So what is "Green" anyway?
What does it mean to be green?
The essential problem for the party, in my opinion, is to define what "green" is and to communicate it with the public. The 10 key values are a wonderful tool, but they need to be filled in, especially as they relate to the economy.
There have been a number of good books on green economics lately, and one of the best summaries comes from Brian Milani's " DESIGNING THE GREEN ECONOMY." A basic summary can be found here.
I offer this as a beginning, as a way of stimulating discussion:
Green economics is not just about the environment. Certainly we must move to harmonize with natural systems, to make our economies flow benignly like sailboats in the wind of ecosystem processes. But doing this requires great human creativity, tremendous knowledge, and the widespread participation of everyone. Human beings and human workers can no longer serve as cogs in the machine of accumulation, be it capitalistic or socialistic. Ecological development requires an unleashing of human development and an extension of democracy. Social and ecological transformation go hand-in-hand.
Green economics and green politics both emphasize the creation of positive alternatives in all areas of life and every sector of the economy. Green economics does not prioritize support for either the "public" or the "private" sector. It argues that BOTH sectors must be transformed so that markets express social and ecological values, and the state becomes merged with grassroots networks of community innovation. For this to happen, new economic processes must be designed, and new rules of the game written, so that incentives for ecological conduct are built into everyday economic life. The state can then function less as a policeman, and more as a coordinator. This is a very different kind of "self-regulation" than current profit- and power- driven market forces. The basis for self-regulation in a green economy would be community, and intelligent design which provides incentives for the right things.
Here are ten interrelated principles that cover key dimensions of a green economy:
1. The Primacy of Use-value, Intrinsic Value & Quality: This is the fundamental principle of the green economy as a service economy, focused on end-use, or human and environment needs. Matter is a means to the end of satisfying real need, and can be radically conserved. Money similarly must be returned to a status as a means to facilitate regenerative exchanges, rather than an end in itself. When this is done in even a significant portion of the economy, it can undercut the totalitarian power of money in the entire economy.
2. Following Natural Flows: The economy moves like a proverbial sailboat in the wind of natural processes by flowing not only with solar, renewable and "negawatt" energy, but also with natural hydrological cycles, with regional vegetation and food webs, and with local materials. As society becomes more ecological, political and economic boundaries tend to coincide with ecosystem boundaries. That is, it becomes bioregional.
3. Waste Equals Food: In nature there is no waste, as every process output is an input for some other process. This principle implies not only a high degree of organizational complementarity, but also that outputs and by-products are nutritious and non-toxic enough to be food for something.
4. Elegance and Multifunctionality: Complex food webs are implied by the previous principle--integrated relationships which are antithetical to industrial society's segmentation and fragmentation. What Roberts & Brandum (1995) call "economics with peripheral vision", this elegance features "problem-solving strategies that develop multiple wins and positive side-effects from any one set of actions".
5. Appropriate Scale / Linked Scale: This does not simply mean "small is beautiful", but that every regenerative activity has its most appropriate scale of operation. Even the smallest activities have larger impacts, however, and truly ecological activity "integrates design across multiple scales", reflecting influence of larger on smaller and smaller on larger (Van der Ryn and Cowan, 1996).
6. Diversity: In a world of constant flux, health and stability seem to depend on diversity. This applies to all levels (diversity of species, of ecosystems, of regions), and to social as well as ecological organization.
7. Self-Reliance, Self-Organization, Self-Design: Complex systems necessarily rely on "nested hierarchies" of intelligence which coordinate among themselves in a kind of resonant dance. These hierarchies are built from the bottom up, and--in contrast to civilization's social hierarchies--the base levels are the most important. In an economy which moves with ecosystem processes, tremendous scope for local response, design and adaptation must be provided--although these local and regional domains must be attuned to larger processes. Self-reliance is not self-sufficiency, but facilitates a more flexible and holistic interdependence.
