Thursday November 30 1995

Green struggle

The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight comrades was an odious opportunity to see the world as it really is, how it operates every day. A government, in this case the military dictators of Nigeria, and a multinational corporation, in this case Anglo-Dutch Shell Petroleum, collude to create conditions of poverty, environmental squalor, repression and death.

But pick any country and through the veil of propaganda we can find the same destructive collusion. This is the sharp end of consumer capitalism, which is all too often veiled by drive-in convenience, bright lights, and thank you/have a nice day. It is an instrument to which we are all attached (whether we like or not) and none more so than the Western corporate and government ideologues who thrust their system at the world.

The killings in Nigeria make a powerful focusing point. Ecological Thought is an important and highly-recommended book. Although well written, reading it is hard work because it plumbs many ethical and philosophical aspects of what ecological thinking means. At times the text can become impenetrable or seemingly irrelevant to the pressing wants around us.

The author reviews ecological thought across the radical to reformist spectrum. The radical ideas make for challenging reading, as they raise such issues as validity of parliamentary institutions, feminist and holistic perspectives, and animal rights. While at the far end of reformist ecological thought, there is the view that the Western political economy is basically fine except for a little bit of green knob-tweaking.

But the author does not merely review. He brings arguments together and in several places furthers the debate and introduces some important insights, reinvigorating fundamental principles that we may take for granted; for example, the importance of rational thought or human rights.

This may seem like an indulgent exercise. But in the postmodern world, rightwing theorists and ideologues would have us believe that rational ideas such as universal human rights and emancipation are either dangerous, presumptuous or ridiculous.

Hayward argues not to reject rational thought wholesale, but rather to reconstruct it with ecological concern. The needs of nature, he argues, are an integral part of human beings struggling for political and economic justice.

The life and death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his fellow-activists, who campaigned on ``all fronts'' of ecological, political and economic issues, serve, in my view, to exemplify this point.

And in order to achieve this touchstone of justice, Hayward makes a convincing appeal to the Enlightenment project: rational thought, scientific reason and human liberation. In other words, ecological thinking is a vital part of realising a socialist vision.

BY FINIAN CUNNINGHAM