Green Party

By Gerard Di Trolio - Rank and File, May 23, 2019

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s volte-face on liquified natural gas (LNG) projects in British Columbia is a welcome development. The policy reversal seems to stem from the recent victory of the Green Party in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith by-election on May 6 which saw the NDP lose a seat they previously held. Whatever the precise reason, the Federal NDP now has responded to the policy weakness they had with which that the Greens were able to outflank them from the left.

However, the protests at the Unist’ot’en Camp by members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation against the Coastal GasLink Pipeline should not be overlooked when it comes to bringing wider attention to the problems of LNG projects.

Singh’s new opposition to LNG is not without controversy from some of the NDP’s ostensible allies. B.C. unions whose members will work on the LNG pipeline are now going public with their displeasure with this policy change.

Leaders of Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 1611 and International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Canada, the unions that will be working on the project believe Singh is putting putting the jobs of their members at risk and that the Coastal GasLink Pipeline that will run from Dawson Creek to Kitimat has the “social licence” to go ahead.

But this is not the way for labour. The better approach is a  just transition, which seeks to build a green and sustainable economy where workers in carbon-intensive industries are not left behind, and which restructures the economy to also meet other social justice goals. If unions don’t step up and articulate a program for a green transition that is also a just transition then workers and everyone else who aren’t among the elite are going to be battered by climate change and by whatever responses that capital comes up with – like ignoring worker interests – once they realize they can’t ignore a warming planet any more.

By María Marta Travieso, Maria Prieto, Moustapha Kamal Gueye - Green European Journal, June 29, 2018

Climate and the future of work are two of the biggest challenges facing the world today and one cannot be tackled without the other. International institutions, in cooperation with governments, unions and employers, are pushing for a just transition that can shift the economy away from destructive forms of production while maintaining quality of life for all.

As we see the lives of many millions of people severely affected by extreme weather events, it is now accepted by most countries that human activity is causing the planet’s climate to change and that, therefore, it is in humanity’s interest to change its behaviour. A clear body of evidence demonstrates that human-induced climate change is well underway and that there are serious consequences of failure to limit the global temperature rise to at most 2° Celsius over pre-industrial levels. The ensuing environmental damage could prove irreversible and pose a threat to humanity itself.

If climate change is a consequence of human activity, then that activity is, for the most part, work or work-related. It is therefore no coincidence that climate change tends to be benchmarked against pre-industrial levels. And if work is the predominant cause of climate change, then inevitably it must be central to strategies to prevent, mitigate, and adapt to it.

An acknowledgement of shared responsibility was demonstrated through the Paris Agreement on climate change and the 2030 agenda for sustainable development with its associated 17 goals. In the declaration supporting the 2030 agenda, world leaders committed to “take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path.”

By Zebedee Parkes - Green Left Weekly, February 17, 2017

My generation has never experienced a below average temperature. The last time the global temperature was below average was in February 1985.

The recent heatwaves across Australia ushered in a new record-breaking summer: every year for the past decade has been hotter than the last.

Meanwhile our political leaders — privileged white men in suits — brought coal into parliament and made jokes while they and their corporate mates continue to burn our collective future.

We are already getting a taste of what our future holds if we do not take urgent action.

Extreme bushfires have burnt down entire towns across Australia in the past couple of years. Pacific islands are already becoming uninhabitable due to rising sea levels. Climate change-induced droughts in Syria destroyed its agriculture and helped create the conditions that led to the civil war. Floods in Pakistan in 2011 affected 5.4 million people, destroying crops and leaving millions displaced, forced to live in makeshift shelters without access to safe drinking water. The Himalayan glaciers are already melting, potentially leaving 2 billion people across Asia without sufficient drinking water.

The consequences of climate change will only get worse if we do not make serious changes rapidly. Already the Artic Sea ice is melting, which could mean sea level rises of 3–5 metres, making many coastal cities uninhabitable.

