1

Greening NewcastleWelcome to issue 10 of the magazine of Newcastle Green Party, May 2011

NewcastleGreen Party branch meetingAll welcome!

19.00, Wednesday, June Ist,British Legion Club(just down from the Lonsdale pub)

Metro: West Jesmond

The 2010 General Election brought back the issue of whether to support some lesser evil in terms of calls to vote one way or another to keep out the more undesir-

able contestant. For many members of the broad anti-war and social justice movement, that enemy was the Conservative Par-ty. Now, the “Nasty Party” is back in power, thanks to support from Nick Clegg and the leadership of the Liberal Democrats.

Doubtless calls will be made that, in future local elections and eventually the next General Election we should all rally behind Labour to get rid of the greater evil of the ConDem Coalition. Such a call will probably be couched, given the rather dismal re-cord of the Blair and Brown governments, in terms of “Vote La-bour Without Illusions” (or, in a different version, notably voiced by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, “whilst wearing a nose peg”). Coalition with the Tories will probably badly dent the appeal of the Liberal Democrats to left-of-centre voters once govern-ment cutbacks begin to bite. That will enable Labour to pitch itself as the true agent of (progressive) change.

Indeed, now that Gordon Brown has gone and with some of the old lags, ‘Brownite’ or ‘Blairite’, no longer in influential positions, there will be claims that Labour has changed its spots: as David Miliband put it, “Next Labour”, not “New Labour”. A sister argument claims that ‘Blairism’ was some sort of alien parasite in the body politic of Labour; its removal will turn this People’s Party back into a party that actually serves the said People.

Labour loyalists further argue that the best way forward is to be ‘realistic’ and rally behind their party, instead of wasting political energies on what they deride as ‘no-hopers’ like the Greens. Indeed, Labour claimed that it had gained some 12,000 new members over the week following the formation of the Cameron-Clegg coalition. [It may be assumed that most are lapsed members returning to the fold, though there may well be fresh elements too]. To some extent, such developments re-flect a naïve view that there was once a ‘golden age’ of Labour-ism, now waiting has to be reborn. The welfare reforms of the 1945 Labour government under Clement Atlee, are often cited as proof.

Crunch pointThere are indeed moments in history when it is time to bury the hatchet and fight together against some Great Evil. The classic instance remains early 1930s Germany. There, the big German Communist Party refused to work with the reformist Social Democrats against the Nazis. Indeed it called the for-mer “social fascists” and, at one point, the latter “working peo-ple’s comrades”. To be fair the Social Democrats used mirror arguments, its leader Herman Müller claiming that “red equals

Kick out the…

brown” (i.e. Nazi brownshirts). Of course this divided anti-Nazi forces, opening the door to Hitler who promptly destroyed both groups and, later, many more once he had power. He had promised a racial war and he kept his promise.

Yet, those big historical turning points notwithstanding, the fact of the matter is that, more normally, it is a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Even that example of the Nazi take-over of Germany is not straightforward. After all, many back then, including the Social Democrats, saw former World War One general Paul von Hindenburg as the lesser evil against Adolf Hitler in the 1932 Presidential campaign. Hindenburg duly won… and then made Hitler Chancellor.

In America, it was the ‘lesser evils’ who most escalated the Vi-etnam War (Lyndon Johnson) and most weakened controls over the banking and finance sector (Bill Clinton), the latter action being the most direct contributory cause of the 2008 financial crisis. Indeed in the case of Barack Obama, there has been much more continuity than change (see the archives at http://www.counterpunch.org/ for a long list). Painful though it is to note, the greenest American President to date was … Richard Nixon (during his time in office, the most important environmental legislation was passed even if he left something to be desired in a rather large number of other respects!)

Indeed Lesser Evilism often means more evil than less. Thus the Labour Party routinely takes for granted the votes of genu-ine socialists and ‘progressive’ campaigners in specific fields like poverty relief on the grounds that the Tories will make things worse. But Labour then makes concessions but only in the op-posite direction, placating big business, rewarding the already super-rich, flirting with Jingoism, ‘cracking down’ on welfare claimants and so forth.

Indeed ‘Lesser Evils” like the American Democrats and Brit-ain’s New Labour did things that the Republicans and Conserva-tives would not have dared to do for fear of a backlash. In Brit-ain, it included further privatisation at home, including far more PFI rackets, and abroad more military aggression. The largesse given out by Gordon Brown to the banks, plus the paucity of strings attached to this gift, arguably exceeded what the banker’s

2

Newcastle Green Party endorses David Cameron!“Too many of your richest people are getting away without paying much tax at all – and that’s not fair”

David Cameron (April 5th, 2011)Unfortunately he was only talking about Pakistan, not Britain.

friends in the Tory Party would have dared do if they had been in power. Such policies usually disillusion previous supporters, with the result that, at the next election, what was the Greater Evil gets back into power. Meanwhile potential opposition to it is dissipated.

Identical Twins?The above argument does not claim that there is no difference between the major three parties in modern Britain. Clearly there are significant policy differences as well as different un-derlying sentiments and instincts. Rather the case is bring made that, on the essentials, there is a basic unanimity. On some things Labour is closer to the Liberals but at other times it is nearer to the Conservatives, not least nuclear rearmament. Labour is arguably the most authoritarian and restrictive of civil liberties of all three.

These differences can indeed be significant for certain groups. The ‘Sure Start’ programme was arguably the best achievement in New Labour’s otherwise rotten track record. For all its fail-ings, the establishment of a national minimum wage also helped many in real need. Yet Labour’s tolerance and indeed encour-agement of general inequality, coupled to the specific measures like the virtual abandonment of social housing provision, hit the poorer parts of the community badly. In the thirteen years of power, it is remarkable just how little Labour did regarding so-cial justice or durable economic regeneration.

Yet redress of the grievances of particular social segments, legitimate or otherwise, are less significant than the big issue of our times, the ecological crisis. Just because many people fail to see its significance, deny its existence or just look away does not mean that the ‘sustainability crunch’ is any the less real or ur-gent. Climate change, peak oil and all the other gathering storm clouds will make the financial crisis look like a storm in a teacup. First things have to be put first or else all other goals, no matter how worthy, are doomed, poverty alleviation included. Indeed the poor will usually be hit the hardest as the ecocrisis intensi-fies as well as have the least chance of mitigating its effects.

Yet the Labour, Liberal and Conservative Parties will not – cannot – make the necessary response. They are all deeply wed-ded to the dominant social order, they will sacrifice more and more chunks of ‘Mother Earth’ to keep the system going. Indeed, in such a situation, the allegedly Lesser Evils will, as defenders of industrialised consumerism, act at critical moments like the financial downturn exactly like the Greater Evils.

From the perspective of the great issues that are the core raison d’être of the Greens – the need to live more lightly, ‘bak-ing’ a smaller economic cake and sharing it more much fairly – there is little difference between any of the ‘grey’ parties. All of the latter are essentially committed to the old unsustain-able goals of open-ended economic growth and indiscriminate technological development. They want few limits, if any, on the growth of differentials within society and, more generally, human domination of the planet. They may differ over the ‘means’ but they are tightly united over the ‘ends’. Of course they will use phrases like ‘sustainable development’ but this is but a case of so much greenwash to mask the pursuit of business-as-usual.

