Toward an Ecology-oriented Politics

In my last blog post I advocated a "conscious movement back to simpler and more basic lifeways ... relating first and foremost to the primary reality of nature and local community."

An early book centered around this perspective was published forty years ago. It was called The Greening of America. Books like that one, plus the inauguration of annual celebrations of Earth Day, led to the development of a global movement for Green (ecology-oriented) politics.

There are now Green parties in over 90 countries worldwide.

Most advanced democracies run under an electoral system called Proportional Representation. PR means that a party which polls 10% of the vote gets 10% of the representation in the parliament. This makes it possible for new parties, advocating new ideas, to get a foothold in the system.

At first, during the 1970s and 1980s, the idea of an ecology-oriented politics was very new, so the Green parties had the support of only about 5% of the electorate. In the U.S., which does not have Proportional Representation, only 5% support relegates a party to the margins, making it hard for a new party to get much in the way of publicity or financial resources.

But in Europe and other countries that have PR, 5% support gets you a voice in the parliament, so a new party with some good new ideas can find itself taken seriously before too long. This is what happened with the Green parties in many countries over the last thirty years.

Members of the Green Party sit in the parliaments of every major European country. In Germany, for example, the Green Party has advanced from 5% support in 1980 to 10% support by 2000, and the Greens now regularly garner 20% support at the polls.

There is a Green Party in the United States (www.GP.org), but it faces obstacles trying to operate within an electoral system that is not conducive to the growth of new parties. America has basically had an only-two-serious-choices electoral system for 150 years (since the "third party" called the Republicans had a major breakthrough with a candidate named Abraham Lincoln in 1860!).

I'll be on the ballot this November as the Green Party candidate for State Assembly in our district (that's Legislative District 14, which includes Cranbury, Hamilton, Hightstown, Jamesburg, Monroe, Plainsboro, Robbinsville and Spotswood in addition to East Windsor). I've been a supporter of the Green Party for almost twenty years.

There are many reasons why I support the Green Party, but I'll give just three here:

1) I like the idea that the international movement for Green politics is working to change the direction our global society is going in.

2) Americans could benefit from having more choices on the ballot in each election.

3) The Democrats and Republicans both are very beholden to the big-money contributors who enable them to run exorbitantly expensive campaigns. The Green Party's main base of funding comes from "the grassroots" . . . i.e., modest contributions from enthusiastic individual local donors.

Below is a list of what's called the "Ten Key Values" of the Green Party. In future blog posts I'll present a detailed exposition of each of these fundamental principles and I'll also write more about my own campaign. For now, please think about how this set of values defines a perspective which is quite distinct from that of either the Democrats or the Republicans . . .

The Ten Key Values of the Green Party:

. Ecological Wisdom
. Social Justice
. Grassroots Democracy
. Nonviolence
. Decentralization
. Community-Based Economics
. Feminism
. Respect for Diversity
. Personal and Global Responsibility
. Future Focus/Sustainability