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Greening NewcastleWelcome to issue 9 of the Newsletter of Newcastle Green Party, April 2011

NewcastleGreen Party branch meetingAll welcome!

19.00, Wednesday, April 6th,British Legion Club(just down from the Lonsdale pub)

Metro: West Jesmond

Energy policy is certainly back in the news. Most dramatically the on-going crisis at the Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan has foregrounded the debate about the future of this controver-sial energy source. Oil price hikes and cuts to the level of fuel duty in the recent budget have raised the issue of whether con-ventional politics is capable of dealing with the challenge of ‘peak oil’. Sometimes it seems that large sections of society, not just politicians, have an insane urge drive still faster down a dead-end road by keeping petrol prices as low as possible

At the same time, various issues surrounding the Alcan biofu-el plant up at Lynemouth poses the question of whether this ‘al-ternative’ is actually appropriate. Abroad, the decision in March to go ahead with the huge – and hugely disastrous – Monte Belo dam in Amazonia is an unwelcome reminder that what may seem ‘clean’ is far from green. Indeed, the Fukushima dis-aster notwithstanding, HEP may have done more actual damage around the planet — to date — than nuclear power. The new geothermal project back here in town may be more promising but still begs questions regarding the real priorities we ought to be addressing in the here and now.

The next Newcastle Green Party branch meeting will be focussing on the nuclear debate. The plans for a new reactor down the road at Hartlepool give it added relevance, as do the number of trains passing through the city en route to Sellafield with nuclear waste from the existing plant. The fact that some ‘green’ commentators, notably George Monbiot in the Guardian, have now begun to campaign for pro-nuclear policies, under-lines the need to hone really Green arguments on the issue. So too does the growing enthusiasm for what are being touted as ‘miracle’ technofixes, in this case the thorium fuel cycle, which, allegedly, can deliver problem-free nuclear electricity.

Indeed there is a case for going right back to the basics in en-ergy policy. For a start, most discussion seems to overlook the fact that, global warming and many other side-effects apart, the immediate problem is the coming shortages of readily available and cheap fuel: in other words, oil, not generated electricity. Nu-clear power cannot replace petrol and other oil-based products in any meaningful time frame. Indeed the construction of more

Energy: Eternal delight?

Below: modern life is hooked on cheap, abundant energy

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nuclear power plants as well as the mining, transportation and milling of the original ore, plus the further transportation of fuel rods to the plants and then to waste disposal sites all consume oil. So, all the other anti-nuclear arguments aside, it is an option that incurs severe fossil fuel energy penalties. Of course that argument also applies to, say the construction of new wind tur-bines and wave energy devices. This is why the overall reduction of energy consumption must be priority number one and given the urgency of a wartime crisis.

Furthermore, it is vital to avoid the pitfall of thinking of how we might best match current, let alone projected future energy demand. It is supplying a way of living that is probably destined to crumble for many reasons, not just energy supply shortfalls. In some parts of the world, water scarcity may turn out to be the real limiting factor. In other places, it might be soil deple-tion, pestilence, or pollution overload. Generally we face not just peak oil’ but just about ‘peak everything’, as the Earth’s life-support systems contract, reducing overall carrying capacity. The ‘supply-side’ logic (how can we replace declining oil supplies etc) must be replaced by a focus on demand reduction, reshap-ing the total human ‘footprint’, not just energy consumption, so it matches what the Earth can sustain.

Power pointThere is one final thought. Perhaps the most fundamental fea-ture of the whole energy policy matter is not possible shortages at all. Rather it might be a surplus of energy, something that has enabled humankind to so trespass the Earth’s long-term carry-ing capacity.. Never before have humans so altered the Earth’s energy flows, its cycles of minerals, its soils, its hydrology, its flora and fauna. Now even the world’s climatic patterns are be-ing altered by people. No wonder the present era has been called the ‘age of the anthropocene’… and the power at the human finger tip is the cutting edge of this planetary revolution.

It is the power provided by fossil fuels that made possible the radical spread and intensification of agriculture so that, literally, the face of the Earth has been radically changed. This power has underwritten the ‘factory farming’ of livestock. It has ena-bled the ‘vacuum-cleaning’ of the seas by giant trawler fleets. It has powered the ‘scalping’ of the Earth, as its forests have been systematically cleared, mainly in the fossil fuel era. Wetlands, the “Earth’s kidneys”, have similarly been destroyed on an unprec-edented scale. Meanwhile a tidal wave of brick, concrete and tarmac has relentlessly sprawled across the land, yet one more development not possible without cheap and abundant power.

Now the warmth, comfort and convenience of the modern house are just some of the benefits that have accompanied this energy revolution. But all those other consequences now threaten to undermine such gains. It is tempting to hope that there may some magic wand waiting to be discovered that will enable the bonanza to continue. Some look to the ‘thorium’ nuclear power cycle, others the so-called ‘hydrogen economy’ (often forgetting that hydrogen is only a carrier, not a source of energy).

The question must be asked whether any such breakthrough might simply power even bigger bites out of the Earth’s wilting life-support systems. Yet no amount of energy can substitute for the structures and processes that make the Earth so suitable for life. So abundant energy may be a Faustian bargain, one which only brings ruin in the end. Perhaps we need to start thinking in terms not of ‘moreness’ but ‘enoughness’… of a low energy society and how we might still build safe, comfortable and fulfill-ing lifestyles on a reduced power base.

