While the Right wing rallies around Big Business, military, and fundamentalist Christianity, the Left seems unable to focus itself and fight back the forces of authority and oppression.

The only movement that can possibly unite the disparate forces of the Left is the environmental movement. There is simply no force out there, and that includes organized labor, that can capture people's interest and enthusiasm than the environment. And corporations are aware of this, which is why they spend so much on PR saying that they're "green" or environmentally friendly -- they recognize the potential power behind a people's movement centered around environmentalism -- which would naturally lock horns with capitalism and the corresponding pollution that accompanies the growth-based capitalist economy.

The goal of the capitalist owners is to derail and stall the environmental movement so as to save their profits -- they've been pouring money into this effort, and it has paid off; most established environmental organizations have been co-opted by Big Business; only Earth First! remains as a vigorous, direct action, people-based environmental movement, which is why it gets such consistent bad press, its members portrayed as terrorists (even though the Earth Firsters' cars are the ones that get blown up -- funny, that!)

But EF! is only one group; it is up to anarchists to show how the environment affects all of us, and can lead to citizen empowerment in the face of government and corporate wealth, power, and privilege.

Anarchism and environmentalism both must do away with capitalism, if they are to have a lasting positive impact on society -- capitalism cannot be reformed; it must be destroyed.

The environmental movement will NEVER succeed in saving the environment so long as capitalism remains intact and untouched. The core principle behind propertarian "ethics" is the idea that the Earth exists for man to do with as he pleases.

Animals, forests, oceans, anything that exists is taken not as instrinsically worthy, but merely useful to man--worth is defined in exclusively economic terms.

Anarchists reject this authoritarian attitude and seek not control and destruction of nature, but harmony with it. We recognize that humans are not the masters of the Earth, but are, rather, tenants. And we unequivocably oppose the source of this destruction: propertarianism (aka, capitalism). Environmentalists and anarchists make for natural allies, and it has led to the growth of a significant eco-anarchist movement, represented by Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl, first and foremost.

Animal Rights: Linked with environmentalism is a recognition of animal rights. We cannot recognize ourselves as one species and at the same time fail to accept our relationship to the animals around us.

It is for this reason that many anarchists are vegetarians (the Spanish Anarchists very often were deeply committed vegetarians for this reason). In our rejection of authority, hierarchy, and coercion, we similarly reject any "right" of man to torture animals for fun and profit.

In a fully realized anarchist world, animals would be accorded equivalent respect humans would accord each other. Anarchists recognize that we (all the animals on the Earth) came from a common ancestor, long ago, and in this common origin, we recognize our mutual kinship with animals.

Moreover, with the dissolution of property "rights", the mad rush for land and resources would abate, no longer encroaching on endangered species' habitats as capitalists sought out lucrative natural resources for their profit.

The fact is that we have only this planet, and capitalists continue to poison it in their insane quest for limitless profit -- they cannot accept that their actions are bringing about this crisis; after all, they profit from it, so it must be good, right?

You cannot expect capitalists to willingly pass up on profits in the interests of society (and humanity) at large; they won't do it -- it falls to the citizenry to take direct action in the interest of the environment and force change to come.

If the Left does not unite around the environmental banner, it will remain splintered and ineffectual, even as the Right remains largely unified behind private wealth, power, and privilege.