This article by Brent Young Greens member Macsen Brown was first published on the Bright Green blog
LINK yesetrday and is republished with the author's permission.
The campaign for the 2019 General Election is well underway, and the
parties are well into the rhythm of things. The Lib Dems are cranking
out their dodgy bar charts, the Tories are hitting the scene with a
steady stream of lies and deception – and everyone is insisting that
they’re the only party that is taking the climate emergency seriously.
But it seems to me that there is only one party that is even remotely
close to understanding the radical political, economic and social
change that beating this civilisational crisis requires – and that is
the Green Party. This is of course my personal opinion, and by no means
an endorsement of the party on behalf of the wider school strike
movement or the UK Student Climate Network.
This snap election, originally called to resolve an artificial crisis
of Tory/Liberal creation, comes at the end of a year of change. It is
the cumulation of decades of neoliberalism, privatisation, greed and
austerity – which is in itself a continuation of centuries of
colonialist and capitalist exploitation of the Global South and of
workers everywhere.
This crisis began centuries ago, but every day that goes by it
increases in intensity. We missed our last chance to save the world
decades ago, what we are trying to do now is to limit the death count
and build a sustainable society that can better resist the catastrophe
this system has unleashed. Friday the 29th is a Global Climate Strike,
but here in the UK it is also opportunity for disenfranchised young
people like myself to make our voices heard. We strike monthly because
as it stands the government is not meeting our demands, the government
is failing to keep us safe.
Today thousands of us will be striking to demand that the UK economy
is completely decarbonised by 2030 through a Green New Deal. Integral to
this is a worker-led just transition away from the fossil fuel industry
and others that contribute to this climate crisis. The Green New Deal
calls for the rewilding and the restoration of habitats devastated by
the capitalist class’ rampant search for profit, it also calls for the
elimination of inequality on a local, national and global scale. The
political and economic system that gave us this crisis is responsible
for the destruction of communities and lives across the UK, but also
across the planet. The Green Party manifesto recognises this, pairing
radical environmental policies with a social transformation on a scale
that is simply not met by other parties.
The work of Labour for a Green New Deal has been phenomenal, and that
the membership did indeed pass a GND resolution at their most recent
conference – the fact remains that Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution
(though miles ahead of the Tories’ farce of a climate policy) has been
watered down by the leadership and as it stands lacks the ambition and
scope of a genuine Green New Deal. They will often point to their
success in getting parliament to declare a climate emergency as proof of
their worthiness, but words don’t cut it alone – and besides, it was
Green councillor Carla Denyer who got the first climate emergency motion
passed in Bristol.
The Lib Dems similarly fall short of the line with a failure to
commit to decarbonisation by 2030, and a continued endorsement of the
neoliberalism and austerity that continues to ravage our climate and our
communities.
We are also calling for a radical reformation of the way young people
are educated about the climate crisis – that the government Teach the
Future. The Green manifesto calls for an English Climate Emergency
Education Act (just like TTF) as well as putting schools back into the
hands of our communities, building links between students and the world
around them – both human and natural. We need to start preparing young
people for the new world that is coming, for better or worse; and the
Green Party’s evidence-based, pragmatic policy is a step towards we
need.
We are also asking that the government Tell the Future, with a
massive public information campaign that ensures everyone in the UK
genuinely understands the sheer scale and scope of this crisis, and what
needs to be done to fight back.
Finally, the future must be empowered. This means finally giving 16
and 17 year olds the vote, as a Green government would do, but it also
means going far, far beyond that. I feel very strongly that everyone
living in a country has a right to take part in that country’s
democratic process, that suffrage must be genuinely universal. This
means extending the franchise to prisoners and migrants as well as
removing the barriers that prevent people without fixed addresses from
exercising their right.
But what use is having a vote if it counts for nothing? What this
crisis shows us is that now, just as we always have, we need a
democratic revolution. This means electing national representatives by
the fairest system (STV), organising ourselves horizontally with maximal
direct participation from people in their communities, making decisions
as a community. It’s not just Cymru, Alba and Éire, we all need
independence from Westminster.
Of course, the Green Party is not perfect, but looking at the choice
that adults will have to make in December it seems to me that they’re by
far the best one you can make.
It’s time we stopped settling for second best, that we stopped
picking the lesser of many evils. We are often sneered at and called
idealists, but in reality I can think of no party more pragmatic and
rational than the Greens. There can be no delusion that things can go on
as they are, that we can compromise or find a middle ground between
climate justice and genocide. We must do what reality demands, not what
politicians can be bothered to do.
Header image credit: Stephen Smith – Creative Commons