What a Waste!Compared to what is now common in countries like Ger-many, the waste management system in Newcastle is half-hearted and devoid of any real vision. To be fair, the council is under a lot of pressure due to central government spending cutbacks but it is critical for long-term sustainability that we pursue a strategy that can minimise commercial and house-hold wastes.

It is, then, a sad reflection of the current state of things that lately the council has even considered a compulsory charge for replacement wheeled bin containers & replace-ment recycling caddies. In the abstract, it may seem reason-able to ask for some payment for the service. In reality, it would only lead to more waste being dumped in the nor-mal bins and indeed trigger a big increase in fly-tipping. The council also seems to be set to abandon its waste reduction targets: proposals now on the table seem to assume no re-duction in waste achieved from now to 2020. Even worse, however, it seems to consider that incineration is actually an acceptable alternative. It should be noted that the send-ing of waste to be burned on Teesside actually preceded the more recent refurbishment of the recycling facility here on Tyneside.

It must be stressed that waste minimisation activities (in-put reduction, reuse, and repair) are more important than recycling, though the latter remains a necessary and useful activity. But it is not clear how much effort the council is prepared to make in that direction. Its attitude is more “ we don’t do that”, rather than “what could we do better”.

It is not even certain that, in its contracts with firms like SITA, the council is pushing for the strongest standards of environmental performance. Indeed it seems as if SITA will still make more money from a reduced requirement to mini-mise waste. Long-term contracts also limit responsiveness to changing patterns of waste generation.

Generally there seems insufficient political will. Newcas-tle Council seems stuck in a rut. Waste management is an area where various exciting alternatives seem to be emerg-ing , however and it is folly not to exploit them to the maxi-mum. For further information on what we should be doing, see for example:

http://www.realrecycling.org.uk/ http://www.banwaste.org.uk/

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You might not be certain whether local buses are going to turn up but you can be fairly sure that when they do, both their floor and seats will be littered with discarded copies of the Metro, one of Britain’s biggest so-called free newspapers. Freesheets have been circulating in the UK since the 1970s. Now over a third of advertising goes to them rather than the traditional regional and local press. As a result, the latter are ailing, with their circula-tion badly down. This has driven their owners to put out their own versions of rival freesheets so at least they got back some money or buy out the newer publications.

The result, however, has been a tightening of the hold over the press by a few corporations. So Trinity Mirror, owner of The Evening Chronicle and the Journal, controls as well some 240 pro-vincial papers as well as the Mirror group and the Scottish Daily Record. At the same time, jobs have been shed in droves in cost-cutting exercises. Between 1986 and 2000, 50% of Britain’s 8,000 or so local journalists were made redundant in an extremely ruthless pruning.

The change in quality is as marked, with a dumbing down of print media in localities like Newcastle. One only has to com-pare the coverage of environmental issues in today’s Evening Chronicle to that in the years when it published the work of journalists like Mike Jameson who rightly won awards for the thoughtfulness and fairness of his columns. Generally, independ-ent critical journalism is conspicuous for its absence in both the paid-for and free local press. There is little serious scrutiny of the doings of property developers and private landlords, nor of local bodies like the Health Trusts. While a David Conn at the Guardian may have lifted the lid on the financial shenanigans in the football league, little light on such matters can be found in the provincial press.

The freesheets have made matters worse. They are largely devoid of serious content, basically providing a platform for advertisers. The Metro is a good illustration of these unhealthy trends. Every weekday morning, some 1,134, 000 copies are dis-tributed across the UK, making it the world’s largest free news-paper and the fourth biggest newspaper in the UK. It is far from free politically speaking, being part of the Daily Mail and General Trust conglomerate. This also publishes the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, and the various Northcliffe Media regional titles. It also operates over 200 websites covering things like property, cars and recruitment ( ‘FindaProperty’, ‘Jobsite’, etc).

The provision of solid, serious news is the last thing on an agenda dominated by profit maximisation from whatever source can be tapped. Distribution via buses, where more than one reader is likely to read each giveaway paper, is an ideal way of cutting costs, whilst reaching a big audience which is ‘trapped’ for the duration of their journey.

Only a fraction of the budget of papers like the Metro actu-ally goes on journalists. When Associated Newspapers launched its first Metro in London, the paper had only 35 journalistic staff, compared to 250 at the then paid-for Evening Standard. Often the ‘stories’ are little more than PR handouts or simplified ma-

terial taken from the news services. They recycle rather than investigate and report. Not surprisingly, the content is “lite, trite and shite”, with nothing that would offend potential advertis-ers. Most provincial papers have followed the same downward route.

Meanwhile those thrown-away papers keep piling up. In 2006, freesheets apparently accounted for 25% of street litter in some parts of London’s West End. Recycling initiatives tend to be frustrated by the way such papers just get dumped by their readers. One scheme in London gathered just 120 tonnes of paper over six whole months. According to one estimate, rubbish on the London Underground increased by over 40% af-ter the arrival of free papers. Of course, the publishers actually need the papers to be left lying on buses and tube trains around as long as possible to try and maximise readership.

