Since political ‘manifestos’ seem to be the order of the Webdiary moment, I’d like to take the opportunity to write in defence of being Green.
To me, voting Green, as I have done in every election post-1990, is much more than just an expression of political support for the only party that seems to be serious about safeguarding our collective ecological future, but that the Greens are such a party is alone enough to win my vote.
Yes, it’s true that the jury remains out on much of the science associated with the hot Green issues – global warming, threats to biodiversity, genetically-modified crops, and so on, but there is already more than enough Empirical evidence on such matters to convince me, a science graduate. The way I look at an issue like climate change is very hard-headed: we can either take the chance that the doomsdayers are right (and there are increasing numbers of them), and thus make major strategic changes now (while they would still have an effect); or we can wait and see. Most scientists seem to think that the ‘Old Bailey jury proof’ on global warming won’t be available for another twenty years or so – by which time, of course, it will probably be too late. And then what? The Greens get to say ‘We told you so’ as a thousand Pacific Islands disappear under the waves?
Sorry, but I’m not prepared to take that chance. What I find bemusing is that so many allegedly ‘practical’ mainstream voters of a more conservative (left or right) bent are – the kind of voters, what’s more, who were prepared to support, on almost no evidence, a speculative invasion and occupation of another country to ‘pre-empt’ a future WMD catastrophe. (Laugh at Greenies like me on far more potentially-disastrous threats, dismiss me as a scaremonger? Curious double-standards here.)
I suppose it’s sometimes easy to ridicule Green tactical excesses – the ‘feral’ aspects of environmental protest, the unorthodox economic theories, the ‘dancing with pixies at the bottom of the garden’. And yet, I have no doubt that future generations will look back upon the turn of the third Millennium, and conclude that the Greens, of all political groupings of our era, were the only ones with their eye on the real ball, the most far-sighted of us all.
Climate change, salination and soil erosion, the looming crisis in fresh water supply, rising sea levels, depleted global fish stocks, the advance of deserts – these are surely not chimeras in a strategic sense, however much we might care to debate the nuances of the short-term numbers. They are real and, arguably now, exponentially-accelerating processes, and only Green parties the world over are placing the finding of timely solutions to them at the heart of their political philosophies, which is what it will take to deal with them effectively. We can argue about Kyoto until we’re blue in the face, but something, ultimately, will have to be done about carbon emissions on the kind of globo-strategic scale that individual, short-term, left-right domestic political cycles simply cannot effect.
The truth is that neither mainstream party in Australia is truly serious about Green issues, and the same is generally true of politics worldwide: Conservatives and neo-conservatives increasingly dismiss them outright, while Progressives usually still pay patronising lip service only, seeing such matters as just another opportunity to rope in a few extra bleeding heart votes by cynical, opportunistic default.
To make a real difference to our ecological future, Green issues must form the bedrock, not the periphery, of a political party’s platform. Legislative aims must begin with the question: ‘What is good for the sustainable future of the planet?’ and then flow from there into all other policy areas – economics, public infrastructure, employment, research and development, education, industry – not the other way around. Otherwise, you might as well not bother.
And it’s for this reason that my support for the Greens as a growing global political force goes beyond matters that are merely ‘ecological’ (if such a distinction is meaningful anyway). Of all global political philosophies available to us, only the Greens’ has a central theme that is, ultimately, still grounded in any meaningful practical expression. You cannot get a more benign and utilitarian and accessible ‘Big Idea’ than the future health of the planet on which we all live.
True, so far, some environmental groups have at times embraced extreme methods and varying degrees of fanaticism – and, yes, ill-judged scare-mongering, too – but as the Green movement has evolved, a startlingly-diverse range of political strands have begun to coalesce around the one central aim of taking care of Humanity’s home. Tree-huggers, farmers, billionaires, students, baby boomer Seachangers, international scientific groups, local mothers clubs, industry leaders, rock stars, grass-roots ‘save-the-local-parkers’, New Agers, indigenous groups – all are increasingly finding common philosophical ground in Green issues.
And it’s not just a matter of saving this forest or that whale or that other piece of Kiribati shoreline over there. It’s far broader, far more holistic and, I suggest without a speck of embarrassment, far more beautiful and Human, too. As the pace of contemporary western life accelerates, as our befuddled idea of ourselves as a species – who we are, why and how we live, what things are truly important to us – fragments under a thousand artificial and self-created pressures, perhaps now to the point of collective Human schizophrenia, there is, I think, a growing hunger afoot in the developed world for us all to stop, pause, and snap out of our mild collective madness. To me, the Green movement is by far our best shot at giving meaningful political expression to that hunger.
And in any case, there is no longer any worthwhile democratic political alternative available. I am, at last, thoroughly through with both ‘Conservative’ and ‘Progressive’ political groupings, for the simple reason that there are no such creatures any more, at least not in the Australian political landscape. There are only populist opportunists for whom power, and power alone, is the only political principle embraced. I read Daniel Moye’s fine articulation of the Conservative Ideal (Why conservatives fear John Howard) and found it admirable but utterly unrecognisable.