This ecological crisis is the result of human activity. Because of a constant drive for profits, corporations are felling the Amazon rainforest at an alarming rate to create cattle pastures for beef production. The Amazon forest is one of the most crucial in the world in terms of soaking up carbon dioxide.

When we desperately need to reduce emissions, corporations, often backed and funded by governments, continue to build major fossil fuel projects, such as the Adani coalmine, poison our water and destroy farmland with gas fracking projects and pursue unsustainable projects that are destroying crucial ecosystems, such as the Beeliar Wetlands and the Great Barrier Reef.

No matter how urgent the need for action on climate change, corporations and their governments refuse to change. 

Solar power is now cheaper in some parts of the world than fossil fuels. In Australia, scientific studies show we have the capacity to have 100% renewables in 10 years. Yet the government continues to give billions a year in subsidies to fossil fuel corporations — money that could be going to renewable energy.

Since the international climate talks in Paris in December 2015, when the world cried out for serious climate action, Australia’s big four banks have poured $5.6 billion into fossil fuels. Governments and the fossil fuel industry are not going to change their destructive practices unless we force them to.

To do this and give ourselves a chance of a future we need to change our economic system. Right now eight men own more wealth — and all the privileges and power that go with it — than the poorest 50% of the Earth’s population.

For serious climate action to be a reality we need a society where the majority of people — workers, farmers, students, the poor, First Nations people and refugees, the victims of climate change — are making decisions in the interests of our collective future.  

To achieve this will take a gigantic struggle. But it also presents an opportunity to change the world. As Naomi Klein, author of Capitalism vs the Climate said: “I think climate change can be the catalyst we need … In a world where profit is consistently put before both people and the planet, climate economics has everything to do with ethics and morality.”

If we address climate change, we can begin to construct the kind of world we want to live in.

By Álvaro Robles Cartes, Francisco Seijo, and Josetxu Guijarro Urízar - Green European Journal, February 22, 2017

Beyond the tit-for-tat factional politicking that we have come to expect of North American democracy and its complex cryptic political rhetoric, the Trump presidency may ultimately prove to be the most unwillingly transformative administration yet regarding the unfolding global warming drama. For the first time since 1969 an American president has fearlessly decided to skip over mountains of scientific evidence and decades of politically correct platitudes to place the issue at the centre of his presidency’s political agenda; albeit if only in an effort to deny it. Trump may, however, prove to be a blessing in disguise for climate activism; a singular turning point for the largely inconsequential political strategies that activists have conceived to advance their cause so far.

As the classic protest song from the 1960s would have it, “There’s battle lines being drawn and nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”. Indeed, Trump has managed to draw, in only a few weeks’ time, new lines in the climate change political battle with bold, abstract expressionist strokes that may have an initially shocking aesthetic effect but may prove, ultimately, to be only intelligible as a representation of Trump’s peculiar personality. Propagandistically, no doubt, Trump has been astute in reducing a complex scientific and intellectual debate to 140-character Twitter sound bites suggesting geopolitical conspiracy theories that have undoubtedly resonated with politically sceptical and economically depressed working and middle class Americans. Tellingly, Trump’s campaign spin that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by China with the goal of making American industry non-competitive is vaguely reminiscent of German nationalists’ concerns in the 1970s that the Nixon administration was trying to use the issue to check Germany’s emerging industrial power. In due course, this politically clever tweet could come back to bite Trump since the relaxation of American environmental legislation to regain industrial competitiveness can only result in more climate induced environmental disasters for the American workers whose interests he claims to prioritise. A form of socio-environmental dumping that Trump, ironically, accuses his main commercial rivals of inflicting upon America.

By Paul Gregoire - Sydney Criminal Lawyers, February 16, 2017

Web Admin's Note: the IWW does not endorse or make alliances with political parties, even green or socialist parties, however, we are posting this article for information purposes due to the program of the caucus mentioned in the following article:

Left Renewal is a group of left-leaning rank and file members of the NSW Greens party that caused a stir amongst the broader Australian Greens, when they announced their presence in December last year and declared their anti-capitalist agenda

The arrival of this socialist group has posed a challenge to the mainstream Greens as a whole, as they’ve always stated that there are no factions within the party ranks. The party line has always been that they’re self-governing and their policies are based on a consensus model.