All these papers, free or for purchase, consume consider-able resources. 12 big trees are needed to make one tonne of newsprint or print 14,000 average-size tabloids. Recycling can only cut part of that total ecological cost. But there is another price: the blow to serious journalism and the acceptance by the general public that has to pay to get good products. There can be no free lunch in the media but the average citizen is being accustomed to thinking that it is getting something for nothing. That can only be as bad for democracy, transparency and ac-countability as it is the environment.{Data above is from the excellent Corporate Watch website. See: http://www.corporatewatch.org/]

Cutbacks campaignThe March 26 demonstration in London was a gigantic success in terms of turnout. But, of course, the struggle goes on, not least to persuade the general public. According to a recent ICM poll, 57% of them support the current or deeper cuts. So a lot more basic propaganda work needs to be done. The following events provide a focus:• UK Uncut protests on Saturday 23rd April,

(details to be announced);• May Day demonstration in Newcastle on 30 April which

could be a major anti-cuts event;• Newcastle Green Festival, 4/5 June, Newcastle and• Durham Miners’ Gala on 9th July.[Several Newcastle Green Party members went on the big march but technical difficulties have stopped the inclusion of pictures in this edition of Greening Newcastle]

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The Great CarbonConClimate change is no longer a distant threat; it’s already here.

Last year, for example, was the hottest year on record and the 2000s were the hottest decade on record. Symptoms of a deepening crisis abound; peat fires around Moscow, huge floods in Pakistan, super storms, super snowfalls, super deluges and floods and super droughts. Indeed, Australia has recently been both scorched and flooded.

Seas are rising and ice is melting faster than scientists im-agined possible even ten years ago. Glacier melt is accelerat-ing around the world with dire implications for agriculture in many areas: India, China, California, Peru,… Everywhere there are signs that ‘normal’ seasonal patterns, on which seed planting and crop harvesting are so dependent, are being thrown out of kilter. Recently, there was even the news that owls are turn-ing brown because of rising average temperatures, though, for a myriad of flora and fauna, even modest climate change will mean extinction.

The only respite has been a fall in the rate at which carbon emissions have been increasing in countries like Britain. Yet that was due to the economic downturn which both government and opposition claim they will reverse. Actually the picture is worse. Total UK emissions have increased by 19% since 1990. Net imported CO2 emissions (embedded in the products and services UK citizens buy) have risen substantially. This has more than cancelled out the 12% reduction in UK domestic emissions. Indeed ‘outsourced’ emissions are a huge and growing problem.

Leading climatologist Jim Hansen has spotlighted the utter failure of governments of all mainstream political hues around the world:

“Today we are faced with the need to achieve rapid reductions in global fossil fuel emissions and to nearly phase out fossil fuel emis-sions by the end of the century. Most governments are saying they that they recognize these imperatives. And they say they will meet these objectives...

Ladies and gentlemen, your governments are lying through their teeth.. Moreover, they are now taking actions that, if we do not stop them, will lock in guaranteed failure to achieve the targets that they have nominally accepted...

First, they are allowing construction of new coal-fired plants. Sec-ond, they are allowing construction of coal-to-liquids plants that will produce oil from coal. Third, they are allowing development of un-conventional fossil fuels such as tar sands. Fourth, they are leasing public lands and remote areas for oil and gas exploration to search for the last drop of hydrocarbons. Fifth, they are allowing companies to lease land for hydraulic fracturing, an environmentally destructive mining technique ...to extract every last bit of gas... Sixth, they are al-lowing highly-destructive mountain-top removal and long-wall mining of coal... And on and on.”

The role of national governments is clearly critical. So too are international agreements. However local councils could

do so much more: they are not totally handicapped by central government. Green Party councillors in Kirklees, for example, have been able to push ahead with bold energy conservation schemes (see: http://yorkshireandhumber.greenparty.org.uk/region/yorkshireandhumber/news/Kirklees-energy-and-money-savings-for-free.html). Thinking at all levels by mainstream politi-cians is, however, crippled by a variety of misconceptions about the crisis and what needs to be done.

Seeing the whole pictureFor a start, there is one-sided emphasis on just carbon emis-sion sources. Yet the loss of carbon sinks tends to go ignored by comparison. But it too is critical. A widespread drought in the Amazon rainforest last year caused the “lungs of the world” to produce more carbon dioxide than it absorbed, potentially lead-ing to a dangerous acceleration of global warming. Indeed the 2010 drought was more intense than what had been called the “one-in-100-years” drought of 2005.

Peatland sinks are also being destroyed (sometimes by wind turbine developments, as in northern Scotland). Worse still the permafrost region will become carbon sources, not sinks, if presents trends are not reversed. At the same time, modern agricultural practices are also reducing the amount of carbon stored in soils. All these areas need to be protected or their use altered to more sustainable practices. Indeed there are many other reasons for doing so, apart from their role in climatic patterns.

That big global picture is basically the product of a myriad of decisions all over the planet. The role of Newcastle – coun-cil, private businesses, public bodies like schools, and individual households – in the above pollution and degradation of envi-ronmental systems is largely at a remove, via those ‘exported’ impacts. But the first contribution the council can make is to put its own house in much greener order. It could make maximum use of purchasing policy choices to encourage sustainable pro-duction and recycling. Most of all it, should strive to reduce the sheer quantity of land, energy, water and other resources it uses.

