j reacts to the question of whether bds is an environmentalist policy

you can't understand this in a vacuum. first, the green party in canada was up until this point a very unstable coalition of conservatives, right-libertarians, primitivists and environmentalists. may herself is a "progressive conservative", which nowadays is a junior leadership branch of the liberal party. she claims bds is a distraction without acknowledging that the fact that she's pro-life is a hugely unnecessary issue on the canadian left and is massively restricting their ability to gain voters. i'd be rich if you gave me a quarter for every leftist i've met that has pointed to her pro-life stance as a reason they can't vote for her. on top of that, they tend to run these market fundamentalists that are clueless about the green party platform and think the answer is more property rights - ideas that are strongly on the libertarian right. the party has no choice but to collapse in one direction or another to grow.

as it turns out, the canadian left is currently in extreme flux. after running a campaign on balanced budgets, and then being triangulated by the center-right liberals as a consequence of it, the dominant soft-left party (the ndp) is in a freefall that it might not recover from. a year ago, a lot of people were suggesting that the liberal party was dead. but, the ndp seems to have stepped in front of the bullet. this influx of green party members is coming from leftists that are fed up with the ndp and looking for a new left that is tied less to union activism and more to environmental sustainability.

in order for these leftists to take over the party, they will need to push the libertarians out of it. there's no other way this can work. may is not one of them, but she will have to go with them.

but, what does bds have to do with the environment? quite a bit, actually. and i'd like to see this point raised more often....

why do we have to support israel, again, despite the human rights atrocities? the reason is that we need a reliable ally in the middle east. is israel a reliable ally? probably not. but, the perception is that it is. so, as long as we need that reliable ally, we're stuck turning the other way as they commit this genocide in slow motion.

but, why do we need this military base in the middle east? the reason is the reliance on middle eastern oil. if we can remove our reliance on imported energy, we no longer need that ally in the middle east - and we can react accordingly. pushing for a green shift to renewables is consequently the most realistic thing that we can do, as citizens, to stand in solidarity and help stop the slaughter.

it follows that opposition to bds is the same thing as support for the fossil fuel industry, and that the greens should at least not be opposing it.

http://forward.com/opinion/347396/why-canadas-green-party-leader-might-resign-over-bds/