However, Left Renewal tend to differ on these points. They believe the Greens have strayed from their more radical roots. And that today, the party doesn’t formulate all of their policies democratically and some of the party leaders aren’t elected.

Calling themselves a tendency, as the term faction has negative connotations, Left Renewal base their ideology on the four pillars that the Australian Greens were founded upon. These are ecological sustainability, grassroots democracy, social justice, and peace and non-violence.

By Mika Minio-Paluello - Scottish Green MSPs, August 2015

The North Sea oil industry says jobs are threatened by falling oil prices. But a better future for Scotland is possible. More and better jobs. A safer and more stable economy. Stronger communities. A long-term future as an energy exporter. Moving from energy colonialism to energy democracy.

This better future won't come with tax cuts for oil corporations and trying to extract every last barrel. It means changing direction – towards arapidtransition away from fossil fuels.

This will require a wholescale change of UK economic policy away from austerity and toward investmentin the new economy.

This report shows that sustainable sectors in the new economy can employ significantly more people than currently work in fossil fuel industries. Scotland can create stable jobs for those who need them, wipe out fuel poverty, do its bit to stem climate change and re-localise economies.

We researched and analysed existing and potential employment in offshore wind and marine energy, forestry and sustainable biomass, retrofitting buildings, decommissioning the North Sea, synthetic gas, and training and research.

Projections were built on conservative estimatesof the jobs required for a rapid andambitious energy transition.We didn't include new jobs in public transport, solar, waste, renewing the electricity grid, energy storage or climate adaptation.

Our calculations show that there are 156,000 workers employed in fossil fuel extraction in Scotland, of which one third are export-oriented jobs. The new economy could in comparison employ more than 200,000in 2035.

Read the report (PDF).

By Andrea Bunting - Green Left Weekly, June 20, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The federal government is keen to cut the age pension. Its latest proposal to double the taper rate on the assets test has been supported by the Greens on the basis that this measure will reduce government support to those with significant wealth.

The Greens also hoped that by supporting these pension cuts, the government would rein in tax concessions on superannuation. However, the government has since publicly ruled out any superannuation changes.

So the deal does not reduce benefits given to the rich. It reduces benefits to those in the middle, while providing a small benefit — about $15 per week — to pensioners with modest assets. The poorest pensioners receive nothing extra.

National Seniors Australia has expressed concern that these changes will reduce pensions, while not addressing superannuation tax concessions.

The government provides support for people’s retirement through the age pension and through tax concessions on superannuation. The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) and Mercer have modelled the total lifetime government support for retirement incomes received by those on different levels of income.

Their modelling found that the bottom 10% of earners average about $400,000 in government retirement support over their lifetime. Meanwhile, the top 10% of earners average about $489,000. This group doesn’t even get the age pension.

But the greatest government largesse is reserved for those in the top 1% income range. The modelling showed that the richest 1% receive on average around $630,000 of lifetime government support. Under the new law, lifetime support for some middle income earners has now been slashed to $214,000.

By Kevin Doyle - Kevin Doyle Blog, February 16, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The town of Wyhl is located in south-west Germany in the state of Baden-Württemberg, not far from the Alps.  Wyhl and its hinterland is largely agricultural and is also rich in terms of natural beauty.  Even so, in the early 70s, Wyhl was chosen as the preferred location for a nuclear power plant.  The technology had been under development in West Germany since the 1950s but it was really only in the late 60s and early 70s that the German state moved to make nuclear power the cornerstone of its future energy needs.