But it can use all the means of education and exhortation at its disposal from City Life to the display spaces at city libraries to spread the word. To date, it is soft-pedalling the matter, as can be seen in some the school initiatives it has launched. Of course, too much alarmism can be counter-productive, especially with children. Yet society is facing the equivalent of a war situation and all action should be judged accordingly. [For evidence of this assertion, see the 2005 UN Millennium Ecosystem Assess-ment, 2008 WWF Living Planet Report and 2010 WorldWatch State of the World Report as well as ‘round-up’ studies like Bill McKibben’s Eaarth and Clive Hamilton’s Requiem for a Species]

The answer, however, is not artificial sequestration like car-bon capture and storage (CCS), This implicitly takes anthropo-genic releases as a given, consumes fossil fuel energy in its own right and brings dangers of accidental carbon releases. In the likely time available to stave off dangerous blowback from global warming, CCS is simply a non-starter. Bodies like the IPCC give a date of 2050 before it could make any significant impact, in other words, many, many years too late. It does nothing to re-duce the devastating impacts of fossil fuel extraction per se. Coal-mining in particular is one of the most destructive activi-ties on the planet and ought to be phased out anyway. Nor is the answer off-setting schemes which, apart from dubious weighting of, say, air flights against tree planting, still evades the need to keep fossil fuels untouched in the ground.

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They want all(to the tune of Bless em All)

They want all, They want all,

City bankers and Tories show gall,

They lost all our pensions, show every intention,

Of taking our jobs, then our dole.

They complain and they blame,

The people they’ve forced to the wall,

The unmarried mother, our unemployed brother,

The poor, the sick, and the small .

LibDems turn, they help Tories burn,

Students hopes, their futures and dreams,

Whatever their reason, for electoral treason,

Kick them and join us, the Greens

No surprise, to their lies,

Media and City in thrall,

Well none of us buy it, we plan to defy it,

Make sure we get rid of them all.

Cut carbon… and all energy consumptionThe real challenge is simply to use less energy, a lot less energy, not match current demand by other means or try to fix the side-effects of current sources of energy. A walk around Newcastle reveals just how much energy we squander, be it the doors of stores like HMV left open in all weather to lights left burning in closed public buildings at night-time. But such losses are trivial when set against the energy embodied in the mass of goods that society could easily do without (at the time of writing, at the start of April, Marks and Spencer is selling strawberries brought from the other side of the world despite all the noise it makes about its Plan A for sustainability)

Of course, deep cuts in energy consumption will only come if ordinary consumers change their ways. Until that happens, food will continue to be produced in ways that are as energy wasteful as they are unhealthy for the waistline. Many people still strive after energy guzzling SUVs and the like. Society needs slimming down in more ways than one!

This is one reason why the Green Party campaigns for new values and goals not just a minor switch in energy policy here and there. After all, Jeavon’s Paradox tells us that savings via im-proved energy efficiency will otherwise come to nothing since people tend to spend money they save on energy bills on the purchase of more goods and service… and therefore more en-ergy consumption in total. That is the why the faith the Coun-cil places in conservation and efficiency in its climate strategy change may be worthy in itself but will achieve little without efforts to bring about much radical changes in lifestyle prefer-ences.

Council worksThere are, of course, limits to the extent that councils can get ahead of public opinion. But it can stop encouraging people to use more energy, let alone curb their consumption. At present Newcastle Council makes much noise about going green but its actions speak louder than words. If it were serious about addressing not just carbon emissions but energy excesses in general, it would not have, for example:

• Supported the further spread of giant supermarkets like Asda (Heaton) and Tesco (Fenham), developments inher-ently linked to large-scale long-distance transportation as well as heavy car use by shoppers;

• Fostered large-scale suburban sprawl like the ludicrously named Great Park;

• Gone for more bankrupt forms of development in the city centre such as the Stephenson Quarter plan and more malls like the Eldon Square extension;

• Encouraged more car driving by making city centre park-ing free in the evening;

• Failed to curb ‘concrete creep’ as more and more gardens are buried under car drives and BBQ patios, concrete manufacture being a major source of CO2; (the loss of garden habitat badly harms wildlife driven from inhospitable intensively farmed land while the loss of permeable surface makes flooding worse).

Many of the above choices are, of course, linked to the great god of Economic Growth on whose altar any sacrifice will be made. Yet very, very roughly, an extra 1.6 lb of carbon is added to the atmosphere for every new pound of spending so the pur-suit of a bigger gross national product must mean worse global warming as well as the aggravation of all sorts of other ecologi-cal ills. Such assumptions are confirmed by the fact the carbon

emissions fell during the 2008 economic downturn.So the overall policy of the Council is one which will cancel

out any good achieved by specific measures it is taking. Coun-cillors and councils officials do have the defence that they are often just giving the public what it wants. Many local citizens are, for example, against ‘restrictions’ on their car use like bus lanes, resident parking and 20 mph schemes. Many locals have welcomed new supermarkets. Many people can think of no way better way to spend their time than wander around shiny shop-ping malls.