Hard LabourIn terms of any ‘lesser evil’ coalition built around a rebranded Labour Party, there are three discrete issues: the record of the most recent Labour governments under both Blair and Brown, the historical performance of Labour in and out of power, and, last but least, the ‘reformability’ of Labour. First of all, it is im-portant be clear just how bad Labour performed in office. For-

tunately there are some detailed critiques that spell it out [See http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2830 and http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/ross-mckibbin/will-we-notice-when-the-tories-have-won, with all of the latter’s articles in the London Review of Books well worth a read]

Whatever the failings of the Blair-Brown years, many still feel that Labour once was a true progressive party, created by and for ordinary people (many would say ‘working class’, though that term begs many definitional problems then and now, ones be-yond the scope of this article). What can be said for certain is that its connection to any variant of socialism is tenuous and many of the reforms it introduced were neither innovatory nor radical. Again there are some excellent histories that document that truth, one of the best, Parliamentary Socialism, ironically by Ralph Miliband, father of the latest Labour leader.

Many Labour supporters will concede that they were dis-appointed by Labour’s performance when last in power. Older ones may remember the disappointments caused by the gov-ernments of Callaghan and, before him, Wilson (on the latter, see Paul Foot’s The Politics of Harold Wilson). Yet they glow with pride about Labour’s achievements under Clement Atlee after the war, claiming that they can be repeated.

To be fair, it is remarkable what Atlee’s government did achieve under the most unfavourable circumstances (something that should shame modern Labour politicians). Yet independent historians like Peter Calvocoressi have shown that, fundamen-tally, the 1945-51 Labour government was more a matter of restoration than of radical reform since the basic structures of power and privilege were left intact.

Indeed others such as the then Liberals had advocated wel-fare reforms like those enacted post-1945. Politicians as diverse as Churchill and Bismarck had, at times, called for nationalisa-tion of certain industries (basically ones private capitalists could not run profitably). The terrible history of the USSR in any case shows that there is nothing inherently ‘progressive’ about state ownership per se. The years of Ramsay McDonald must also be remembered alongside those of Clement Atlee. There was never any ‘golden age’ of Labour. Nothing has happened under

3

Ed Miliband’s leadership to suggest that anything much is likely to change. Labour is still decidely ‘grey’, not green.

Furthermore, all attempts to reform Labour have dismally failed and there is little evidence that such attempts will do any better in the future. The sorry record of the Labour Left is particularly pertinent here. [See, for example, http://www.trot-sky.org/history/etol/writers/harman/1965/xx/tribune.htm and http://www.marxists.org/archive/foot-paul/1968/xx/wilson.htm ] There is no simply evidence that Labour can be reformed from within. Look what happened to the ‘Militant’ group!

AllianceAnyone can, of course, stand on the sidelines, impotently sniping at the efforts of others to bring about changes in the real world. Indeed the history of the radical Left in Britain is a sorry tale of how easy it is to slide into the dead-end of sectarianism. Weak parties like the Greens need to find ‘extra muscle’ by work-ing with whoever may be appropriate. Co-operation, however, should not require a cover-up of real differences nor silence on-going debate. We should never forget that, as Gary Coates puts it in Resettling America, “what appears at first to be merely two paths to shared goals turns out, on closer inspection, to be two separate paths to very different goals”.

Attempts to identify the best options for collaboration will benefit from a strict distinction between ‘popular fronts’ (uni-ty on the lowest common denominator, sometimes involving organisational fusion) and ‘united fronts’ (unity around certain specific goals, wherein the independence of participants is pre-served). The Green Party’s best bet is the latter, with a hard focus on specific policies, rather than individual Greens getting a shot at office). Obviously there is no point simply agreeing to some ‘minimum’ programme (which solves nothing). But it is equally futile to demand an ideal ‘maximum’ programme (which attracts too little backing to solve anything). The trick is to tease out a transitional programme that builds a critical mass of sup-port whilst putting into action measures that really will put so-ciety on the road to sustainability.

Certainly Greens should respond positively to overtures for joint work. A number of Party members are involved in broad campaigns like the Coalition of Resistance and Tax Justice. At the very least, we should welcome each and every audience we can find for our views. But we would want detailed clarification from potential allies about their stance on a whole range of issues, from specific ones like energy policy to the $64,000 questions of population growth, consumerism and technological innova-tion. The more productive areas for collaboration are likely to be found in the field of extra-Parliamentary campaigns rather than in a narrow focus just on electoral pacts.

Ultimately continued and independent activity by the Greens as the Greens is what matters. Sight should never be lost of the big picture. The Greens have made solid progress in some localities. However, in most parts of the country, the task is still to wave the Green flag firmly and clearly.

It must be stressed and then stressed again: time is running out. Climate change, Peak Oil and other storm clouds do not dwell over some distant horizon: radical action is needed now. Dithering about how to vote to bring about minor reforms is a poor option when what is desperately needed is strong, forceful campaigning about the core issues.

Yes there is scope for temporary deals, especially around specific policies, at certain times in particular places. Yet, overall, the way forward for the Green Party now is to continue to the work of building its independent strength, membership, voter base and general influence.

Singing from the same pro-growth song sheet?

Growing PainsLabour, like the Liberal Democrats and the Tories, wants growth and lots more of it. Essentially they all share the same vision. Thus the latest strategy from Liberal-controlled Newcastle Council calls for rapid expansion (including population growth) in its core strategy developed in partnership with the Labour-controlled council across in Gateshead.

Indeed most councils in Britain act on the assumption that growth is inherently beneficial and that more and faster growth will benefit local residents. Local growth is often cited as the cure for all sorts of urban ailments, most of all unemployment.

Yet there is little evidence to justify this fetish of more growth. A detailed American study found, for example:

• Faster-growing areas did not have lower unemployment rates;

• Faster-growing areas tended to have lower per capita income than slower-growing areas. Per capita income in 2009 tended to decline almost $2500 for each 1% increase in growth rate;

• Residents of faster-growing areas had greater income declines during the recession;

• Faster-growing areas tended to have higher poverty rates. It found that the 25 slowest-growing metropolitan areas out-

performed the 25 fastest-growing in every category and aver-aged $8,455 more in per capita personal income in 2009. They also had lower unemployment and poverty rates. Stable met-ropolitan areas (those with little or no growth) did relatively well. Statistically-speaking, residents of an area with no growth over the 9-year period tended to have 43% more income gain than an area growing at 3% a year. Undoubtedly this offers a ray of hope that stable, sustainable communities may be perfectly viable - even prosperous - even within our current economic system.

The study by Eben Fodor, The Relationship between Growth and Prosperity in 100 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas, can be sourced from: http://www.fodorandassociates.com/Reports/Growth_&_Prosperity_in_US_MSAs.pdf

Labour Liberal

?