There was immediate opposition to the proposal in Wyhl and over a number of years planners and politicians were lobbied to oppose the project – all to no avail.  In February 1975, building contractors moved onto land near the town to prepare for construction.  A few days later local activists and farmers occupied the site and prevented preparatory work from progressing.  The police intervened and removed the protestors but the subsequent publicity – which exposed heavy-handed police tactics – drew attention to the struggle in Wyhl.  A short while after nearly 30,000 people – including large numbers of students from nearby Freiberg University – converged on the site and all work was halted on the construction of the power station.  Less than a month after, faced with ongoing protests and occupations, the grand plan to make Wyhl nuclear was abandoned.  In an ironic twist the site for the power plant was later turned into a nature reserve.[1]

The victory at Wyhl is considered to be one of the first major successes of West Germany’s impressive anti-nuclear movement which held sway mainly in the 1970s and 80s.  Other significant confrontations were to follow – such as that at Grohnde[2] and Brokdorff [3] – but Wyhl is noteworthy for the decisiveness of the victory.  How did this happen?  A key factor was local involvement and resistance.  A second feature was the willingness to commit to direct action – such as the site occupations.  A third and vital factor was the movement’s ability to win practical support in large numbers when the West German state opted to use its repressive hand.  This wider support and solidarity was vital to what was eventually achieved.

The German green movement was an important component of the broad anti-nuclear mobilisation in that country.  They played a role in building that struggle and were, at the same time, fundamentally influenced by it.   Local activity, which focused on local issues and which utilised local action, was a key ingredient in growth.  Grass roots participation was also highly valued as was consciousness-raising around the issues and concerns of the day.  In other words before the greens ever became Die Grünen, the political party, they were a coalition of all sorts of practical activists – citizens action groups, campaigners against nuclear power, anti-militarists and pacifists as well as anti-capitalists.[4]  Politically speaking they drew their membership largely from the radical left – anarchist, New Left and Maoist ideas were all part of the mix – but no one ideology wielded a decisive influence.[5]

Two factors were important to the political challenge that the green movement came to represent.  The first was the emerging importance of “environmentalism” and “ecologism” as political issues.  Seen from the perspective of today, environmentalism and concern about the earth’s resources appear to be a mainstream issues, but back in the early 70s, concern about the impact of human development on the earth’s ecology was decidedly new.[6]  Central to this was the green perception that capitalism itself was a key part of problem that the environmental movement faced. Capitalism’s unrelenting demand for growth, its voracious search for new markets and cheaper raw materials were core to its dynamism.  Yet these same elements were directly at odds with the earth’s environment and green movement’s contention that the planet had exhaustible, finite resources that needed to be carefully managed and minded. For this reason significant sections of the Green movement held that social and economic transformation away from the dictates of the ‘free market’ would have to take place if the environment was to be saved.[7]

A second factor was that the early green movement was also about a different way of doing things.  Its evolution – as indicated by protests such as that at Wyhl – emphasised grassroots involvement and participative democracy.  But in practice too there was a commitment to doing things ‘a different way’.  This translated into an anti-professional, participatory and decentralised attitude to party organisation.   Horizontal organisational forms were favoured over traditional ‘top-down’ arrangements, as were internal organisational practices that promoted and maintained grassroots empowerment and participation.

The overall praxis then – maintaining a radical organisational form that encouraged and facilitated participation as part of the process of building a movement for change – was seen as core to the green perspective.

Key protests such as that at Wyhl had been successful because such actions were locally based and relied heavily on the active participation of grassroots members.  However this ‘local’ nature of the early green movement also meant that from early days and in some regional areas, sections of the greens also openly intervened at city and regional level elections.  These initiatives were initially tactical and relied heavily on the emerging movement’s ability to exploit the rivalries that existed between the dominant political parties in West German politics – the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats.[8]  Broadly speaking these electoral initiatives fared well (winning modest, locally valued concessions) with the result that there was increasing openness to using such methods if the opportunities presented themselves.   In the early days these electoral tactics were used in conjunction with (or parallel to) tactics involving direct action.[9]  This parallel approach – using extra-parliamentary action alongside a visible parliamentary presence – was an old strategy of the Left’s and quite viable.[10]

Inevitably, however, the greens moved to consolidate this base of operations and this culminated in the formation of the German Green Party (Die Grünen or The Greens) in 1980 at Karlsruhe.[11]