The challenge is to develop a vision of community living that both addresses threats like adverse climate change as well as offers a safer, more secure and actually more fulfilling way of liv-ing. After all, there is a lot of unhappiness, frustration and indeed mental illness beneath the glitter of modern society. A sustain-able society is about sustainability at all levels, from the whole planet to the inner person.

At the political level, only the Green Party is grappling with the development of such a programme of change and spelling out some home truths to the electorate. The coming local elec-tions will be one such opportunity.

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Green: what does it mean?

harmonise different elements like job protection and conserva-tion of wildlife or applying broad green principles to specific issues such as banking reform or social welfare programmes. The brutal battles inside the German Green Party further dem-onstrated the problems when there is no unity over the very meaning of Green Politics. Nor is it easy to establish just how broad the Green ‘church’ can be and still function effectively.

What’s the big idea?Fifty years ago the word ‘green’ referred either to inexperience, a set of vegetables or simply a certain colour. Now it is widely used to describe a broad social movement. Some of the new political parties within it did (and some still do) use the word ‘ecology’ but ‘green’ is now the preferred self-description.

At some point, possibly starting with the publication of Charles Reich’s The Greening of America in 1970, ‘green’ began to be associated with environmental concern and a vision of a greater harmony between humans and the rest of Nature. Bodies like the Green Party did not, however, appear out of the blue (or the red, for that matter) and that it is possible to trace contributory ideas and related activity back in history.

Such a discussion might be written off as sterile ‘theory’, as opposed to productive ‘practice’. Many activists treat intellec-tual debate as ‘hair-splitting’ and pointless, if not divisive. They say that it causes splits and saps energies better devoted to campaigning ‘out there’. Not surprisingly, such people are of-ten hostile to ‘theorising’, wanting to focus on practical things, perhaps launching a concrete project in the field of alternative energy, attempting to float a local currency scheme, conducting ‘guerrilla gardening’ or just working their own allotment.

Put simply, they want to shut up what they dismiss as mere ‘talking shops’. Yet, without a solid foundation in (good) ideas, even the most well-intentioned, well-coordinated and energetic action is doomed to degenerate into pointless bustle and quickly cease to serve any valid purpose. At the same time, the absence of intellectual ‘ballast’ makes it more likely that activists drop out once progress falters: they have little sustenance for the lean periods that normally characterise most political activity.

The growth of Green politics is still quite recent. The first politi-cal organisations only emerged in the early 1970s (depending on definitions, the local Neuchâtel group in Switzerland in 1971 or the United Tasmania Group in Australia 1972). The first na-tionally elected M.P. was again in Switzerland in 1973. The first ‘breakthrough’ for a national party came when Die Grünen in Germany won 27 seats. It was as recent as 1995 that Greens first joined a national cabinet (Finland). Britain’s first Green par-liamentarian was chosen in 1999 (Robin Harper as an additional member of the Scottish Parliament) while, south of the Border, it was only in 2010 that a Green was elected to Westminster (Green Party leader Caroline Lucas in Brighton).

Yet the ideas from which this political tendency has grown have had much wider impact than suggested by electoral per-formance alone. Thus in 2010, the new Conservative Prime Min-ister, David Cameron, thought it useful to pledge that his would be the “greenest government ever”. In the wake of the 2008 fi-nancial downturn, American President Barak Obama had prom-ised a “green recovery”. Of course, there is no unanimity over such matters. In September 2010, Russian leader Vladimir Putin dismissed the green agenda as “claptrap”, for example. He was advocating nuclear energy as the only way forward. But even that stance reflects the way that issues pushed by the Greens, in this case the challenge of ‘peak oil’, have now become part of normal political debate, something not the case 50 or more years ago.

Green parties are part of a wider movement in society, one which ranges from personal lifestyle change and local commu-nity initiatives to the work of ‘alternative technology’ research institutes as well as an army of pressure groups and charities in fields such as campaigns over global warming, practical wildlife conservation and policy development for a ‘new economics’. In countries like the UK, related bodies are said to have a com-bined membership greater than traditional mass movements like trade unionism.

Green politics goes beyond the comparatively restricted fo-cus of the typical pressure group. Central to Green thinking has been an opposition to military adventurism, for example. It was one such instance, the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, that led to the biggest demonstration ever in the UK, the anti-war march of 2003 when many hundreds of thousands took to the streets. Green Politics is, however, a concerted attempt to develop a comprehensive programme covering the threats from not just military aggression, nuclear weaponry and the arms trade (like CND and CATT), but also global poverty, social in-justice, economic instability, community degradation, dangerous technologies and, of course, environmental despoliation.

Of course, David Cameron’s claims about his ‘greenness’ also spotlight the problematic nature of that word ‘green’. It is not just a matter of so-called ‘greenwash’, for example, the bogus claims to environmental friendliness made by advertisers and others. There are genuine difficulties of giving a rounded defini-tion of what ‘green’ actually might mean. It also far from easy to

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Actually the battle for ideas (or what Antonio Gramsci saw as a struggle for ‘ideological hegemony’) is paramount. Without success on that battlefield, successful election campaigns, boy-cotts, marches and so forth are likely to yield little sustainable fruit. Indeed it might be argued that the 1945 Labour election landslide, for example, was the result of countless little acts of persuasion that won millions of people over to the idea that there should be no ‘return’ to the 30s and that there was an alternative (the creation of the welfare state, nationalisation of key industries etc.).

