Climate strikes, democracy, and voting green.

[grok_mctanys]

I was in town on Friday 20th when the Climate Strike march was underway, and my mood was generally uplifted by the vibe of the protests, the message being sent, the number of people out there doing it, and the inventiveness of the protest sign slogans ("Keep Earth clean - it's not Uranus").

One of the chants that caught my ear ended with the line "This is what democracy looks like!"

It's a powerful line, but it's kind of weird, because what was happening was not democracy. Democracy is not about having your voice heard, it about having your voice count. Peaceful assembly and protest is not democracy - voting is.

To be sure, the right to peaceful assembly and protest is generally correlated with democracy, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient for a democratic state. Strict monarchies could allow for peaceful assembly and protest (and some have), and in theory a democracy could ban protests (or confine them to only happen in out of the way places where no-one would ever actually see them, either in designated "free speech zones", or outside large designated "exclusion zones", or some other authoritarian sounding nightmare) without impinging on citizens' right to vote and their core democratic nature.

So, how do you use democracy to make a change on climate?

Well, that's easy. Vote Green.

I did wonder how many of the people marching that day had actually voted green at the last local election, general election, or European parliament election. One of my friends pointed out that a fair proportion of the people protesting weren't old enough to vote, which is fair. But I'm not sure it's relevant, because I think the protesters are targetting the wrong people. The protesters seem to be targetting our current MPs, who are the ones that through their current inaction have already demonstrated their enduring loyalty to the businesses that are causing the problems. If the protesters want to use democracy to make a change, their protests should be targetting voters to vote for a different set of MPs - green MPs.

Another friend of mine pointed out that this was an issue because apparently a number of (UK) Green Party policies, in areas that don't intersect with the environment (e.g. education?), are "bonkers". This friend is better versed in the minutiae of political party manifestos than I, and much better versed in the practicalities of turning manifesto promises into government policy and executing on that, so I will not attempt to claim otherwise here.

However, if the problems of climate change are as severe, or as existential, as the climate strikers purport to believe, then even the potential problems that could be caused by a few non-environmental "bonkers" policies should be insignificant compared to the climate change problem that needs to be addressed. Also, it's possible that greens aren't particularly invested in their non-environmental policies. If it turns out that some of them aren't workable, isn't it likely that they'd change them for policies that were? At least, it seems that that is more likely than mainstream non-green parties changing their not-working environmental policies for ones that do - after all, they've had at least 30 years to fix their environmental policies at this point and have so far failed to do so.

(That's not even taking into account the notion that voting green will put pressure on the mainstream parties to have more comprehensive environmental policies, in order to win over those voters.)

So, climate strikers and climate strike sympathisers, if you want democracy to be a part of the solution to the climate problem, persuade everyone you can to vote green at the next election.

Comments

[little_frank]

If that friend is the same one who thought a Conservative government was a good idea, it's quite possible 'bonkers' for them just means left-wing. What I like about the Greens, apart from them taking climate issues seriously, is that they've dared to be more socialist than Labour. They'd have got my vote sooner and more often if we hadn't always been so at odds over nuclear power, but compared to what's going on now, that nuclear power disagreement feels petty. It's 2019 and we're astonishingly still burning coal, and it really is a disaster that will impact the lives people who are at school now. We're lucky that we'll probably die before the impact of our own choices really kicks in.

[grok_mctanys]

What I like about the Greens [...] is that they've dared to be more socialist than Labour.

I think that being an environmentalist is pretty much guaranteed to make anyone opposed to neoliberalism. The idea that if you have enough money you can pretty much do whatever you want because fines - if they are ever imposed at all - are just "the cost of doing business" is antithetical to protecting the environment. Nearly all (if not actually all) the major environmental problems we have are caused by giant multinational corporations trying as hard as they can to maximise shareholder value at the cost of everything else.

Legally restricting how corporations can exploit the environment for their own gain, and using tax money to preserve and restore the environment because that is something you implicitly care about is conceptually similar to restricting how corporations can exploit people (employees, customers, bystanders) for their own gain, and using tax money to protect and look after vulnerable members of society because they are what you implicitly care about.

I'd be very surprised to find any green movement anywhere that wasn't at least strongly socially democratic, if not further left than that.

[rich_jacko]

I've had another read of the Greens' most recent manifesto. To be fair, they're no longer pushing some of their more bonkers ideas, like the complete abolition of the nation state. They're still stuck in the fantasy student politics of claiming everyone can have magical unicorns, so long as we tax "the rich" in some vague, undefined way - but then, so are the current Labour party. And there is a lot of good stuff in there too.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said in this post. Persuading people to vote based on environmental policies would certainly help influence those in power. Any political party worth its salt has an environmental section of its manifesto these days. It's certainly a section I pay close attention to, but it's debatable how high up the priority list it is for some parties. The Greens are the only ones placing it at the top, meaning a vote for them sends a very clear signal. Unfortunately our stupid FPTP voting system means people who might otherwise vote Green feel they have to tactically vote for other parties. There's also the need to weigh up a whole range of factors when deciding how to cast a vote, but anything that can persuade us to give more weight to climate issues in making that decision has to be a good thing.

I don't, however, think the protesters shouldn't be targeting current political leaders as well. The scientific consensus seems to be that we need to act quickly, so we can't wait for long-term political change over a series of future elections. We need those in government to make more changes immediately. Strength of public opinion and damaging headlines will influence them.

I'm encouraged by the protests. I support their cause and their intention. I agree democracy is part of the solution. But protesting alone is not enough. Strikers and sympathisers all need to show that we mean it, and that we won't say one thing but yell and scream and vote against politicians if they take action to curb climate change which affects the way we live our lives. That we are genuinely committed to tackling climate change, not "only if it doesn't affect me". That means persuading every one of us to improve our habits when it comes to waste, energy use, transport, which companies we buy from, etc. And influence the people around us so that we collectively change attitudes and behaviour across the whole of society. That's a much bigger task.