Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
In a rare interview, the former Soviet leader says glasnost is working, but globalization isn't.
Sep 7, 2000 | Mikhail Gorbachev has a new mission: saving the world's environment. In an interview at the State of the World Forum in New York Tuesday, the former leader of the Soviet Union said, "I think the environmental problem will be the number one item on the agenda of the 21st century ... This is a problem that cannot be postponed."
Gorbachev linked the planet's worsening health to globalization and the growing gap between rich and poor it has produced. But he emphasized, "We cannot just criticize, cannot just blame. We should try to understand what is happening and what we need to do."
The former Soviet leader also spoke at length about Russian President Vladimir Putin, rebutting criticisms that Putin is returning Russia to authoritarianism and crippling the nation's environmental regulations. After the two men met this summer, at Putin's invitation, Gorbachev had praised Putin for restoring "order" in Russia.
In Tuesday's interview with Salon and National Public Radio's "Living on Earth," Gorbachev stood by his comment, asserting that Putin is "in favor of laws and courts being effective, because in the chaos that existed in Russia under Yeltsin ... dishonest people ... appropriated a lot of property."
Gorbachev added that he had criticized Putin's handling of the Kursk nuclear submarine tragedy, and that the public and media outcry against Putin left Gorbachev "rubbing his hands" with satisfaction that "glasnost is working after all." As for Putin's abolition of Russia's environmental protection agency and persecution of environmental dissident Alexandr Nikitin and other green activists, Gorbachev said Putin had made a mistake. "I believe that decision will be reconsidered," he said.
Gorbachev was in New York to address the United Nations Millennium Summit and to preside over the annual gathering of the State of the World Forum, an organization of politicians, activists, scientists and business leaders that Gorbachev founded in 1995 to address such global problems as environmental sustainability and poverty. He also heads the Green Cross International, a global environmental organization that works toward sustainable development. Globalization is the theme of this year's forum, and Gorbachev chaired an opening session that included financier and philanthropist George Soros and AFL-CIO president John Sweeney.
Except for a few more wrinkles around the eyes, Gorbachev looks little changed from the late 1980s, when he astonished the world by dismantling Soviet totalitarianism, ending the Cold War and reversing the nuclear arms race before being driven from power following a failed military coup in 1991. Striding down the corridor of the Hilton to the interview suite, he was surrounded by half a dozen aides and security men. Yet it was his aura of calm authority that commanded attention.
Dressed in a gray pin-striped business suit with matching shirt and tie, Gorbachev looked healthy and fit, with no apparent aftereffects of the devastating loss of his wife and political confidant, Raisa, to cancer last winter. His handshake was a firm, thick-fingered grasp that harked back to his peasant upbringing.
In his speech to the World Forum, Gorbachev argued that there is great public disappointment at the direction global affairs have taken since the end of the Cold War. Wealthy nations and transnational corporations have benefited from globalization, he said, but 1 billion people now survive on less than $1 a day. To reshape globalization, Gorbachev said, the forces of civil society should organize regular "people's forums" to work for alternative policies.
"As always," he concluded, "I am optimistic."
In the 1980s, you warned about the unprecedented dangers of nuclear weapons and took very daring steps to reverse the arms race. Have things gotten better or worse in the last 10 years? And do we need equally daring steps today to avert environmental degradation?
I would say that both threats are really extremely dangerous to mankind.
The environment has been greatly damaged by the nuclear arms race. Models made by Russian and American scientists showed that a nuclear war would result in a nuclear winter that would be extremely destructive to all life on Earth; the knowledge of that was a great stimulus to us, to people of honor and morality, to act in that situation.
Similarly regarding the environment, a great deal has changed in the world during the 20th century. Imagine, in the beginning of this century, the annual gross product created by all countries was worth $60 billion. Today, $60 billion is produced in one day, in 24 hours. Imagine the kind of overload that creates on the environment, the kind of heat and waste that is created.
All of that has damaged the environment already. We see that species are disappearing. We see that many areas of the world are no longer fit for human living. We see the death of forests, desertification, pollution of the oceans with nuclear waste and other kinds of waste.
My experience with the environment began many years ago when I was a small child. I grew up in a family of peasants, and it was there that I saw the way that, for example, our wheat fields suffered as a result of dust storms, water erosion and wind erosion, I saw the effect of that on life, on human life.
When I began to work in Moscow on the Central Committee, I saw a really terrible picture of the consequences of what we had done to the environment and a certain view of nature took shape for me, which was very important. Then I had to go through many other experiences, including Chernobyl.
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