Twenty Year On

Guest editorial by John Pearce, author of “The Little Green Book”, and former editor of “Green News”

15th January 2010

When “The Little Green Book” was written, many year ago now, the political landscape was quite different, and green awareness among the public was  lower than it is now. Most of us now take things like recycling for granted, but then the idea that local councils would be doing doorstep collections  was an environmentalist’s dream rather than a mundane reality. People were beginning to wake up to issues like the hole in the ozone layer, but awareness of global warming/climate change was minimal.

The Green Party rode a brief wave of public support that peaked for the European elections in 1989 when they won around 15% of the vote, and it seemed briefly that everywhere you turned people were switching on to green. However the trend passed, and The Green Party missed its historic opportunity when the anarchist wing rejected potential leaders like Jonathon Porritt and Sara Parkin, and thus consigned itself back to the wilderness.

However although public awareness of green issues has moved on to the  extent that much of the Green Party’s environmental manifesto has been stolen and repackaged in a pale green version by the main parties, in terms of the damage we are doing to the planet little has changed, and in many respects things have got worse.  This is particularly true with regards to deforestation of the fast dwindling rainforests and atmospheric pollution with greenhouse gases. Traffic volumes continue to grow, and the developing world sees car ownership as a dream rather than a curse.  Loss of biodiversity has accelerated.

Rather like the smoker who knows they are killing themselves but carries on regardless, we seem unable to step off the treadmill that is leading not only to our own destruction but of the whole life-supporting environment of our planet. We are complicit in a kind of giant suicide pact, sleep-walking to disaster, like the oft-quoted frog in a pan of hot water being slowly brought to the boil.

The approach climate debate is particularly sad. In many respects it has been split along the lines of which paper people read, with the Mail and The Telegraph, and to a lesser extent The Times providing a platform for those who see a communist plot at every new revelation of the irreversible damage being done. The money spent by the oil companies sowing seeds of doubt has paid off spectacularly well.

The dismissal by so many people of the “precautionary principle”, that you don’t take chances unnecessarily, is puzzling when you are gambling with the one known life-supporting planet in the universe. Agreed, life can be cruel and harsh at times, and some would argue it is not worth saving, but do we really want to throw away the product of billions of years of evolution, and the sacrifices of our ancestors to get us to where we are, just because we can’t make a few sacrifices, which compared to the sacrifices of those who went over the top of the trenches in the First World War, are really not so great?

We can live without cars if we have to, those of us able to afford heating we can usually turn the thermostat down and wear more clothes in the winter.  We can eat in season rather than expect to be able to eat any food from any part of the planet regardless of the time of year.

However there seem remarkably few people up for the challenge. It is much easier to drift along in the comfortable conspiracy of silence, to try and ignore the evidence for as long as we can, rather than rock the boat, and spoil the fossil fuel party.

The fairest system of proceeding is of a form of global rationing of consumption, a personal quota based on contraction and convergence towards a more equitable world. Goodness knows we have the technology to implement rationing; it is the willingness to act that is lacking.

We are happier with the present compromise where people blame governments, governments blame people, and other governments, and no-one has to make any change or face any responsibility.

So twenty years on, the first step in the green revolution has been reached, in that we are aware of the problem, however much we are in denial. However the shift from awareness to action is only in its infancy.

Revolutions can happen quickly, that is their nature. The Berlin Wall was breached quite unexpectedly when a critical point was reached, when enough people wanted change, and those resisting it weakened in their resolve to oppose them. Many never thought Apartheid would crumble and Nelson Mandela walk free.

At the moment we are a long way from breaching the wall that stands in the way of a sustainable lifestyle in the developed world. There is still a world to win, but it is up to those of us with the commitment to spread the green message, and peacefully confront those that seek to maintain the status quo in the pursuit of short-term vested interests.

A green revolution could still happen, but we are approaching the point where it will be too late. What was once the worse case scenario that was barely considered possible twenty years ago, of a runaway greenhouse effect caused by thawing permafrost releasing huge amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane, is increasingly seen by mainstream scientists as a real threat.

The horrors of this scenario are outlined clearly in Mark Lynas’ book “Six Degrees”. Beyond that point, all bets are off, not just for saving humanity, but for the survival of any life on our planet.

A Leader at Last

Caroline Lucas, the first leader of The Green Party

After twenty years in the political wilderness, The Green Party has finally come to its senses and elected a leader. In between lies a story of wasted opportunities. While the anarchist wing of the Party opposed the concept of leadership, the environmental crisis has unfolded, possibly past the point at which life on the Earth can be saved. Twenty lost and wasted years in which the Party could have used the springboard of astonishing success in the 1989 Euro elections to take the national stage an have a real impact.

One can only speculate what would have happened twenty years ago, if instead of rejecting the attempts of “Green 2000” to make the Party electable, the vote for a leader had not been rejected by Conference. The progress of the Party towards political representation at the national level has been painfully slow to the point that The Green Party is routinely ignored by most of the press and the public. It is increasingly clear that with climate change, time is not on our side. In the process the Party lost the involvement of charismatic figures like Jonathon Porritt and Sara Parkin, who would potentially have made great leaders of the Party. An opportunity has been tragically lost, with permanent consequences. But that is history, and we have to move on. There will be ongoing divisions within the Party to heal, as the “anarchist” wing of the Party who have rejected leaders, will be uncomfortable with the Party’s new direction. But it is essential that we now all work together, make a fresh start and move forward.

In Caroline Lucas the Party now has a leader with intellect, passion and experience who can take the national stage. She does not have the baggage and impact of Sarah Palin, the American Republican vice--presidential nominee, but at least with a leader, there is some chance that The Green Party will be taken a bit more seriously by the press and other parties.              

              There is much to be done still to make the Green Party electable at a national level. Some aspects of Party policy are still open to ridicule among the wider population, such as a ludicrously liberal drugs policy. To put it bluntly, just because a lot of Party members like smoking dope, does not mean that making drugs legal is a sensible policy, and the Party cannot afford to have policies which make it unelectable. Drugs are a corrosive influence on a society, wrecking lives and ruining neighbourhoods. They have no more place in our nation than guns. The Party must also address the issue of immigration. To raise the issue immediately draws the criticism of racism, but in our overcrowded island, already short of three million homes, we do not have the capacity for more people, particularly if we are aiming to move towards being more self-sufficient. To promote a policy of open borders ignores the justified fears and concerns of millions of people. If the Green Party is to be electable it needs to listen to the wider population.

              The Green Party also needs to sort out its finances and attract a much wider membership. There are millions of citizens who belong to environmental charities in the UK, yet the Party has only around 7,000 members. The Party needs to be become a slick, professional money, willing to borrow substantial sums to pull itself up by its bootstraps.

              The election of a leader gives The Green Party to make a fresh start, at a time when the British public are crying out for real and inspirational leadership to address the urgent threat posed by climate change and the myriad other environmental issues we face. It marks the shift of the Party away from being a pressure group of enthusiastic and extremely hard-working amateurs, and gives the Party the opportunity to turn itself into a force to be reckoned with in politics.