Friday, January 2, 2015

Why - even with First Past the Post, a Green vote is never wasted.


A vote for any party other than a Green one is a vote for more of the same. By that I mean it is a vote for the almost total lack of attention to the infrastructure of waste and fossil fuel reliance at the core of our economy. I totally agree – and campaign in support of many of the policies the Labour party have published for 2015 and which - more importantly- many Labour supporters have for decades actually promoted, but, after a lot of thinking realise it is almost as wasted as the effort to rearrange the Titanic deckchairs.

Let me explain. The fighting between the ‘grey’ parties for votes, influence and power takes precedence over the hard to see central environmental concerns. The large scale environmental pressures imposed on the planet by our current version of a Capitalist economy result in the social evils which anyone who has a heart can see any and every day. This social hell is often laid totally at the feet of the Tories but, all save the Greens keep on doing more of the same thing so, the  “let’s get out of hell first, then we can work on building our utopia.” idea – always fails.

Greens are not aiming at utopia, ‘hell’ is very much on the way – environmentally – which is almost non-metaphorical. ‘Society’ is like the deckchairs – it needs something solid to be under it. We have been destroying the foundations of the very infrastructure that supports human existence itself – Malthus yes, but on a global scale. He was clearly historically wrong – but only in the ‘west’ and only while there were places left which our growth could pillage to fuel itself. These other counties and the protected areas of our own land have either run dry ( almost ) or it is too destructive to safely harvest them ( fracking, nuclear fission power ) – to say nothing of the social destruction ( resource wars, occupation ) that result.

I am delighted by science and technology and can see multiple ways out of our mess – including replacing war with space exploration as a way to gain resources and generally show off. Oh, I long for that ! The Star Trek model shows a simplistic way in which that could work, but I hope we don’t need total collapse to bring us all together first.

As I have written in my blogs, no one living their daily lives intends to wreak collateral damage on anyone or any thing. They (we) are almost totally unaware of the consequences of our actions, we have to grow up and open our eyes to these facts while we still can. By ‘we’ I can only mean the people who actually vote in the governments all over the planet.

Green Party policies intend to enable, empower, encourage and educate everyone who has any form of control over our planet’s populations’ daily lives, to further the aim of making human life itself become supportive and regenerative of the planet’s life support systems. There does not need to be any great change in what everyday people do everyday (us) – Government and industry must change the ground rules so that we are free to think about stuff – like social justice and everything social activists from all parties  stand for – and carry on being blissfully ignorant of the larger environment. As it is, with ‘more of the same’, humanity could very well die out – that’s not a party I wish to be part of.

Yes, this is social hell indeed – but, lets avoid the physical hell of environmental breakdown while we can – at the same time as dealing with all the social stuff. ‘More of the same’ deals with nothing fundamental to environmental sustainability. There is no option left – we have already tried everything else and things went brilliantly for centuries ! – for some of us in the West, but, to the determent of the countries we occupied and to the shared future that none of us can escape.

So Global thought – Green sustainability and regeneration, Local action – do what is locally appropriate and helpful.

We still have the time, resources and the freedom of a not yet broken climate in which to do this – but not for much longer. Co operation is the key. Greens will help any party ( that isn’t mad , illegal or bigoted – insert party names here ) as long as that is the shared goal. We can get there by any of multiple path, indeed just taking one path would lead to destruction as that would be the blind following of dogma, hatred, fear and – basically all the problems we have already. Greens don’t have all the answers – but we know who to ask ! It could be – and in part defiantly is you !

A Green vote does indeed take votes away from the others - that is very much the point. This forces the others to do what must be done. They won't do it as long as they think they can keep business as usual going for another term. Vote for what you want - not for what you fear less that what we have.

Happy new year.

No comments:

Post a Comment