4

All Out?G roups on the Far Left such as the Socialist Workers

Party (SWP) and the Socialist Party (SP) are calling for the TUC to lead a General Strike against government

austerity policies. No doubt they believe there can be a rep-etition of the industrial unrest recently witnessed in countries like France and Greece. The sheer size of the turnout on the March 26 anti-cuts protest in London, well over 400,000, prob-ably leads them to deduce that there is a basis for much more militant action in Britain.

However there does not seem, at the moment, to be a solid basis for a General Strike of any kind. There is insufficiently deep and widespread anger yet about the cutbacks. The recent UCU strike in colleges and universities, for example, was undertaken after a ballot in which a mere 38% of the members actually voted, with only a 51% majority for action. Clearly a lot of work needs to be done to build forces for sustained action.

There must be doubts also about the efficacy of one day strikes. To be fair, they can demonstrate the degree of resent-ment in the workforce… if sufficient people take part. Often, however, they achieve little except cost participants a day’s pay, save management some money and possibly alienate members of the public (especially in the transport sector). It might be bet-ter to try and develop more creative alternatives. After all, the strike wave in France seems to be receding, with little to show for all the effort.

For a start, the tactic of just few key sites coming out on strike for a prolonged period but sustained by monies from the remaining union membership might be more effective than one day of ‘all out’ action (it seldom is actually ‘all out’). Of course such a tactic depends on the willingness of the general rank and file to pay the necessary levy. Other possibilities might include non-collection/non-payment of certain fares, bills and other charges, plus, where relevant, deliberate delay in data provision.

Of course. there is a need to protect individuals from legal counter-action given the obligations that are often part of for-mal job contracts. None the less, ways have to be found to ‘hit’ management/government with minimised cost to both union members themselves and the general public.

Pressure points.Clearly ‘reason’ alone is not going to change the minds of the powers-than-be, only a degree of ‘pain’. Effective work-to-rule sanctions, boycotts and the like are obviously hard to organise and still harder to implement. But they can achieve dramatic results as in the case of the 1990 anti-Thatcher Poll Tax revolt. There have also been some successful consumer boycotts (for examples, see: http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/Boycotts/suc-cessfulboycotts.aspx). Even the recent petition against the for-est sell-offs achieved significant success, though doubtless the government may just wait a bit before renewing its assault on the public estate.

Part of the problem today is the absence of well-established networks of militant activists in large, well-organised workplac-es. Indeed both have declined in number. The successful fight against the Industrial Relations Bill in the early 70s owed a great deal to the work of the grassroots Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions.

There is no equivalent today, though, of course, there are certain organisations that huff and puff as if they had such roots.

Since the huge TUC March against the cutbacks, there have calls from Far Left organisations for a General Strike which, they claim,

will halt the ConDem Coalition government in its tracks.

Bodies such as the National Shop Stewards Network and Right to Work Campaign seem debilitated by the chronic sectarian in-fighting that often erupts when organisations like the SWP and SP are involved.

More seriously still, the decline in the culture of lifelong jobs and the lure of redundancy money often undermine any fight-back in the workplace against layoffs and other cuts. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that some people enjoy life much more post-redundancy, something that further debilitates any concerted resistance to job losses. Such factors suggest an even greater need for due caution when proposing strike calls.

In future debate about how to fight back against government policies, we should also avoid the temptation of blaming every failure to wage full-blooded struggle on cowardly and/or treach-erous leaders (TUC etc). Conversely, we should not romanticise the ‘rank-and-file’ membership as if it were straining at the leash to fight the good fight. Indeed large numbers of workers are not even union members. Only one in seven workers in the private-sector is a member of a trade union, though it is over 50% in the public sector. So it is just as important to appeal to people in other capacities, not just union-based struggle.

People can, of course, only be ‘sold out’ if they have clearly expressed demands which are then not pursued or abandoned without good cause. A more honest appraisal does not neces-sarily lead to a politics that tails after ‘The People’, simply re-flecting whatever they want. It just means starting from reality, not wishful thinking, in a struggle to change popular opinion.

During the March 26th TUC rally, demonstators occupied the luxury food store Fortnum and Masons

5

Council SmokescreenNewcastle Council recently circulated a questionnaire asking local people about their priorities over cutbacks and things to be protected. It is hard to know what were the motives behind this exercice. Consultation is, of course, a buzzword these days and this one will give the Council the excuse that it is only doing what the general public wants when it chops certain services or increases charges for others.

It all looks very democratic. The reality, however, is that the ordinary citizen is scarcely in a position to know the details of council spending, let alone the longer term implications of alter-native budget options. Basic breakdowns of council income and spending are indeed available but it is difficult for the public to appreciate who is paying how much for which item of council provision for whose benefit and at what long-term cost (in-cluding environmental costs, something treated as some sort of disconnected ‘externality’, rather than a direct consequence of spending choices).

In any case, totting up the results from a crude tick box list is not likely to produce a coherent and balanced package of measures. At best it might record certain general preferences. In an individualistc and materialistic culture like that of modern day Britain, these are likely to be biased towards options that appear to save council tax payers money in the here and now. All sorts of misinformation and prejudice may also colour the results. The general long-term good is unlikely to be served well.

There is already a democratic way of deciding such things. It is for electors to choose at election time between the rival stances of election candidates on matters like the cutbacks. In between elections, the controlling party ought to come forward with a coherent plan, drawing on the expertise of its officers and the information the council holds. If voters do not like it, they have the option of ‘punishing’ the offending party at the next election. It is the proper role of politicians to give a lead, based on their principles, goals and assessment of particular problems, not hide behind pseudo-consultation smokescreens.

Green approachThe Green Party recognises that the huge reductions in central government grants by the ConDem coalition are indeed a body blow to the finances of local councils. It further accepts that each local authority has a legal duty to set a balanced budget. But existing Green Party councillors are doing their best to find imaginative alternatives that will protect jobs and services.

Alternatives suggested by the Greens for savings include cuts in the often exhorbitant pay of top council executives and in the monies wasted on expensive consultants (the books by David Craig on such waste, especially what he calls the “consul-tancy money machine”, detail some true horror stories of the plundering of the public sector). There is no need to squander money on developments like the Stephenson Quarter and a lot of the public relations guff could go too.

More positively, there is plenty of scope to save money by cutting council fuel bills (by making schools, libraries etc more energy efficient). Conversely, revenue can actually be raised in schemes like the installation of solar photovoltaic arrays on council properties. Money might be raised by levies on those workplaces that now provide free car parking. Parks and gar-dens could be managed more sustainably, whilst saving money.

There are a number of exemplar strategies, sometimes Green Party-led initiatives and at other times pioneered by the more forward thinking sections of other parties.

Examples of green responses include:

• Fuel bill reduction in Kirklees: http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/community/environment/ener-gyconservation/warmzone/warmzone.shtml;

• Energy generation on North Tyneside: http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2011/02/22/solar-panel-plans-for-north-east-homes-61634-28210024/;

• Parking levies in Nottingham: http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2600;

• Biodiversity and low maintenance in the parks and gardens planting and management regimes for Gateshead: http://www.gateshead.gov.uk/DocumentLibrary/Environ-ment/Strategies/makingadifference.pdf.

