From my experience traveling to Poland each summer, item seems that there is a very high awareness of green issues there, and that country suffered much environmental degradation under the communists. For example, Krakow, which has one of the most beautiful old towns in Poland suffered much from pollution from a nearby steel mill. Also, all who were in Poland in April 1986 remeber the Chernobyl accident.

For these reasons, I could never see anyone associating the ‘green’ movement with communism. It just seems really weird.

My second point is this: if the anti-environmental camp is making this argument, which is so obviously false, they have really gotten very desparate.

First, red-baiting activists is nothing new. Civil rights organizers in the South were consistently portrayed as Communist agitators. And, of course, early gay rights activists were the pinkest of pinkos.

Second, in a way, green *is* the new red. Worldwide, environmental NGOs are more and more arguing that environmental problems cannot be solved in the context of existing disparities in wealth. The linkage between these NGOs and the social justice NGOs that have been working against trade globalization probably does represent the most significant threat to capitalism yet. This is more evident in, say, Bolivia than it is here in the USA.

They are, of course, right about the need for radical economic reorientation. Capitalism is and always will be bad for ecosystems. But old-school communism wasn’t any better. Like capitalists, Marxists viewed nature as inert matter to be utilized as resources by people. That’s why the former SSRs are pockmarked with environmental disasters.

Unfortunately, the new environmental justice movement has not moved far from the old-school viewpoint. Go to any World Social Forum and you will hear activists from all over the world proclaiming a “power to the people” position that assumes that simply switching which people control the “resources” will solve the problem.

This is one reason that those of us who advocate for ecosytems and animals must do a better job of working with and within the environmental and antiglobalization movements. Otherwise, green might really turn out to be the new red, with “the people” treating animals and ecosystems just as dismissively as the capitalists always have.

I wanted to note that the Czech Republic recently banned the Czech Communist Youth Union or KSM. This action by the Czech government constitutes an assault to the entire progressive community–it is not surprising to now hear anti-environmentalist rhetoric coming from such a regime. While it is obvious that not every progressive, environmentally-friendly person is a Communist, it is increasingly obvious that capitalism’s priority of profit above-all-else is largely what landed our planet in the Global Warming crisis. From a Communist perspective, it is imperative to shift this priority–there’s no way to liberate the working class, no way to share resources, if the planet is poisoned.

Lastly, reactionaries will brand you with any name fit to discredit you if you oppose their policies. The brand of “eco-terrorist” is definitely a convenient one for them to slap us with.

If the economics don’t work, recycling efforts won’t either.
As our little contribution to make this economics of recycling more appealing, http://LivePaths.com blogs about people and companies that make money selling recycled or reused items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources.

but seriously. the co-optation of the green scare rhetoric is interesting.