(Tasmanian Greens)

 The Greens Charter

Charter
Reflecting an awareness of the interrelatedness of all ecological, social and economic processes, the general principles of the Greens are to:

Ecology
- ensure that human activity respects the integrity of ecosystems and does not impair biodiversity and the ecological resilience of life-supporting systems
- encourage the development of a consciousness that respects the value of all life.

Democracy
- increase opportunities for public participation in political, social and economic decision making
- break down inequalities of wealth and power which inhibit participatory democracy.

Social Justice
- eradicate poverty by developing initiatives that address the causes as well as the symptoms of poverty
- provide affirmative action to eliminate discrimination based on gender, age, race, ethnicity, class, religion, disability, sexuality or membership of a minority group
- introduce measures that redress the imbalance between rich and poor.

Peace
- adopt and promote a non-violent resolution of conflict
- develop an independent, nonaligned foreign policy develop a self-reliant, defensive, non-nuclear defense policy.

An Ecologically Sustainable Economy
- develop economic policies which will ensure greater resource and energy efficiency as well as development and use of environmentally sustainable technologies.

Global Responsibility
Promote equity between nations and peoples by:
- facilitating fair trading relationships
- providing for increased development assistance and concerted international action to abolish Third World debt
- providing increased green technology transfer and skills to developing countries
- opposing human rights abuses and political oppression
- ensuring that Australia plays an active role in promoting peace and ecological sustainability.

Long-range Future Focus
- Avoid action which might risk long-term or irreversible damage to the environment
- safeguard the planet's ecological resources on behalf of future generations
- reduce dependence on non-renewable resources and ensure sustainable use of renewable resources
- adopt more comprehensive social, environmental and technology assessment practices
- facilitate socially and ecologically responsible investment.

Meaningful Work
- encourage, develop and assist work that is safe, fairly paid, socially useful, personally fulfilling and not harmful to the environment
- encourage and facilitate more flexible work arrangements, on-going education, training and social welfare so that more people can engage in meaningful work.

Culture
- respect and protect ethnic, religious and racial diversity
- recognize the cultural requirements of the original Australians
- assist in ensuring the achievements of Aboriginal land rights and self-determination.

Information
- facilitate a free flow of information between citizens and all tiers of government
- ensure that Australians have the benefit of a locally responsible, diverse, democratically controlled, independent mass media.

Lecture 1

Analyses of recent elections around the world tend to suggest that the Greens are succeeding at the expense of opposition parties (e.g., conservatives in our Tasmanian state elections, the Democrats in the US elections) because there is a perception now among voters that there is little substantive difference between right and left. Both forms of politics now accept the same set of economic and political goals, whereas the Greens, as the Tasmanian policy statement above shows, speak the only truly oppositional message to mainstream rhetoric. One either votes for whomever is in power because of the lack of differentiation between the main parties, or one protests by voting Green (or extreme right-wing as in Holland, Italy, and France).  The concern I feel is summed up in the statement from Paul Harris that Jewels posted in the War thread. If the current trend continues, and Greens begin to win significant representation in national politics in the US and allied nations' legislatures, will the right-wing forces give up their pretence of democracy and simply impose full authoritarian rule? They certainly have the hegemonic power to do so.

If you go back and look at the charter, you will find that it delineates an approach to the issues that is far more complex and inclusive than the purely ecological concerns of those 'environmentalists' who are merely concerned with technical fixes of specific environmental problems while trying to hang on to the status quo politically and economically. In particular, the concerns with participatory democracy, social justice, peace, disarmament, decentralization, corporate morality, and so on. It appears, as I will be attempting to prove over the next three years or so of my doctoral thesis, that being a Green makes you an environmentalist, but being an environmentalist by no means ensures that you are a Green.  Being a Green is, as many have suggested, a state of mind, a worldview that differs radically from the mainstream, based on a belief in plenty rather than scarcity, co-operation rather than competition, and working to live, not living to work. It is an anti-growth paradigm, or, rather, it believes in qualitative growth rather than quantitative growth.  I, for one, am proud to be able to fit within its parameters.

Lecture 2

I found myself in a conversation with a fisherman last night at a party, and the subject of Green concerns about over fishing came up. He was outspokenly anti-Green, so I asked him to enumerate his reasons, and what I got from him was the party-line from the mainstream politicians - Greens are anti-jobs. Then I asked him to tell me what working fishermen think about over fishing, and international poaching, and export-driven economics, and he came out with a series of statements that could have been the Green policy statement on the Fisheries industry in Tasmania. He admits that he and his fellows are forced to over fish because of the high costs of fishing licenses and the demand for export income, going against their own better instincts as regards sustainability. I think I ended up with a partial convert once I told him that the Greens supported all his better instincts, and were against all the same things he was.

But the main point of me sharing this story with you is that it brings home just how much power the media has in the environmental debate, and the fact that the vast majority of media outlets are owned by, and supported by, the economic status quo. Look back 2 posts at Jewel's comments to Agnes about how the political structures are so heavily tilted against minorities. Noam Chomsky makes precisely the same point about how the media treats critics of US foreign policy, giving minimal or no cover, or lampooning and ridiculing critical reports.  With the bias of the media against environmental discourse, how often does one succeed in getting letters to the editor published? Are letters to your elected representatives more useful perhaps, since they all seem so paranoid about voting trends? What is the answer to a media owned by the 'enemy'?

Lecture 3

In my early research on the use of anthropology in environmentalism, I have begun studying the way the environmentalist movement is split into several, distinct strands. Even the radical wing, of which I am part, is split between those who are still anthropocentric, concerned with the environment primarily from a human viewpoint, and those, like me, who take a biotic or ecosystem approach, in which nature and the other animals are given equal value with humanity. This I am calling the Green approach, as opposed to the other environmentalist approaches, and we find this biotic orientation in the first principle stated in the Tasmanian Greens charter.

Ecology
- ensure that human activity respects the integrity of ecosystems and does not impair biodiversity and the ecological resilience of life-supporting systems
- encourage the development of a consciousness that respects the value of all life.

An internet message board I belong to seems to have representatives of all the approaches: conservationist, preservationist, anthropocentric, and Green, and even a couple of us who take the parallel eco-feminist approach, which also splits between anthropocentric and biotic orientations. There is also the sub-division which revolves around the spiritual, or 'native wisdom' view.

The trend that fascinates me, which I will look at in detail once I've had time to assimilate the various facts, is the way each approach, beginning from conservationist and ending with an eco-feminist, quasi-spiritual Green approach, is the way that each step along that spectrum includes the steps before it, but not those after it, almost like a psychological growth paradigm.

This is going to put me out on a limb either trying, as so many do in such circumstances, to pay lip service to the concept that these steps are not developmental, they are all valid in their own right, or biting the bullet and admitting freely that I do, in fact, see it as a developmental process, and that the further along the spectrum, the more 'advanced' one is. That should make for an interesting 'discussion' if anyone is actually paying attention.

Merlin's Lectures are Copyright © Phillip Day, PhD, 2002, 2003 and are distributed here by permission. 

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