User:Fishal/Green politics

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Part of the Politics series on Green politics

Green movement Worldwide green parties: Global Greens · Africa · Americas · Asia-Pacific · Europe

Principles

Four Pillars Global Greens Charter: ecological wisdom social justice participatory democracy nonviolence sustainability respect diversity

Issues

List of Green issues Politics Portal ·  v • d • e

Green politics or Green ideology is a political ideology which places a high importance on ecological and environmentalist goals, and on achieving these goals through broad-based, grassroots, participatory democracy and a consensus decision-making. Green politics is advocated by supporters of the Green movement, which has been active through Green parties in many nations since the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Greens" claim that their ideology represents a fundamentally new way of addressing societal and political problems, and that grene politics is therefore not classifiable along the traditional left-right political spectrum. However, green parties are often characterized as left-wing parties, and most Greens see themselves as being more leftist than the social democratic parties.

Contents 1 Statements of principles 2 Green views 3 Green Party's politics 3.1 Values and ethics 3.2 Platforms 3.3 Critique of green policy 4 See also 5 External links

[edit] Statements of principles

Green politics has been defined in similar ways by various green groups in the decades since the ideology's inception. The first major statement of this kind was the Four Pillars of the Green Party drafted by the German Greens. Although the first green party is generally acknowledged to be the United Tasmania Group, formed in Hobart in 1972, the German Greens (die Grünen) was the first Green party to meet with electoral success at the national level. The Greens contended in thir first national election in 1980. They drew support for their opposition to nuclear power, pollution, and the actions of NATO. In the 1983 federal election, the Greens won 27 seats in the Bundestag. The Four Pillars, written in 1979-1980, have been echoed by many Green Parties worldwide. In addition to making this foundational statement of green ideology, the German Greens first coined the term "Green" and adopted the now-common sunflower symbol. The Four Pillars are:

1. Ecology ("Sustainability")
2. Social Justice (sometimes "Social and Global Equality and Economic Justice")
3. Grassroots Democracy
4. Non-Violence

In 2000, the Green Party of the United States expanded the Four Pillars into its "Ten Key Values." In addition to the Four Pillars mentioned above, the GPUS states that green politics also includes:

1. Decentralization and local control of many decisions now made at the national level
2. "Community-based economics," defined as offering "meaningful work with dignity" to all members of the community
3. Feminism
4. Respect for diversity
5. "Personal and global responsibility"
6. Sustainability and "future focus"

In 2001, the Global Greens were organized as an international Green movement. The Global Greens Charter identified six guiding principles, all of which echo the Four Pillars and the Ten Key Values:

1. Ecological wisdom
2. Social justice
3. Participatory democracy
4. Nonviolence
5. Sustainability
6. Respect for diversity

[edit] Green views

Some of these views include:

• a commitment to the methods of consensus decision making, participatory democracy and deliberative democracy wherever feasible
• local and moral purchasing provisions for government especially, requiring the source of supply to follow similar environmental and labour standards as those prevailing in the consuming jurisdiction
• measuring well-being as an alternative to consumer price index based means of measuring economic growth
• full cost accounting and an end to dirty subsidy of pollution by government
• a green tax shift that would increase consumption and sales taxes on all resource-intensive items, while reducing income tax and capital gains tax
• a cessation of all taxes levied against strictly local production and trade
• against nuclear power and the build up of persistent organic pollutants - based on a strict adherence to the precautionary principle where technologies are rejected unless they can be proven to not cause significant harm to the health of living things or the biosphere. In Germany and Sweden programs have been initiated to shut down all nuclear plants (known as nuclear power phase-out).
• an end to biological forms of pollution and human health damage via the subsidy of dairy farming and the meat industry
• treating waste as a resource - a commodification of something of negative value, previously dumped into the commons without full cost accounting
• investing heavily in human capital
• accounting reform that would probably disadvantage both labour and large investors in favor of smaller investors
• are ambivalent about the War on Drugs in the United States and Europe. The USA GP's platform advocates something other than drug peace: a "firm approach" against the "trafficking in hard drugs", although it notes that drug crimes have "too much emphasis".
• an end to the War on Terrorism and the curtailment of civil rights - focusing instead on growing deliberative democracy in war-torn regions and the construction of a civil society with an increased role for women
• urban secession by major cities to permit them to shake off control of the suburbs and renew their economies in ways that they cannot do if they require the permission of their surrounding regions, e.g. to tax, ban cars in downtowns, or put money in mass transit instead of highways
• bioregional democracy reflecting ecological boundaries in politics directly