But such an ideological struggle can successfully take place only if there sufficient clarity about the ideas being put forward.

What’s in a word?So, before looking at that Green lineage, it is necessary, then, to first try and dispel some of the confusion surrounding words like ‘green’. Like so much political terminology, it is hard to come to any watertight definition. Parallel problems are also posed by close cousins such as ‘natural’, ‘sustainable’, and ‘environment-friendly’, all of whom have a new relative in the form of the prefix ‘smart’ (as in ‘smart city’). It is a commonplace to come across the adjective ‘green’ prefixing a noun which refers to ac-tivities, technologies or organisations that are ultimately quite Earth-unfriendly (for example, ‘green capitalism’ or the ‘green car’).

The problem of defining what ‘green’ might mean is also connected to the issue of whether the old political spectrum of “Left’ versus ‘Right’ is relevant to the challenges of tomor-row and, if so, where Green Parties in particular might position themselves on that continuum. There is also room for argument over relationship of Green Politics to another divide, that of ‘reformism’/’gradualism’ versus ‘revolutionism’, a split that tore apart the socialist movement.

The world is, of course, awash with all sorts of political ‘isms’: Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, Anarchism, Libertarianism, Syndicalism, Mutualism, Feminism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Capitalism, Fascism, Nazism… and many more. Other strands interweave with such ideas, from life-style labels like ‘consumerism’ and ‘post-materialism’ to ones of a more philosophical nature (‘humanism’ etc), plus perspectives on culture such as ‘post-modernism’. Sometimes they are joined together as in ‘libertarian socialism’.

In its more contemporary guise, ‘Green’ too has its associ-ated ‘isms’, most obviously environmentalism but also ecologism and ecocentrism. None has just fallen out of the sky one day. They connect to some of those older terms, including ‘holism’ (as opposed to ‘reductionism’). In some cases, however, there is a shift of emphasis, not least that from humanism to anti-anthropocentrism. ‘Vitalism’ might possibly be counterpoised to ‘mechanism’. Some of those older political traditions have also appropriated green terminology as in ‘ecosocialism’, ‘ecocapital-ism’, and ‘green conservatism” (as in the American Republicans for Environmental Protection, who claim “Conservation is Con-servative.”)

That last example demonstrates the importance of not tak-ing labels at face value. ‘Traditional’ France, for example, or rath-er that stereotype evoked by the Clochemerle novel or the film Chocolat, was most changed by the ‘modernisation’ programmes of conservative governments led by politicians like Georges Pompidou. In Britain, Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher tore apart the social fabric of the country, with utter contempt for those who wanted to conserve human communi-ties, local economies and environments. One of environmental conservation’s worst ever enemies was the conservative Secre-

tary of the Interior James Watt in the Reagan Presidency in the USA. Watt seemed to have a mission from God to hand over all protected land in his charge to oil, coal, mining, ranching and other agents of ecological ruination.

So it is vital to look closely at what the different political ‘colours’ actually represent, both in theory and in actual practice (which may be very different indeed). Any such assessment must be comprehensive, exploring the stances over, for example, the meaning of history and progress, of the nature and role of sci-ence and technology, the use and abuse of expertise and power, the meaning of work, the relationship between the individual and the group, the essence of human nature, attitudes to the character of individual places and, of course, the relationship between humans and the rest of nature. It must also be remem-bered, as Gary Coates once put it, “what appears at first to be merely two paths to shared goals turns out, upon closer inspec-tion, to be two separate paths to very different goals”.

Fake Greenery?Given that ‘green’ is often equated with ‘environmentalism’, it is important here to underline the dangers inherent in a related word, ‘environment’. It is a term that almost invites its own mar-ginalisation. It can be taken to mean everything around an indi-vidual, not just air, water, soil and so forth but also bad housing, poor schooling, unsatisfactory domestic circumstances and the like. It can mean just about everything… and therefore nothing much in particular.

Sight is thereby lost of the critical issue: the Earth’s life-sup-port systems and the fact that upon on their well-being hu-mankind is utterly and inescapably dependent. Furthermore, the issue is not just the damaging impact of resource depletion, pol-lution and environmental degradation. That in itself is scarcely a radical insight. It is that ecological protection is all important; , all else is secondary, no matter how pressing or worthy. ‘Social justice’, for example, without ecological sustainability is nothing more than fair shares in extinction.

Further problems are posed by the notion of ‘stewardship’. It may shade over into an anthropocentric view that see humans as apart from and above the rest of nature. As such, it differs significantly from deeper green ideas like Aldo Leopold’s famous ‘Land Ethic’ and his notion of people as ‘plain citizens of nature’. Indeed a notion of stewardship fuelled some quite environmen-tally destructive practices, not least by the American Forestry Service under Gifford Pinchot in its quest for ‘sustained yield’ and ‘resource development’. This brought him into bitter con-flict with the great conservationist John Muir in the battles over the Hetch Hetchy dam near Yosemite (1907-1914).

