John Rensenbrink and the Primacy of Ecology

An influential, insightful individual writes, speaks, organizes, and leads over the course of a lifetime. How to distill the essence of their vital contribution? A special issue of Green Horizon Magazine (Spring 2020) contained tributes to the work, presence, and prescience of my co-editor, John Rensenbrink, who died last Saturday. The articles embodied a variety of attempts to convey the essence of John’s contributions to the movement.

Here’s my own:

The left of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries recognized that democracy and peace require social justice. This comprehension was important, yet attempts to base social-change praxis on that theoretical foundation were disappointing. As of the 1960s it was apparent that a focus limited to class struggle, identity politics, wealth redistribution, and/or economic socialization was failing to usher in the envisioned era of democracy, peace, and justice. Meanwhile, a crisis outside the purview of traditional leftism was increasingly consequential. It showed that, instead of making progress toward an ultimate “highest stage of history,” we appeared to be heading into an abyss of social breakdown, climate catastrophe and mass extinction of species.

The theory and praxis needed to change. It did so on the basis of an emerging new worldview. During the 1970s the nascent Green movement suddenly presented an alternative to all the old ideologies. It was based on Four Pillars. They included the standard three of the traditional left, phrased as Grassroots Democracy, Social Justice, and Nonviolence (peace). But the Green perspective pointed the way toward a paradigm shift via appreciation of a new factor — ecology. John Rensenbrink, early on, was among those who realized the primacy of the “additional” pillar: Ecological Wisdom. And he then worked tirelessly over the years to enlighten the social change movement based on that realization. The title of his masterwork, Ecological Politics: For Survival and Democracy, indicated his recognition that more is at stake in our time. And more is required of us. Nothing less than a radical transition of our politics and a full transformation of our lifeways will be required to re-establish ecological balances and to restore our righteous citizenship within the community of life.

Green Horizon issue #40 (Spring 2020) detailed the extent to which John’s insights and erudition touched the lives and influenced the thinking of one individual after another over the course of his career as an educator, activist, and organizer:

https://greenhorizon.sites.community/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/GHM40_web.pdf