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Introduction-A As well as outlining global remedies, the following points substantiate means of deriving greater efficacy from Green involvement in parliamentary politics. The platform available there is optimally used for enlightening the public and parliamentarians about our real-world situation. Policies should maximise insight from having them heard, and show the way forward in developing New Zealand's "exemplary" peacemaking and conservation role within the global community. For example, policy to 'legalise marijuana use' would have better effect pitched as a referendum, for people to choose a consistent approach to toxin consumption: 'Legalise marijuana, or ban alcohol?' More understanding of connected issues would result from people having to thoughtfully decide such questions - mainly industrial ownership of recreation, with health and civic downsides, in this case. Holistically telling it like it is will take us much farther than moderating our message for coalition consumption. There is a right to know real perspective on life, about which rare, uncompromising honesty would translate into electoral growth. The goal of vaguely and narrowly positioning Green concerns as centrist - "neither left nor right" - is clearly failing due to the fickle, self-interested flightiness of the right-of-centre vote. These are not our natural constituency, nor the most numerous, as Green policies do challenge centrist complacency most often. A bold, radical coherence from left of Labour right through to centre is what's required, offering clear political sense and direction. This means becoming more of a labour party than Labour is, absorbing Labour's pro-worker initiatives but outreaching social democracy theoretically, organisationally, and historically. Social democracy's reforming epoch is over, and the task is to succeed rather than reproduce it. Attractive as "Buy Kiwi Made" is as nationalist rallying cry, it is both ultimately futile against globally devaluing forces and tempting dangerously regressive protectionism: trade barriers raised around declining markets are the main historic route to World Wars. Greens must be comprehensively specific about the future we are trying to build, and the malformations to be left behind. |
Green Future offers a practical programme for connecting the Green politics of today with a salvaged, surviveable ecosystem of the near Future. Another example: it is not that science and genetic research are destructive per se, but that they are presently advanced for private, rather than public, gain. Such a shift in policy emphasis would offer starker contrast, and more real choice, than blanket opposition on simplistic principle and national stereotype. The solutions we supply need to be global rather than national, in both purpose and framework. A vigorous campaign against advertising - where abstracted from a product or an entity's premises or transport - is the perfect starting point: against a grossly wasteful, destructive, and distracting tax-dodge trade, made fully redundant by the advent of pull technology (the internet). Push technologies (like broadcast) are under pressure from economics across the board. Email spam demonstrates precisely why the present production mechanisms lock in minimised productivity, and therefore must change. Energy policy is the essential proof for Green electoral viability; on top of this hangs food - and therefore all - production. In anti-nuclear New Zealand, policy options are especially limited but do indicate solutions applicable globally. Total energy expenditure by human society on Earth currently exceeds the rate by which it is arriving from the sun - and is thus fixable by photosynthesis or photovoltaic cells - by a factor of 400:1 and climbing hyperbolically. The looming exhaustion of fossil fuel and uranium reserves mean that greatly enhanced technological innovation, coupled with massive economic downsizing, is our only hope. That describes nothing short of a restructured world society, and any lesser statement to voters is way short on truth. Thus, through the unpalatability of its core message, the electoral route is highly problematic for realising the humanitarian Green vision. We must acknowledge this fact, and develop supplementary mass dynamics for survival through social change. Continuing illusions in social democratic reforms can only frustrate that responsibility. Catchphrase: Green Solutions ~ solutions that work |