Will Hutton (London Observer): The greening of America

From the London Observer (Sunday supplement of the Guardian Unlimited)
Dated Sunday December 14

The greening of America
Some of the boldest environmental decisions are now coming from the world's most reviled country
By Will Hutton

The most eyecatching and effective radical politics continues to come from the environmental movement. It is the United Nations' warning that global warming threatens the Western middle class's ski resorts in the Alps and the Rockies that captures the headlines, and no issue unites such universal condemnation as George Bush not signing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
The EU is ignored or scoffed at on most issues, but when it publishes a league table, as it did last week, showing how feebly its member states are implementing their commitment to control carbon-dioxide emissions by 2010, the criticism falls away. It is doing a good job revealing how indifferently we are confronting what everyone agrees is the greatest challenge of our times - how to avoid a global environmental disaster.
There is the familiar cast of villains: the United States; selfish Western lifestyles; Russian cupidity in not signing Kyoto; China's obsession with industrialisation. And, above all, our predisposition to refuse to acknowledge slowly evolving but none the less catastrophic threats. We cannot help but live for now . . . .
The Bush Administration may be careless of the environment; US states and tens of millions of Americans are not, just as you would expect if environmentalism's real roots lie in reactions to contemporary economy and society. If Castells is right that the real battle is about identity, control and fairness, then it would be better for everyone if the earth warriors understood what they were really about, who are their real enemies and who their friends.

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