Because it lacks clear identification with powerful interest groups, and tends to appeal more to a world-view or mindset, Green politics tends to grow slowly but also not to easily lose ground to other views or parties over time. In developed nations Greens have typically stood at 3-12% of the vote for long periods of time without making breakthroughs, usually participating in government as a minority partner, or working at municipal or regional levels. Most Greens reject radical centrist politics though there is some overlaps between that perspective and what is occasionally referred to as the "realist" wing of the Greens.

Basic statements of Green political values include the Four Pillars of the Green Party originally adopted by the European Greens, the Ten Key Values of the Global Greens adopted by most English-speaking Greens in the 1990s, and the six core Green principles accepted in 2001.

Greens often refer to productivism, consumerism and scientism as examples of "grey" views, which implies age, asphalt and obsolete ideas of human social organization, including globalization of economic relations. Many Greens are important players in the anti-globalization movement. This involvement includes the full spectrum from street protesters to those building local alternatives to global economic monoculture.

Greens on the Left are often identified as Eco-socialists, who merge ecology and environmentalism with socialism and Marxism to blame the capitalist system for environmental degradation, social injustice, inequality and conflict. While there are many overtly eco-socialist parties across the world, Eco-socialists are generally found in most Green Parties.

Green politics is usually said to include the green anarchism, eco-anarchism, anti-nuclear and peace movements - although these often claim not to be aligned with any party. Some claim it also includes feminism, pacifism and the animal rights movements. Most Greens support special policy measures to empower women, especially mothers; to oppose war and de-escalate conflicts and stop proliferating technologies useful in conflict or likely to lead to conflict, and such radical measures as Great Ape personhood.

[edit] Green Party's politics

[edit] Values and ethics

Greens participate in the legal electoral process and seek to influence the definition and enforcement of law in each nation in which they are organized. Accordingly, Green Parties do not advocate an end to all law or all violent or potentially-violent enforcement of law, although they prefer peace, de-escalation, and harm reduction approaches to enforcement.

Green Parties usually advocate stark divisions between public commons (in land or water) and private enterprise, with little cooperation — higher energy and material prices are presumed to create efficient and ecological markets. Green Parties rarely support subsidies to corporations — sometimes excepting research grants to find more efficient or ecologically sound industrial techniques.

Greens on the Left adhere to Eco-socialism, an ideology that combines ecology, environmentalism, socialism and Marxism to criticise the capitalist system as the cause of ecological crises, social exclusion, inequality and conflict. Many Green Parties are avowedly eco-socialist but most Green Parties around the world have or have had a large Eco-socialist membership. This has lead some on the right to refer to Greens as "watermelons" -- green on the outside, red in the middle.^[1]

Despite this stereotype, some centrist "right" Greens follow more geo-libertarian views which emphasize natural capitalism — and shifting taxes away from value created by labor or service and charging instead for human consumption of the wealth created by the natural world. For example, the Independent Green Party of Virginia is fairly conservative on fiscal matters, while supporting the use of rail transportation to reduce traffic and pollution. That said, Greens may view the processes by which living beings compete for mates, homes, and food, ecology, and the cognitive and political sciences very differently. These differences tend to drive debate on ethics, formation of policy, and the public resolution of these differences in leadership races. There is no single Green Ethic.

