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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.
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.
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