Dreams of stewardship can lead to that hubris which tempts humans to treat environmental systems as a mere resource, there to be manipulated to satisfy whatever whim grabs their fancy, ignoring Lord Acton’s warning about the temptations of power. Certainly human changes to energy flows, material cy-cles and biotic composition have routinely led to devastating ‘blowback’ (from destructive introduced species to the altering of atmospheric gas balances). That said, stewardship does also suggest notions of responsibility and care so it has its benign aspects too. So it retains, at least, some merit.

Another problematic term is ‘sustainable society’. But it begs questions about the sustainability of what, where, by which means, for how long, and, above all, why (which in turn pos-es further questions such as: for whose benefit and by whose choice, assessed by which means). If the Third Reich had actually lasted 1,000 years, as Hitler predicted, instead of the 12 years it actually did, it would have been none the better. Of course, it

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must be noted that Nazism and Fascism had qualities that more or less guaranteed that they would bring about some sort of ‘Götterdämmerung’, in which the world was set ablaze.

One thing is for sure. ‘Sustainable growth’ is simply an oxy-moron, pure pie-in-the-sky down here on a geologically finite, entropy-bound and ecologically constrained Earth. It is a term mainly used by rogues trying to put a greenish gloss on other-wise unchanged – and still destructive – goals. Its cousin ‘sus-tainable development’ is also of dubious value, covering both a multitude of sins and, to be fair, some worthy ambitions. Its main value is probably that it can mean all things to all men and women … and therefore lacks any solid meaning.

Cutting edge There is no need, however, to worry too much about absolutely precise definitions. After all ‘socialism’ has been in common use since at least the 1840s, yet socialists still have failed to arrive at any agreed definition of their goal. For many, the Soviet Union was some sort of socialist state. For others, however, it was a “degenerated workers’ state”, “state capitalism” or “bureau-cratic collectivism”. Indeed socialists have frequently taken to killing each other in big numbers, not just in post-1917 Rus-sia but also places like post-World War One Germany (Social Democrats’ repression of the Spartacists) and Civil War Spain. Somewhat more peaceful but still fierce is the competition be-tween the various left-wing sects today, each certain that they embody ‘true’ socialism.

The key thing is to have a rough-and-ready concept of a dis-tinctive Green politics, its core ideas and its long-term goals as well as the major policies through which that vision may be brought closer to being. It must be stressed that no ‘end of his-tory’ is envisaged nor some perfected world. Rather it is a mat-ter of constant striving towards a society less scarred by the manifest ills of today. Furthermore, it is in the nature of Green politics to recognise that the actual journey will vary from one biogeographical region to another. There can be no One Big Plan.

The process of clarification and enrichment demands a will-ingness to set aside rigid boundaries and abandon that knee-jerk habit of dismissing certain ideas and thinkers as ‘reactionary’, ‘petty bourgeois’, ‘idealist’ and so forth. Certainly Green politics cannot be rigidly placed on some set point of the old left-right political spectrum. Only a very limited and limiting perspective would try to do that. It is vital to move beyond such sterile categories.

Many of the thinkers and activists mentioned later as part of the Green lineage simply defy traditional labels like ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’. So too do concepts like ‘limits-to-growth’, ‘steady-state economics’, ‘appropriate technology’, and ‘bioregionalism’. The same applies to basic beliefs about the intrinsic value of non-human forms of life. Conversely Greens dissent from ideas shared by both Left and Right on fundamental matters such as the nature of ‘progress’ (usually defined in terms of ever on-wards and upwards, judged by largely materialistic and individu-alistic yardsticks).

Green thinking can be enriched by both Karl Marx and Karl Popper (though perhaps more the former than the latter). Cer-tainly it should be informed by a ‘conservative’ like Edmund Burke who had much of value to say about stewardship, modes-ty, and the need for caution, even if other aspects of his life and thoughts were much less worthy. The same goes for the ‘liberal’ thinker John Stuart Mill, the first person to provide a coherent outline of the concept of the ‘steady-state economy’, a core ele-ment of the Green programme. Indeed Adam Smith, often seen as the high priest of laissez-faire economics, had worthy things

to say about morality and should not be ignored simply because modern politicians and economists misuse his ideas.

That said, there are core elements of the Green worldview that are quite distinct as well as uniquely relevant to the chal-lenges ahead. It has been argued that, ultimately, Green thinking is rooted in a uniquely collectivist view of life. Thus, in his book Home Place, the noted Canadian ecologist Stan Rowe talked of ‘outside-in’ thinking, which starts from the outer totality, the Earth (for all intents and purposes our home and, indeed, boundary, since mass migration to outer space seems unlikely). From that perimeter, it works inwards, considering the welfare of all Earthly ‘stakeholders’, not just humans.

Rowe then contrasted this ‘ecocentric’ approach to what he called ‘topsy-turvy’ thinking which starts from the individual and working onwards. This ‘egocentrism’ is constructed around the individual. This is most obviously the case with free market ‘lib-erals’ and libertarian anarchists. But it also applies, to some ex-tent to the Left, despite its long-standing association with quasi-collectivist measures such as nationalisation and public welfare services, indeed socialism. Marx himself defined communism as the “free development of each”. Today, most socialist thinking has become little more than a sort of entitlementism, an ever-lengthening of individual rights, asserted with scant considera-tion of how they are to be sustained by society as a whole, let alone the rest of Nature.