One of the best ways to prepare for the reduced availability of cheap oil and to reduce other unsustainable impacts of mass car usage (CO2 etc.) is to promote more cycling. Its benefits for general health and fitness across society need no emphasis here.

Yet cities like Newcastle are decidely bike-unfriendly places. Existing bike lanes are often blocked by parked cars. The situ-ation is far from equitable with far more money is spent on catering for the private motorist than cyclists (or walkers).

For this reason, Newcastle Green Party has welcomed the formation of the Newcastle Cycling Campaign. It is fighting for measures like:

• the creation of a Strategic Cycle Network;• provision of key corridors into the city centre;• comprehensive signage of cycle routes;• much improved safety measures for cyclists in

Newcastle City Centre; • exploration of cycling ‘contra flow’ systems;• review of traffic lights in the city centre to aid cyclists;• exploration of safe streets for walking and cycling,

including many more 20mph zones;• integration of bikes with public transport;• promotion of ‘cycle & ride’ schemes;• provision of secure cycle parking at Rail, Metro and

Bus stations;• holding of an ‘Annual Newcastle Cycling Conference’;• promote new activities such as annual family bike ride or

a cycling film festival. Another option worth consideration is the so-called “shared

street” which, contrary to popular expectation, does seem to reduce accidents. It also creates more human scale environ-ments than segregated traffic developments (pedestrian under-passes etc). The area to the north of the Monument in the city centre is the best example locally, though the sheer volume of crosstown bus traffic along Blackett Street is an issue.

[See http://www.hamilton-baillie.co.uk/_files/_publica-tions/6-1.pdf]

On Your Bike

6

Every picture tells a story?

Above are two contrasting ‘gardens’ from two neighbouring houses. On the top right is a very verdant site. On the top left, however, is an example of a modern curse: ‘concrete creep’ which is destroying valuable habitat. Now that most farmland is so inhospitable to wildlife because of the vast monocultures, intensive agrochemical us-age and so forth, many species are increasingly dependent on garden vegetation.Yet it too is being lost. Almost 25% of all front gardens in NE England have been com-pletely paved over. London has lost the equivalent to 5,200 football pitches by house-holders paving over their front gardens. Paving, tarmac and concrete increase the amount of rainwater than runs off by as much as 50 per cent, heightening the danger of serious flooding. All that concrete and other material also has to be quarred and manufactured in the first place (concrete works being a big greenhouse gas source).But the council does little to enforce existing laws nor seek new powers to curb this tide of environmental despoliation. Nor does it address eyesores like the one straight to the left which has blighted the site on a local high street for years.

The council is desperate for what it sees as ‘development’ so almost any new business seems to be welcomed, with little consideration of its

impacts. The new store to the right has big chiller units and so needs extrator fans as can be seen (it is alleged that no planning permission was

sought, let alone given). Yet the noise is now a real headache for houses opposite whose bedrooms directly face the ugly fans. The back lane be-

neath is frequently blocked by delivery vehicles while parked cars outside the front of the store block sight lines at the busy T-junction there.

Below are two vehicles. One, below right, is from a new social enterprise firm trying to reduce car dependency via a ‘car club’ (http://www.com-

monwheels.org.uk/). The other, from the same street, is exactly what we must stop: the sale of SUVs. Apart from anything else, they eat up street parking space, driving other people to turn their gardens into car ports. Of course, the ideology of the ‘market’ says people should spend their

money however they want, regardless of other people or planet.

7

Green: what does it mean? (2)Part one of this article look at the emergence of avowedly Green parties as well as some of the possible ambiguities sur-rounding words like ‘green’, ‘sustainable’ and so forth. What fol-lows is an attempt to tease out some of the core elements of Green Politics and what the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society from the Green Party of England and Wales calls its “philosophi-cal basis” (though ‘worldview’ might be a better term).

There is no point in reinventing the wheel so it is as well as to start from previous attempts to pinpoint the essence of Green thinking. In 1973, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess felt obliged to distinguish two currents in the environmental movement at that time. There was a ‘reformist’ strand, what he called “shallow environmentalism”, which simply sought to ame-liorate some of the worst excesses of contemporary society via assorted technological and economic fixes such as pollution control gadgetry and levies on certain pollutants. Conservation of biodiversity was justified primarily for its utilitarian benefits.

Naess also identified a much more radical stream which he called “deep ecology”, which sought a through restructuring of social values, goals and lifestyles, working within the processes, capacities and rhythms of the ecosystems on which humans depend. Central to this transformation was an acceptance of the intrinsic value of non-human life forms, regardless of their perceived usefulness for people. Along with George Sessions, Naess was to spell out a “Platform for Deep Ecology”.

However it is worth spotlighting a more recent rewrite by the Canadian ecologists Stan Rowe and Ted Mosquin (see http://www.ecospherics.net/). Their version reads thus:

Core Principles 1. The Ecosphere is the Centre of Value for Humanity2. The Creativity and Productivity of Earth’s Ecosystems

Depend on their Integrity3. The Earth-centred Worldview is supported by Natural

History 4. Ecocentric Ethics are Grounded in Awareness of our Place

in Nature5. An Ecocentric Worldview Values Diversity of Ecosystems

and Cultures 6. Ecocentric Ethics Support Social Justice

Action Principles 1. Defend and Preserve Earth’s Creative Potential 2. Reduce Human Population Size 3. Reduce Human Consumption of Earth Parts4. Promote Ecocentric Governance5. Spread the Message

Another attempt to convey the kernel of Green thinking was done in the form of “10 Commandments” (see box to the right) by the noted Californian academic, writer and activist Ernest Callenbach, whose excellent novel Ecotopia tried to envisage what a sustainable society might actually be like.

8

Thus, the Green worldview consists of a set of irreducible values. They are ecological in the sense they are grounded in what the ecological sciences tell us about what is viable and what is sheer fantasy (e.g. “sustainable growth”). But they are not reducible to some extension of an ‘is’ (i.e. how the world would appear to work) to an ’ought’ (how we should lead our lives in that world). After all, ecological science was used to de-velop the defoliation chemicals used in the Vietnam War. Simi-larly ecology might tell us that we are destroying the world but we might still decide to eat, drink and make merry, not caring whether tomorrow we thereby will die. The Green worldview embraces both the ‘ends’ (values and goals: the ‘good’ society) and the ‘means’ (geological space, energy flows, water and min-eral cycles, and biota, including humankind and thus our own human physiology and psychology).