I listen to a Bob Carr or even a Paul Keating speech, and for a short moment, I start to believe that ‘Progressivism’ too is still possible in mainstream Australians politics – until the harsh reality of the next ALP branch-stack, the next grubby and cynical attack on a Carmen Lawrence idealist, bursts that hopeful bubble.
Ultimately, I realise that the gap between the expressed ideals and the dirty daily realities of traditional political groupings has been rendered too wide by the entrenched habits of pragmatism. There is always a ‘reason’, an ‘excuse’ for the jettisoning of principle by our two mainstream political groupings, and the net result is two mainstream political groupings that operate according to no over-arching principle at all.
Left and Right is over; it is a dead division; it has ceased to be. There is only the fight for raw power now, and perhaps a little half-hearted window-dressing to disguise that ugly fight. The John Howards and their power-opportunists pay their hollow ‘tributes’ to Deakin and Menzies, while the Simon Creans and Bob Carrs and their power-opportunists lift their goblets of Grange in hollow ‘homage’ to Curtin and Chifley and Whitlam. But it’s all the same game, and that same game is telling believable lies.
“The things that unite us are more important than the things that divide us,” declares the Prime Minister, even as he wedges the nation apart with a casual brutality that will take a generation to heal.
“We are a tolerant and inclusive country,” he says, before dog-whistlingly ‘reminding’ us that that gay men and women have no place in the future of the species, let alone the nation.
“We are fulfilling our legal and moral obligations to refugees and treating them with compassion,” Phillip Ruddock assures us, even while fighting, inch-by-bloodless-inch, a court determination that the detention of a few scared kids behind razor-wire is not merely illegal but also, as anyone with an ounce of honesty and Human instinct would agree (if they allowed their better instincts to prevail), inhumane, cruel, harmful, ludicrous.
“The Australian Labour Party is committed to re-embracing its grass-roots membership,” says the too-clever-by-half ‘intellectual politician’ Bob Carr, even as the Mayor of Parramatta is summarily dumped as Labor candidate in favour of the nobody wife of some nobody Right Faction power-broker.
“This is a victory for the True Believers,” announces Paul Keating smugly, having just destroyed, with breath-taking cynicism and shameless scare-mongering, a Liberal Party opponent who, for once, was actually presenting a political package of considerable idealism and vision.
“Trust me, I am a born-again Greenie,” puffed Graham Richardson once upon a time, and like a fool, I took him at his word. (Never again, Richo. Never, ever again, mate.)
“I did not have sexual relations with that women,” said Bill Clinton, with a hot tear of ‘Progressive’ conviction in his eye.
“Saddam Hussein has sought uranium from Africa,” said George W. Bush, with a resolute, Churchillian gleam of ‘Conservative’ conviction in his.
“Iraq can launch WMD in 45 minutes,” swore Tony Blair, and his brand of political conviction goes, I’m told, by the dull bureaucratic name of ‘The Third Way’ – but it was just another cynical, power-grubbing lie, too.
Such rank public dishonesty has many mournful effects on the civic health of a democracy – disengagement being the political word of the day – but by far the most damaging effect of all is, I think, the long-term damage that it has done to the idea of ‘public truth’ itself. Because when a politician stands before us and, in the face of all the evidence we can see with our own eyes, swears blind – eloquently, passionately, with conviction – that mandatory detention of children is ‘compassionate’, or that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda are working together to attack us with WMD, then what is destroyed is not just our belief in that particular politician, or their party or political philosophy, or our belief in politics as a civilising force, or our belief in the institutions of democracy, or even our belief in the worth of civic participation in general.
What is truly destroyed, with each rotten public lie – big or small, explicit or implied, outright or dog-whistled, lie of fact or lie of spirit – is our collective belief in belief itself.
And that is why, the older I get, the more comfortable I am with embracing what is quickly becoming an unstoppable global political movement – the simple belief in doing whatever we can to nurture and protect the future of our planet, which is no less, of course, than nurturing and protecting the future of our kids, and their kids, and so on, for all time.
Because for all the many criticism that can be directed at the Greens as a political force – and I concede that there are still many – one that cannot honestly be made to stick is a lack of belief in their own expressed principles and philosophies; Green principles and philosophies which, even better, an individual like me can try to put into meaningful practice. It’s becoming easier to ‘live Green’ all the time, and that doesn’t just mean taking the bus, not flushing the dunny and rolling your own cigarettes. Unlike all other political parties, aspiring to being a ‘good Green party man’ is an entirely personal, individual, and non-ideological lifestyle choice.
Sure, the Greens are no more in possession of all the answers for the future than anyone else, but what I do know is this: what I want from my public representatives is that what they say in public retain some core connection to what they do in public, to the policy decisions and positions they make.
I want Public Truth from our leaders, and the only place I’m getting it consistently these days is from Senator Bob Brown and Company. Liberal, Labor, National, even the Democrats – as parties, they’re all the same to me now: populists, cynics, game-players and patronisers of one sort or another.
And so, in the absence of honesty from Conservatives and Progressives out there in a dinosaurian political Luddite Land where two plus two is now five and white is fast becoming black, the only conclusion any rational voter can draw is this one: that the future story of Public Truth – of global democracy and meaningful civic participation – will be a future written with a billion and more nutty Green Pens.