Thirty-four years ago Wisconsin's Gaylord Nelson inaugurated the first Earth Day. It was a time of great optimism, but today that optimism is difficult to come by. Internationally, we face global warming and massive species extinction. Nationally, we have a President that is waging an undeclared war against the earth. Locally, Wisconsin has alarming air pollution and our water is so poisoned that eating fish has become dangerous. And more fundamentally, our society still tends to see the environmental issues in a human-centered way, with nature merely a resource and concern based only on human self-interest. We have not achieved what another Wisconsinite, Aldo Leopold, called for over fifty years ago: a land ethic in which we change our role from "conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it."

But over the last three decades, there has been a promising development in the environmental movement: the realization that environmental issues cannot be separated from social ones. Globalization harms both the earth and workers. Environmental racism places the heaviest burden on socially marginalized groups. The bloody war in Iraq distracts attention from pressing ecological issues. Reckless deficit spending will cripple our ability to face environmental problems in the future. The so-called Patriot Act suppresses actions in defense of the earth, while media conglomeration suppresses independent investigations of ecological problems. This recognition of the link between social and environmental issues is hardly cheerful, but it is empowering because we see more clearly the need for a fundamentally different approach to politics.

It is the Green movement that has most effectively acted on this realization. Starting in Europe some twenty-five years ago, the Greens are a growing force in the United States. Here in Wisconsin we have the highest per capita rate of Greens elected to public office, and currently we have more Greens running for office than any other state. Yet the public at large remains largely unaware of Green candidates and what the Greens stand for.

The foundation of the Green movement is the Four Pillars. The first pillar, ecological wisdom, refers not only to a deeper sense of identification with the earth. It also involves a recognition that health is found in rich diversity rather than dominance by one part. And true strength comes from mutual cooperation because, as Leopold said, "the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts."

The second pillar, social justice, affirms that we cannot defend the earth without also defending the rights of all people around the world, those alive now and generations to come. We need policies that promote the well-being of the whole of nature, including human beings that are one part of it.

The third pillar, grassroots democracy, highlights the fact that ecological wisdom and social justice cannot be a hallmark of our society until our politics are truly representative of the people. Our government is democratic in only a superficial sense, with politics controlled by massive corporate donations and relentless lobbying.

The fourth pillar, nonviolence, refers not just to a rejection of the brutality of war, in which violence increases hatred which leads in turn to more violence. We also need to oppose social violence toward marginalized groups, whether it is sweatshops in the third world or a constitutional amendment that would enshrine discrimination. And we need to oppose violence against the earth which gives us life.

Ultimately, as Gandhi and Martin Luther King showed, nonviolence is a positive state of mind and a spiritual way of life, and it includes ecological wisdom, social justice, and grassroots democracy. On Earth Day during an election year, many of us are pleased that the Greens challenge the status quo politics of the two dominant parties. Our state and our country can only benefit from having candidates for elected office who offer a real alternative and who work for a green future.