A Green Way of Analysing the WorldThe above values might in turn be translated into a green ‘ana-lytical framework’ through which to look at the world, diagnose its ills and develop solutions (it is contrasted below with ‘flawed’ views, ones which underpin mainstream politics):

• Appreciation of the diversity of landforms & lifeforms that ecosystems contain, above all for their intrinsic value; (flawed view: that only certain species need to be conserved because of their actual or potential use such as food crops or drug ingredients and that human wants are always paramount, i.e. ‘human chauvinism’);

• Awareness of ecological systems and their dynamics, i.e. ecology in its narrowest ‘scientific’ sense,(flawed view: that humans and their technologies are free from the limits that constrain the lives of other species, i.e. human exceptionalism);

• Due attention to all those constraints characteristic of life on Earth, the ‘limits-to-growth’, leaving plenty of room for ‘margins of error’. There are three main ‘outer’ ones:

1. Earth and its physical finitude, which limits the sheer space that can supply resources as well as act as sinks for the wastes inevitably caused by the second ‘E’ (next) plus other sources of pollution;

2. Entropy, the unavoidable ‘overheads’ as energy and mat-ter are dissipated through their extraction, conversion, transmission, use and final disposal;

3. Ecology, the web woven by geology, climate and lifeforms which give the Earth its self-replenishing, self-repairing and self-regulating capabilities but which is vulnerable to pollu-tion, simplification and degradation.The 3 ‘E’s together constitute a set of barriers and dimin-ishing trade-offs in which accompanying ‘collateral’ damage begins to cancel out whatever benefits may have accrued.(flawed view: that the right mix of economic incentives, mana-gerial expertise and technological innovation can overcome all shortages and create ‘free lunches’ for one and all, i.e. cornuco-pianism.A linked illusion is that of ‘zero waste’, thermodynamically speak-ing, a pipedream. So is that reductionism that treats problems purely in terms of a shortage of energy, an abundance of which, it is fallaciously assumed, would overcome all other constraints);

Those ‘outer’ limits are further tightened by ‘inner’ ones, stemming from within human society itself:

1. Limits to human physiological and psychological tolerances, leading to various individual stresses and social strains if transgressed;

2. Individual difficulties in coping with over-rapid change as well as information ‘overload’;

3. Difficulties in detailed planning and general co-ordination, including bureaucratic inertia and the tendency of special-ists to lose sight of factors outside their area of expertise;

4. Unanticipated costs and a tendency to budget overruns in big projects;

5. Greater alienation in impersonal big organisations;6. Decreasing democratic ‘weight’ of each individual voter as

the size of constituencies and other such arena increases.(flawed view: that human ingenuity and capacity to adapt are unlimited, i.e. the ‘Disney Dream’);

• Comprehension of the magnitude and range of the human impacts on the rest of Nature and their consequences for humans and other species alike;(flawed view: that the problem is just this or that pollutant and that ‘clean’ technology is the simple answer)

• Assessment of those impacts in terms of total ‘life cycle’ costs, from ‘cradle’ to ‘grave’, not least with an estimation of net return of total energy invested;(flawed view: that one resource can simply be substituted for another and that abundant energy supply is, in any case, the cure-all i.e. ‘energy reductionism’ again)

• Rounded analysis of the core driving forces aggravating those impacts, specifically1. human population,2. per capita consumption and3. technology

i.e. the technological mix used to deliver a given range of goods and services to a given number of people.

The technological mix may be a matter of * power source (e.g. replacement of muscle power and sails by fossil fuel energy), or * quantity of delivered power (e.g. switch from the axe to the chain-saw) or one of * quality (e.g. change from naturally occurring fibres and dyes to ‘man-made’ synthetic replacements];

The formula PAT = I is often used to sum up the above equation i.e. the impact of population multiplied by the effects of particular per capita consumption patterns or ‘affluence’, multiplied by the effects of using this, not that, technology.The actual impact will be depend on the resilience of differ-ent environmental and social systems. Thus the clearance of tropical jungles has more drastic impacts, at least in the short-term, than the equivalent in, say, the boreal forests. The 2008 financial downturn had quite varied impacts in different countries due to differing banking regulations and practices therein.(flawed view: that the problem is technology and/or lifestyle and that any mention of overpopulation is wicked ‘neo-Malthusian-ism’ i.e. ‘overpopulation myopia’.)

9

• Analysis of all root sources of those pressures:

1. ‘vested interests’i.e. the negative role of certain vested interests whose self-interest, self-serving behaviour and sometimes sheer tunnel vision variously lead society down the wrong road. Often the way society is organised leaves individuals, es-pecially its poorer members, with little choice but to do things that harm the long-term interests of themselves and society as a whole.Under this heading come a whole range of forces: capital-ist profiteering, bureaucracy, religion, political factionalism, mechanistic science, caste and class discrimination, patriar-chy, racism… and many more ‘isms’, not to overlooking the deepest, broadest and, ultimately, most destructive ‘ism’ of them all, anthropocentrism.(flawed view: that the growing crises just happen all by them-selves and/or that we all equally to blame and ‘in the same boat together’ and that the only barrier is lack of knowledge/foresight/confidence)

2. ‘tyranny of commonplace decisions’i.e. the cumulative impact of a myriad of micro-decisions, made each and every day, comparatively harmless in and of themselves but disastrous in toto. No exploitative, op-pressive or otherwise wilful dynamic is necessarily at work: rather the reason is personal security, safety, convenience, company, personal cost-saving, pleasure, laziness, compla-cency, misunderstanding and so forth.This other ‘root source’ is all the more important since, if unaddressed, it will persist in making things go from bad to worse, even if all other structures of exploitation and op-pression were magically to be removed.(flawed view: that the problem is just ‘them’ – greedy capitalists, even greedier bankers, unresponsive bureaucrats, elitist profes-sionals, ‘top-down’ planners and their ilk – and that ‘empower-ment’ of the ‘masses’ will be the remedy, i.e. populism. The tra-ditional Right would blame forces like what it calls ‘trade union barons’, ‘scroungers’, ‘trendy experts’ etc., with the restoration of the old elites and their power as the answer)

• Conceptualisation of any problem in terms of a ‘longage’ of demand and scope for its reduction, before looking at it in terms of ‘shortage’ of supply and its expansion. Indeed more supply often leads to more demand, creating an un-sustainable positive feedback loop;(flawed view: that more economic growth provides more means to solve both environmental and social problems, that ways can always be found to produce more, and that material abundance is the precondition for the ‘good’ society, however defined, i.e. a politics of ‘moreness’, instead of ‘enoughness’)

• Prioritisation of policy options in terms of the Green ‘R’s, which, in order, are refusal (i.e. stopping this or that activity), reduction, reuse, repair, recycling and regionalisa-tion (plus, ideally, localisation), alongside, where practicable, a redistribution of land and resources;(flawed view: that humans have always managed to jump from one resource base to another, exploit new lands and will con-tinue do so, i.e. the ‘high frontier’ mentality)

• Prioritisation of policy options in terms of the undeniably essential needs of the many (clean water, nutritious food, housing, sanitation, literacy and numeracy, etc.) over the non-basic wants of the few;(flawed view: that the super-rich live in luxury because of their superior abilities, that the ‘trickle down’ effects of their wealth acquisition helps everyone else and that inequality is necessary as an incentive for those lower down the social ladder to make more effort to enrich themselves, i.e. ‘greed-is-good’)

