"Elizabeth May who runs the Green Party in Canada—a wonderful woman" --- Bill McKibben

"One of my friends, a woman named Elizabeth May who runs the Green Party in Canada—a wonderful woman, had missed several of these. She showed up and said quite correctly, “Nothing ever changes! This is like a family reunion aboard the Titanic.” There is very much that feeling, you know, of the same big cast of people from around the world trying, somehow, to solve the biggest problem the world has ever faced, but without the political movement behind them to allow them to do work on the scale that needs to be done."

from http://globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/3418

While we're at quoting one important American writer, here's from another's latest,:

"A consensus is firming up on each side of the "stimulus" question, largely along party lines -- simply those who are for it and those who are against it, mostly by degrees. Nobody in either party -- including supposed independents such as Bernie Sanders or John McCain, not to mention President Obama -- has a position for directing public resources and effort at any of the things I mentioned above: future food security [organic & local], future travel-and-transport security [more communal], or the future security of livable, walkable dwelling places [renascent community] based on local networks of economic interdependency [resilience]. This striking poverty of imagination may lead to change that will tear the nation to pieces."

Pretty much ditto for Canada.