There is comparative silence about personal responsibili-ties and more general constraints. Indeed such thinking is quite hostile to what it denounces as ‘judgementalism’. So, for exam-ple, it is now common to hear all sorts of people talking about ‘ecological footprints’. But they bristle if anyone asks questions about how many ‘feet’ individuals choose to parent. Green Poli-tics, by contrast, always judges individual entitlements in that wider social and ecological context. However, the question is being begged: what are the core elements at the heart of Green thinking. [To be continued in the next issue of Greening Newcastle.]

“It’s all very well to go on about the environmentbut what about our standard of living”

Above, three excellent readers on green thinking, first on the left, by Andrew Dobson (Routledge), George Sessions (Shambhala Books) and, lastly Alan Drengson and Yuiche Inoue (North Atlantic Books)

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Name the green!8. Grünen leader’?

6. Big is ugly?

7. ‘Survived’ in 1972 to campaign on a camel in 1974

5. Didn’t stay ‘silent’ about DDT & its ilk

4. A ‘wallpaper man’ but certainly not George Osborne

2. Exponentially controversial country parson

3. ‘This ‘Yosemite’ Scot called sheep “hoofed locusts”.

1. Linked to fine foods but one of first think-ers about energy and matter

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Current officers and their contact details are listed below. If you know of any opportunities that the local Party might take up or want to raise any other matters, get in touch with Laurence or one of the other officers.To reduce the number of emails in circulation, please use this newsletter to draw attention to any papers you want to put forward for discussion. Just send your name, email address and the title of the topic and we’ll try to give it due publicity. Laurence Ellacott, Branch co-ordinator manyellacotts@tiscali.co.ukAndrew Gray, Election Agentandrewgray123@virginmedia.comJohn Pearson, Treasurerjohn.pearson@unn.ac.ukTony Waterston, Literature and Publicity.A.J.R.Waterston@newcastle.ac.ukSandy Irvine, Newsletter editor and Policy Responsesandyirvine@blueyonder.co.uk

Branch officers

This is the issue 9 of a regular publication.Please send material for the next one

directly to Sandy Irvine(tel: 0191 2844367 or

email sandyirvine@blueyonder.co.uk)

Please pass Greening Newcastle to any person or organisation you like, and they can in turn pass it on themselves, provided it is transmitted at all times in its entirety as a PDF file and unchanged. Anyone may quote from it, provided this is in con-text and Newcastle Green Party is acknowledged as the source. The song comes courtesy of Anna and Tony while Fred Stanback drew the ‘Running on Empty’ cartoon.

Green QuizAnswers1. Epicurus (341 BC - 270 BC)He clearly enunciated elements of modern theory about energy and matter ones that make a nonsense of the still widely held delusion that we can get more from less, or, that technology will create resources out of thin air or make wastes magically disappear.

2. Malthus (1766-1834)This clergyman raised the issue of environmental constraints on population growth in his An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). The key insight was not any specific prediction about population and food but his argument that people are subject to environmental constraints, like all other species.

3. John Muir (1838-1914)A Scot who emigrated to the USA, he came a pioneering con-servationist , leading battles that led to the creation of the won-derful Yosemite National Park. He rejected materialistic valu-ations of environmental systems, in favour of ‘intrinsic value’.

4. William Morris (1834-1896)Perhaps best known as a designer,, with many wallpapers and curtains bearing his imprint, Morris was also a political activist who developed a brand of socialism with strong green elements, with a strong critique of not just the environmental and eco-nomic costs of mass industrialism but also its cultural poverty.

5. Rachel Carson (1907-1964)Though she started as a marine biologist, it was a critique of the effects on wildlife, especially birds, of agrochemicals like syn-thetic pesticides that was her great achievement. It also led to a vicious witch-hunt by the agribusiness lobby and chemical in-dustry. Her book Silent Spring could be said to have created the modern environmental movement.

6. Fritz Schumacher (1911-1977)His 1973 collection Small is Beautiful captured the imagination of many. He spotlighted how society could and should choose whatever technology that suit both people and planet, rather than just submit to expensive and risky mega-technologies. He helped to foreground the importance of human scale systems, not least more localised political and economic forms.

7. Teddy Goldsmith (1928-2009)Publisher of the Ecologist, in its day the leading green journal (though sadly not anymore), Teddy Goldsmith was the leading spirit behind the 1972 Blueprint for Survival, still one of the best statement of the green analysis and alternative. In 1974, stand-ing as a People Party candidate (the grandparent of the Green Party), he campaigned with a camel to try and draw attention to the way conventional farming would ‘desertify’ the land.

8. Petra Kelly (1947-1993Some early members of the emerging Green Parties were sus-picious of the notion of leadership. But certain individuals defi-nitely played a dynamic role of building those parties and few more so than Petra Kelly in Die Grünen in the then West Ger-many. Her tragic death robbed the movement of an inspirational figure.

There was a strong Green Party presence at the TUC ‘March for an Alternative’ on March 26th in London