• Global equityFocus on lifestyles and technologies that, in theory at least, could be sustainably generalised across the planet and, therefore, to a likely population of, say, 9 billion. Without such a framework, it would have to be assumed that some sections of the total global population might have to be forcibly denied options taken for granted by others, a rec-ipe for corrosive resentment and possible violent conflict, scarcely a sustainable option in itself.(flawed view: that everyone has the right to ‘develop’ how and as fast as they want; no-one ought to hold back simply because others have not/cannot catch up. Any problems will, in any case, be solved by ‘trickle down’ from the ‘haves’ to the have-nots’, with the latest technologies benignly percolating across the planet)

• Intergenerational equityBe fully considerate of the consequences of actions today on those who will be born in future days. We owe much to past peoples and we can pay that ‘debt’ by trying to be-queath a world at least as healthy, productive and beautiful as we inherited for those yet to come.(flawed view: that posterity has done nothing for me so why should I care if ‘apres moi, le deluge’)

• Concern for a sustainable balance of rights and responsibilities, with every effort to bring costs and benefits together in same time and place;(flawed view: ‘to each according to his ‘needs’, regardless of the nature of those expectations and the burdens they place on oth-ers, be it other fellow citizens, other generations or other species, i.e. ‘entitlementism’ and ‘grievance group’ politics)

• Concern for a ‘biosocial’ scale: institutions, buildings, and so forth that match both human scale and the patterns of the ‘bioregion’ (climate, landforms, soils, etc.) in which hu-man activities take place, localising them and related public decision-making systems as far as practicable;(flawed view: that all societies could and should move in same direction of one standard globalised model in which the big-ger, the faster, the more powerful the better, i.e. gigantism and ‘placelessness’)

• Preference for systems that are failure-tolerant rather than fail-safe (e.g. power plants that are ‘100% safe’ or busi-nesses that must be bailed out because of their size), given that what can go wrong probably will go wrong one day and that even the best laid schmes “aft gang agley”;(flawed view: expertise can guarantee safety and that precau-tion and protection are just ‘nanny state’ interference with enter-prise and innovation, i.e. human hubris)

10

• Reliance on institutions and technologies that facilitate, rather than discourage, democratic control and gen-eral transparency;(flawed view: decision-making is best turned into an evidence-based technical task done behind closed doors, i.e. managerial-ism and meritocracy)

• Prescription of policies that can put the relationship be-tween people and between humanity and the rest of na-ture on a less destructive and more durable footing: ‘tread lightly’.(flawed view: that life is a competitive race and that ‘devil take the hindmost’, i.e. egocentrism)

CommentaryFew of the above perspectives readily lend themselves to quan-tification and generally there is no easy way to weigh one against the other. Rather, Green politics is about a new agenda for pol-icy-making, not a rigidly fixed menu. There will always be issues in need of further clarification and development, not least as external circumstances change.

It might be noted just how many of the above perspectives chime with long-standarding proverbs. Examples include: “look before you leap”; “a stitch in time…”; “a bird in the hand…”; “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”; “don’t count your chick-ens before they hatch” etc. While ‘common sense’ can often embody the misconceptions and blindspots of a particular cul-ture, it sometimes has the edge over an expertise that rests on a very disconnected, one-dimensional ‘tunnel vision’.

The very first point on the above list must be particularly stressed. Without some sense of respect for the intrinsic value of non-human Nature, including a corresponding willingness to constraint human activity, there will always be some immedi-ate and seemingly unanswerable case to take one ‘bite’ out of the ‘Mother Earth’. After all, it may seem, at least in the here and now, as if anthropogenic extinction of wildlife is ‘cost-free’ or that an extra spoonful of pollution will make no difference. A few extra acres of housing here or another business estate there would seem unlikely to bring the entire global ecosystem crashing down. But, as argued above, the Earth is being killed not by some gigantic mega-development but by countless tiny cuts here, there and everywhere.

Further, it is impossible to put a precise figure on how much this wetland or that old-growth woodland is financially worth. Purely utilitarian calculations are, then, likely to encourage fur-ther steps down the road of ecological suicide. So the Brundt-land Report (reverently treated in most literature on so-called ‘sustainable development’) was actually severely flawed, taking into account only the “needs of future (human) generations” (about whose numbers it was also extremely evasive).

EarthfirstSo maintenance and indeed restoration of the Earth ‘commu-nity’ (i.e. those flora and fauna characteristic of the present geo-logical era, it being the only timescale on which we can operate) is the Green version of Occam’s Razor which can slice through possibly conflicting choices. A contrast might also be drawn with Marx’s vision in which he foresaw “government of people” giving way to the “administration of things” (a pre-echo of the fantasy of ‘planet management’).

In the Green view, all human activities must be managed in the light of their environmental impact. Thus the emphasis is switched from environmental management (e.g. dams and levees) to the management of people and their artefacts (e.g. land use

zoning to keep settlements away from flood plains, protection of wetlands from human encroachment, taxation of excessive water use). This perspective in turn leads to policies to preserve and expand ‘wilderness’ areas, including both large ‘nodes’ as well as ‘corridors’ linking them, including policies for ecological rehabilitation (e.g. appropriate reforestation and wildlife rein-troduction programmes). It also demands strong animal welfare policies in fields from farming and the animal ‘body parts’ trade to blood sports and other forms of so-called ‘entertainment’.

That said, Greens recognise that such a switch in emphasis will not be possible unless governance is made as palatable as possible: both open and democratic, with decision-making close to the place where an issue need resolution. There can be no sustainable ‘eco-authoritarianism’, with decisions arbitrarily im-posed from above. Indeed democracy inside human society is the equivalent of all those feedback loops within the rest of nature which help to curtail destructive excess.

People MatterGreen politics is no species of misanthropy. Study of the extant green literature will lead to a variety of thinkers who have also been concerned about human life and the right of all peoples to live without deprivation and oppression. An ethos of caring and sharing guides the Green view of human relationships as well as those between people and planet.

Thus Frank Fraser Darling, famous for the 1969 Wilderness and Plenty Reith Lectures on the BBC, was an ardent conserva-tionist but had long campaigned against inequitable land owner-

Below is a vision of a renewable energy future from the American National Geographic magazine. It violates human scale and shows scant concern for the place of wildlife in such a scenario. The co-ordination of the various energy sources to supply the activities like the mass motoring it depicts would require tight, centralised control systems that would destroy the democratic potential of a more mod-est use of solar and such like sources. Far from being ‘alternative’, the thinking encapsulated in the image below is about trying to sustain ‘business-as-usual’ but by other means. It can also be sampled in those books with revealingly hubristic titles like The Gaia Atlas of Planet Management.

11

ship patterns. Paul Ehrlich, well known for his 1968 book The Population Bomb also contrasted the suffering in what he called the ‘steerage’ compared to the first class cabins of ‘spaceship Earth’ (not least in the 1971 follow-up How to be a Survivor). Jonathon Porritt’s Seeing Green from 1984 forcefully stressed that the comparatively poor would only accept general policies based on ‘limits-to-growth’ if a sustainable economic cake were to be divided up fairly.

