Reponding to climate change and peak oil: reclaiming the commons.

• Author: Orton, David

We must live at a level that we seriously can wish others to attain, not at a level that requires the bulk of humanity not to reach. --Arne Naess, Philosophical Dialogues: Arne Naess and the Progress of Ecophilosophy, p. 224. The Greens have become a party of timorous environmentalists attempting to bring in a few petty environmental reforms, and the majority of them have become adherents of eco-capitalism. Their programs and policies are full of inner contradictions, which arise from the fact that they are afraid of telling voters hard ecological truths. --Saral Sarkar, witing about the German Green Party in Eco-socialism or Eco-capitalism? 1999, p.200. I believe the understanding that the climate is changing, and that this is for the worse, is starting to penetrate the consciousness of many people. We seem to be in an era when many also understand that "peak oil" and "peak natural gas" have arrived or are about to arrive. What this will mean for a global production and distribution economy, totally addicted to fossil fuels, and for the economic, social, political, cultural, and military relationships built around this, is now being argued.

Yet deeper electoral Greens, while believing that we must try to change industrial society's and our own destructive obsessions, remain unsure whether or not this is possible. This message, not that of optimism, should be part of any truthful message to the electorate. Greens, as a social movement and as a political party, need to make it clear that one of their basic messages, which sets them apart from all other parties, is that voting Green means less industrial consumer goods for those in the so-called developed industrial societies, and a greatly increased living space for other species. As this may not be a vote-getting message, it is absent from the federal Green Party electoral platform in Canada.

Revolutionary or reformist ideas?

Talking about climate change and peak oil is an opportunity for those in support of deeper green thinking to take part in a discussion which can be truly revolutionary in its implications for ecological and social change. But on what basis do we as Greens enter these discussions? Is the basis one of timorous reformism--limiting ourselves to what amounts to incrementalism (within a taken-for-granted market fundamentalism), which is the eco-capitalism referred to in Saral Sarkar's quotation? Do we present the view, as given in Tim Flannery's recent, much praised book...