South Africa has seen revolution. A decade ago, the country was divided by apartheid. So much has changed in the ensuing 10 years that it feels like a lifetime has passed. Keep that in mind as the days count down to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, August 26 to September 4.

The first Earth Summit – Rio de Janeiro in 1992 – failed not because it lacked good ideas. It lacked our support.

Ten years ago we were busy with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and saving the world by "shopping green". Optimistically, we trusted our governments to act in our interests. Naively, we allowed the private sector to monitor itself. Meanwhile, many of us stood aside as an exploding, global casino economy launched a decade of unprecedented consumerism. At the cusp of the new millennium, a critical mass began to see where our market infatuation was taking us: into governance by trade agreement, with civil democracy replaced by an elite boardroom politics.

Now we know the scope of resistance that we can muster. Since Seattle in 1999 – not the first globalization protest, but the first to shake the world – we have seen the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and G8 shift to a rhetoric of global justice. While we continue to fiercely criticize these organizations, we know, too, that we have fundamentally altered their DNA. Not one of these organizations acts with the almost limitless power they enjoyed even five years ago.

The global justice movement has been focused on corporate power, but its energy has also breathed new life into social movements, the labor movement, even the peace movement. And now, perhaps in Johannesburg, it's time to revive the environmental movement. Or rather, to renew its deep challenge to the drift of global culture.

At the 1992 Earth Summit, environmentalism was just reaching the crest of a wave. Since then, it has fallen back.
In many ways, mainstream environmentalism today remains disjointed from the new activism. It praises "green" business while a generation of activists fight corporate power. It shies away from a challenge to consumerism while fighting to regulate consumerism's terrible social and environmental costs. Its fights are good ones, but it has lost the kind of vision that can truly change the world.

At the same time, a less-recognizable environmentalism takes the streets at every global justice gathering. It is expressed in the activists themselves, thousands of people who have connected their individual ecological footprints to corporate power, consumer culture, and First World arrogance. The chemistry between the public social justice movement and its personal ecological politics is revolutionary. But our crises are too severe for the environment to remain a junior partner in global activism.

Johannesburg may not be a flashpoint, but it could be the tipping point towards a new green movement. Radical ideas are emerging, imagining a world totally transformed. As the banner says, we've got three new "Rs": Rethink, Rise-up, Resist.