Values of indigenous peoples (or "First Nations"), and to a lesser degree the ethics of Mohandas Gandhi, Spinoza and Crick, and the growth of awareness of ecology, have had a very heavy influence on Greens — most obviously in their advocacy of long-term "seven generation" foresight, and on the personal responsibility of every individual to make moral choices. These ideas have been summed in the Ten Key Values drafted by the U.S. Green Party which include restatement of the Four Pillars that European Greens used. On the global level, the Global Greens Charter proposes six key principles.

[edit] Platforms

Green platforms draw terminology from the science of ecology, and policy from Environmentalism, Ecosophy, Eco-socialism, Feminism, Pacifism, Centrism, libertarian socialism, Social Ecology and even sometimes libertarian survivalists.

It is rare for a Green platform to propose lower fossil fuel prices, unlabelled genetically modified organisms, tax, trade and tariff liberalizations that remove protections for ecoregions or communities.

[edit] Critique of green policy

Critics sometimes claim that the universal and immersive nature of ecology, and the necessity of converting some of it to serve humanity, predisposes the movement towards authoritarian and intrusive policies, particularly with regard to the means of production, as these sustain human life. These critics often see Green programs as just a form of socialism or fascism — although many Greens counter that these are more characteristic of Gaians or non-parliamentary groups such as Green Anarchists, who are part of the Green Movement but less committed to democracy. ^{[citation needed]}

Skeptics point out that industrial nations are in the best position to adopt state-of-the-art clean energy and corresponding high pollution standards — and that Green Parties advocate going against economic progress. However, Greens respond that industrial nations are still those which use the most resources, and contribute most to climate change, and that as the poor world develops, we must help it develop with renewable rather than finite/carbon-based energy sources.

A further criticism is that Green parties are strongest among the well educated in the developed world, while many policies could be seen as operating against the interests of the poor both in rich countries and globally. For example, some Greens support increases in the indirect taxation of goods ("ecotax") which they perceive to be polluting. This can result in the less well off paying a higher share of the tax burden because more of their income goes to purchasing essentials. Green defenders of the Green Tax shift respond that the poor are often the first and greatest victims of environmental degradation and do not have the resources to adapt or move away. Protecting ecosystems therefore protects the poor even more than the rich who can better adapt or move. Furthermore, equity positive tax or refund adjustments can be made to the progressive income tax system to compensate for any socially regressive consequences of the green tax shift. Globally, Green opposition to heavy industry is seen by critics as acting against the interests of rapidly industrialising poor countries such as China or Thailand. A counter view is that emerging nations from the South would benefit environmentally and economically given the rising cost of fossil fuels by leap-frogging the industrial stage and moving directly to the post-industrial stage. Green participation in the anti-globalisation movement, and the leading role taken by Green parties in countries such as the United States in opposing free trade agreements, also leads critics to argue that Greens are against opening up rich country markets to goods from the developing world, although many Greens would argue that they are in favour of trade justice - Fair trade over Free Trade. Contrary to the above view, Greens in Europe advocate the lowering of trade barriers and argue for the elimination of export subsidies for agricultural products in the industralised nations.

Finally, critics argue that Greens have a Luddite view of technology, opposing technologies such as genetic modification which their critics see as positive. Greens have often taken the lead in raising concerns about public health issues such as obesity which critics see as a modern form of moral panic. Whereas a technophobic point of view can be found in the early Green movement and parties, Greens today reject the accusation of Luddism, countering that their policies of sustainable growth encourage 'clean' technological innovation like renewable energy and anti-pollution technology.

Encouraging thriving natural ecoregions, preventing global climate change, and preserving other aspects of the natural environment are viewed as necessary to maintain human life.

[edit] See also

• Green syndicalism
• Green liberalism
• Ecological humanities
• Green economics
• Eco-socialism
• Activism
• Environmentalism
• Republicans for Environmental Protection

[edit] External links

• Global Greens Charter, Canberra 2001
• California Green Archives