The trick is to find some sustainable mix between ‘hard heads’ and ‘kind hearts’. One without the other is a recipe for ruin. At present, the need for immigration controls, for example, is rejected by those who glibly assert a policy of ‘open fron-tiers’, regardless of its social, economic or ecological costs. They dismiss any other option as, ipso facto, racist. Thus genuine di-lemmas are simply wished away, while real racists are given a field day. One result in Britain has been that many working class people have been driven into the arms of fascistic bodies like the British National Party.

Finally it must be stressed past follies do not excuse ones to-day or tomorrow. There is a bizarre point of view, for example, that argues that since white people in the west destroyed their forests they have no ‘right’ to tell non-whites elsewhere not to cut down their trees.… a recipe for everyone’s ultimate ruin!

Flawed TechnologyThe so-called ‘green car’ illustrates a number of the perspec-tives listed above. Its fans ignore, firstly, the rate and magnitude point. It would be a herculean task, way beyond the time and resources available, to replace the current global vehicle fleet, with electrically powered ones or even make significant inroads.

Secondly, they fail to consider adequately the total life cycle costs of green cars. Most environmental impacts of car manu-facture of all kinds occur in the manufacturing stage, not usage. Electric cars also bring with them severe pollution problems from their batteries (nickel etc). Car-based pollution would sim-ply come from another source if these ‘green’ cars were pow-ered by fossil fuel or nuclear electricity, It is hard to imagine that alternative sources could generate enough electricity.

Furthermore, electric cars would still require land for roads and parking space plus infrastructure like traffic lights. They would still encourage urban sprawl, with all its social, economic and environmental costs, especially if their somewhat limited range were to be increased. The problems caused by road vehi-cles go beyond just air pollution or finite energy sources.

An attempt to roll out the electric car across the planet would intensify all such impacts. Even in rich countries, the elec-tric car would be, initially at least, a luxury item of the better-off, one which those on lower incomes would not be able to af-ford. The latter’s basic needs would be better served by making every effort to make facilities like shops, schools and so forth much more locally accessible whilst, at the same time, investing in public transport systems (where, indeed, there might be some scope for electrically powered buses, taxis and trains).

Last but certainly not least, even if many of the above draw-backs of electric vehicles could be eliminated, their advantages would be cancelled out by on-going population growth and by more people making more journeys (the ‘affluence’ part of the PAT equation). But, of course, mainstream politics usually main-tains a deafening silence about those factors.

The ‘green car’ is only one of many, many examples of how conventional thinking fails to consider all the impacts and all the costs. Take, for example, the observation by Michael Jacobs, author of The Green Economy, that softwood, wool and cotton production has ‘relatively little environmental impact’. Quite the

opposite is actually the case. Cotton cultivation has exhausted soils around the world and, currently, the crop is the single big-gest consumer of pesticides. Sheep and goats have denuded one hill side after another. No wonder the great American conserva-tionist John Muir called them four-legged locusts.

Meanwhile, softwood production has devastated whole en-vironments, most spectacularly in the clear-cuts of Northern America. It has also destroyed forestry jobs, via fossil fuel-pow-ered mechanisation, as fast as it has felled old-growth wood-lands, polluted rivers, wrecked fisheries, and eliminated vital wildlife habitat. It is often heavily subsidised out of the public purse too (http://www.wri.org/publication/perverse-habits).

Other generations and other speciesGreens broaden the ‘circle of concern’. Obviously this has major implications for public policy and personal lifestyle choices. For example, it means that economic matters cannot be left to mar-ket forces. Those yet to be born cannot ‘bid’ in the market place nor can non-humans. The needs of those alive today but with little income are similarly ignored in a system that favours the highest bidder. Only regulatory interventions can ensure that such considerations are taken into account.

Consideration of international equity also rules out certain technological choices. For example, those alive today might be said to benefit from electricity from currently operating nuclear power plants. They are creating radioactive wastes whose long-term safe disposal remains an unsolved, perhaps even insoluable, problem. So future generations will have no choice but to shoul-der that cost but will have received no ‘compensatory’ benefit. There is a parallel argument against the Private Finance Initiative and the way it dumps enormous bills on future tax payers.

Taking precautionsMainstream thinking tends to be bullish, not least about racing ahead with new technoloiges and going all-out for economic growth. Thus the science writer Michael Allaby once attacked Greens for being “timid little hobbits”. Indeed there is wide-spread hostility towards those who question ‘progress’. The abusive epithet ‘luddite’ is hurled at such heretics. Symptomatic were the bitter attacks launched upon the 1972 Limits To Growth report in books with titles like ‘The Doomsday Syndrome’.

Greens do indeed support what is sometimes called the ‘pre-cautionary principle’ and often call for in-depth studies about the likely impact of proposed developments before any final de-cision is made. Of course decision-making is often made in the comparative dark since there are often ‘unknowns’ and ‘never-to-be-knowns’. In such cases, caution is the key since meddling in complex systems does tend to boomerang.

This view goes beyond technology. Greens rue the loss of one language after another as well as many other cultural differ-ences as much as the spread of land use monocultures or single product economies. It is the equivalent of putting all one’s eggs in one basket. But such caution also extends to fields such as international relationships. In the abstract, there may be a case for ‘humanitarian’ military interventions in this or that trouble spot. Yet, they routinely backfire and often create a bigger mess than existed before. Once again, it pays not to be a bull in a china shop.

In that sense Green Politics is ‘conservative’. But its vision of lifestyles and socio-economic structures is radically different from that of today’s Conservatives and other fans of conven-tional ‘progress’.In the next part, the implication of the above values and perspectives for actual policies and manifestos will be explored.

12

Name the ‘green’!

8. Monkeyed around a lot but has done lots for animal wel-fare and wildlife conservation

6. Critic of the ‘megamachine’. including

modern conurbations

7. FoE founder but fell from Californian mountains club

4. ‘Daffodil’ man worried by the ravages of the Industrial Revolution

5. American very aware, contrary to contemporary faith in progress, that ‘man’ was modifying the ‘nature’… for the worse

2. Assisted appreciation of all species, not just people

3. He ‘naturally’ encouraged interest in flora and fauna,

first at Selbourne

1. Showed the ‘Way’ which started in China

13

Green QuizAnswers1. Laozi/Lao Tse ( ? )His name is written in different ways and his lifetime given dif-ferent dates yet he is central to that body of thought commonly called Taoism (or sometimes Daoism). This could be said to be the first coherent body of thought that sought to harmonise human living with the ‘way’, those patterns, rhythms, flows and cycles that characterise life on Earth.

2. Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226)Some critics, notably American historian Lynn White, castigate Christianity for its advocacy of a view that the rest of nature was created just to serve its lord and master, humankind. How-ever, there are other traditions within that broad church, includ-ing Francis of Assissi, founder of the Franciscan Order. He had a deep respect for non-human species, including what he called, according to legend, “sister birds” and “brother wolf”, all to be protected (the positive side of ‘stewardship’).

3. Gilbert White (1720-1793)White, a Church of England curate. pioneered what is common-ly called natural history in his study of the flora and fauna of Selbourne in Hampshire. He was one of the first to study other species in their habitats, not as specimens. Some call him the first ecologist (though it was not until 1866 that Haeckel first defined the term). White also encouraged vegetable gardening.

