Today in Istanbul, the surprise Spring continues, with many thousands rising up against the abuses of Turkey's fundamentalist government. At the beginning, though, it was a modest protest of the kind I have devoted my own life to: resisting a new downtown mall, the bulldozers advancing on Genzi Park, the last green space in that part of the old city. I've noticed that reporters think it is flukish that a park's destruction would launch a nationwide response. The livability of trees and grass must be a separate issue from the human rights encroachments that sparked this passionate uprising.
As we pass 400 carbon units per million, it is clear that the world needs a new political perspective, where we are not splintered into our "issues," but stand together with the Earth. The isolation of the Environmental Movement needs to be overcome. There are many good folks working in those well-funded NGO's, but they would not, for instance, bring together the homelessness that comes from fraudulent foreclosures with the sudden homelessness of a super storm. They think the two storms must remain separate issues.
In New York City we have banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Bank of America - whose policies drove the foreclosure mills that led to so much homelessness in our country. These same banks move billions into projects which put CO2 into the air in great quantities, especially coal-fired power plants. Yet, when Hurricane Sandy hit our city, there was no mention of Wall Street's creation of the very conditions that brought us destruction. On the contrary, the banks sponsored blanket give-aways and musical concerts. They storm-washed any inconvenient truth that might emerge about their investments.
Indeed, the thousand mile wide Sandy was not publicly tied to any possible cause - other than the vaguest of references to climate change. The suggestion that some of us f...





