

coastal flooding or ecologically induced famine is only because they aren't good for democracy!
In the end, survival is a more basic value than democracy. However, if you believe -- as I do --
that democracy, the stronger and more empowering the better, is ideally necessary for a full life,
then you should worry about the prospects that unsustainable trends will make democracy an
impossible option in the future. The structural and partisan tendencies we are experiencing now
are not only coincidentally also directed against democracy, but they have the potential to erode
the very conditions of democracy in the future. For these reasons, democratic political theorists
(those who publish in Political Theory) need to pay more attention to environmental theory and
practice than they do -- which is to say, they should notice a little bit. (If one wanted to make an
ad hominem critique one could say that too much political theory, especially democratic theory,
has 'the smell of the lamp'. Of course, such criticism would be irresponsible.

2. To Sustainability via Democracy?

a) Democratic-Green Affinities

I mentioned above the general affinity between democracy and green theory. This affinity

traditionally has been expressed in terms of the virtues of small, local communities and place-
based democracy. Indeed, the appeal of decentralized, close-to-the-land, bioregional approaches
to green democracy is still attractive. More recently, however, a vision of much more inclusive
and large-scale kind of democracy has been theorized, both within and outside the state.