4. William Wordsworth (1770-1850)Romanticism has certain connotations of wooliness and soft-heartedness. But the Romantic poet William Wordsworth was a thoughtful and sharp critic of the then new ‘Industrial Revolu-tion’. Many contemporaries could only see money where there was unsustainable muck but Wordsworth realised Industrial-ism’s human and environmental costs. He was also a pioneer of the concept of national parks, recognising that areas like the Lake District would need public protection for the collective good.

5. George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882)Marsh was an American diplomat, businessman and naturalist. His contemporary Karl Marx praised the way capitalism had smashed feudalism’s fetters on production. It was opening the door, Marx argued, to a never-ending age of abundance, once capitalists themselves had been appropriated. Marsh’s Man and Nature was one of the first works to show that the blowbacks from human appropriation of nature would pull the rug from beneath this cornucopian fantasy.

6. Lewis Mumford (1895-1990)Many critics of society treat technology as a neutral tool, its development, use and impacts dependent upon the identity and purposes of its controllers. In reality, every technological system has inherent qualities from which consequences follow, regard-less of its owners or users. Few developed this insight more coherently than the American historian and philosopher Lewis Mumford. One innovation, the built ‘environment’, stands in greatest contrast to non-human Nature. Again Mumford’s writ-ings documented how the nature and impact of cities changed down the ages. He especially warned of the threat from urban sprawl.

7. David Brower (1912-2000)Few people have played as big a role as David Brower in the founding of so many environmental organisations from Friends of the Earth to the Earth Island Institute. But one of those or-ganisations, the Sierra Club, began to compromise over nuclear power and keep quiet about the threat from human numbers. Brower stuck to his green guns and was forced out. Brower’s book Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run is one of the best and most readable introductions to green thinking.

8. Jane Goodall (1934- )Goodall has worked tirelessly in her studies of wildlife, espe-cially chimpanzees. Her efforts have helped to promote wildlife conservation in general, especially in environmental hotspots like East Africa. She has also campaigned about the welfare of farm animals. Contrary to the canard about ‘green misanthropy’, Jane Goodall is also noted for her humanitarian work, not least the promotion of peace.

Get up-to-the-minute estimates of the total human population load on planet Earth from:

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.php;http://www.populationinstituteof-canada.ca/;http://www.populationinsync.net/;http://www.population-connection.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_us

No wonder we are called the ‘human race’.

14

UK Uncut ActionThis Saturday, 23rd Aprilin NewcastleMeet at the Monument at 12:00We’ll be targeting tax-avoiding businesses and banks

Here’s why.... Most of the tax-dodging happens by diverting profits through tax havens such as Switzerland.Large corporations can afford to employ experts in tax avoidance and, unbelievably, this is deemed legal,. BOOTSWorldwide profits last year £475m.Cash flow statement to March 2010 showed that just £14m was recorded as tax charged on those profits, or 3%. ARCADIA GROUPIncludes stores such as Top Shop, BHS, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins and Burton.Run by Philip Green but owned by his wife who lives in Monaco where she pays no tax.Total tax avoidance £285m. VODAFONELet off a £6 billion tax bill by Tory Chancellor George Osborne. TESCOEstimated tax dodged: over £100m. And, of course,THE BANKS…According to the Bank of England, the British taxpayer provided more than £1 trillion of public money to prevent the collapse of the banking system… caused by the banking system. Even the Banks that didn’t receive capital directly have benefited from the system being propped up by the rest of us. RBS last year announced losses of £1.93 billion, though paid out bonuses of £1.3 billion, despite the taxpayer owning 84% of the bank. The vast sums involved make it all seem a bit like monopoly money. But to give some perspective:Philip Green’s £285m would pay the salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses and the full, increased fees for almost 32,000 students. We are literally paying the price for this immoral practice in terms of public sector job cuts, the dismantling of the NHS, attacks on the vulnerable members of our society by the government’s targetting of people with disabilities and benefit claimants, higher education being gradually restricted so that mainly the well-heeled will be able to go to university.

15

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 for-ward for discussion. Just send your name, email address and the title of the topic and we’ll try to give it due publicity. Branch meetings usually take place on the first Wednesday on the month at the British Legion club, just down from the lons-dale pub and the West Jesmond metro station.

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 10 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. Thanks to John and Alison Whalley and to Tim Dowson for the pictures of the March 26 demonstration. Fred Stanback drew the ‘Running on Empty’ cartoon. We hope to carry a report on the crisis in local colleges in the next edition. We’d also wel-come challenging ‘questions’ of the kind that might be put to our candidates at election time. Then we can think of answers!

Meeting report: A 12th century church, consecrated at a time when New-castle’s citizens lived within Nature’s limits was, perhaps, an incongruous setting for a discussion on the excesses of contemporary global capitalism. Certainly, the ancient grave-stones, facing east towards the rising sun and the promise of Resurrection, spoke of a different age.

An audience of around 30 sat in a large circle for a meet-ing convened by Left Unity. The speaker was Professor Barry Gills, a Newcastle Green Party member who gave us the benefit of his expertise on the global financial crisis. He spoke for 30 minutes,only occasionally referring to notes on the structure of the international banking system and where it had gone wrong. He particularly highlighted the way the integration of retail and investment banking – unheard of in previous times – led to the collapse of the system at all levels.

He claimed that Steven Byers, a senior official at the Treasury at the time, must have forseen the coming crash but failed to act. and explained how the banking system needs fundamental reform. Immense financial (and political) power is now controlled by a few giant institutions.

In the following discussion, Jim Cousins, a former New-castle MP argued that Northern Rock be handed back to its members with its current asset levels intact and with ownership being on the basis of one member one share, rather than dependant on the size of an investors deposits.This proposal fitted well with an earlier suggestion by Barry that depositers can bring a bank down by withdrawing their funds at the same time: such a co-ordinated action had been carried out in Holland recently.

The meeting also showed that there is scope for joint work between Greens and at least some Reds.

Reporter: Laurence Ellacott

May Local Elections:

Candidates & wards

Help is urgently wanted.Tim Dowson (North Jesmond ward) 234, Jesmond Dene Rd, Jesmond.0191 2811665email: tim.dowson@blueyonder.co.uk

Tony Waterston (South Jesmond ward) 20, Burdon Terrace, Jesmond.0191 2816752email: a.j.r.waterston@ncl.ac.uk

Andrew Gray (South Heaton ward) 61, Addycombe Terace, Heaton.0191 2093140 email: andrewgray123@virginmedia.com Frances Hinton (East Gosforth ward)62 Hollywood Crescent, Gosforth.0191 2135284email: frances_hinton@yahoo.com

Sandy Irvine (West Gosforth ward)45, Woodbine Rd, Gosforth.0191 2844367 email: sandyirvine@blueyonder.co.uk

John Pearson (Wingrove ward)3, Belle Grove Place, Spital Tongues.0191 2325980email: john.pearson@unn.ac.uk