8. Participation & Direct Democracy: To enable flexibility and resilience, ecological economic design features a high "eyes to acres" ratio (Van der Ryn & Cowan, 1996)--that is, lots of local observation and participation. Conversely, ecological organization and new information/communications technologies can provide the means for deeper levels of participation in the decisions that count in society.
9. Human Creativity and Development: Displacing resources from production and tuning into the spontaneous productivity of nature requires tremendous creativity. It requires all-round human development that entails great qualities of nurture. These are qualities of giving and real service that have been suppressed (especially in men) by the social and psychological conditioning of the industrial order. In green change, the personal and political, the social and ecological, go hand-in-hand. Social, aesthetic and spiritual capacities become central to attaining economic efficiency, and become important goals in themselves.
10. The Strategic role of the Built-environment, the Landscape & Spatial Design: As Permaculturalist Bill Mollison has emphasized, the greatest efficiency gains can often be achieved by a simple spatial rearrangement of system components. Elegant, mixed-use integrated design which moves with nature is place-based. In addition, our buildings, in one way or another, absorb around 40 per cent of materials and energy throughput in North America. Thus, conservation and efficiency improvements in this sector impact tremendously on the entire economy.
Green economic conversion must be radical, but it must also be incremental and organic. How is this possible? Rodale cites the need for a kind of economic succession which mimics ecological landscape change. We need "pioneer enterprises" which can thrive in today's hostile economic landscape, but also prepare the ground for more ecological and egalitarian enterprises to come. A vision of what each sector of the economy would look like in an ecological economy--based on the specifics of each place--is a starting point. This vision must be coupled with practical action in each of these sectors, gradually moving toward this vision. Enough practical activity can eventually generate the impetus for state action to level the playing field for ecological alternatives.
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An excellent first post to kick things off. Thank you.
David Orton's take on green economics. While both of these works provide outstanding frameworks, it's too easy to miss seeing the forest if we're rich in ideological purity and poor in election victories. I think one of the basic initial steps which must be undertaken is to link green economics with job creation. I'm going to be working on this and will hopefully be able to contribute something on the macro level in the near future; however, in order to provide candidates with better analyses which are tailored to their specific constituencies, a case by case breakdown of the actual impact of green economics would be more useful.
Secondly, I believe we need to link green economics with current trends, particularly the rising costs of gasoline and healthcare. Obviously, we can't depend on the corporate parties to provide sustainable solutions in these matters; consequently, it falls on us to educate the public on the economic benefits of such things as universal healthcare and amending CAFE standards. In the case of the former, the corporate parties are so awash in campaign contributions from the healthcare mafia that they are incapable of representing either the interest or will of the American public. Currently, we have two viable options. The first would be to extend Medicare to all. The second would be the creation of a new universal system based upon one of the already existing models, perhaps the Canadian system or one of the European models. Nevertheless, Greens must crunch the numbers and be able to prove how we can actually pay for whichever plan is more economically feasible.
In the case of the latter, we have to utilize tangible steps incrementally in order to alter the automobile culture within this nation. This is a hard sell which cuts across a great many economic boundaries; however, simply raising current CAFE standards to 40 mpg saves millions at the pump and reduces both our dependence on foreign oil as well as CO2 emissions. While these are worthy objectives within themselves, their combined effect also produces economic ripples in other areas as well. Reducing our dependence on foreign oil would greatly reduce our defense requirements while decreasing CO2 emissions has postive ramifications for both health care costs as well as the negative economic repercussions of global warming.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we must be able to prove the economic benefits of a cleaner environment. Again, it's a matter of linking jobs to such things as the development and implementation of alternative fuels, the maintenance of healthier forests and the creation of naturally cleaner fresh water supplies. Granted, it's a David v. Goliath scenario as the corporate-owned MSM operates against us in our attempts to get this information out to the public; however, there's too much at stake not to wage the battle. Establishing these economic links and honing our overall message into a package our candidates can sell is the key to accomplishing our goals both within our greener ideological economic framework as well as the ballot box.
The only way that I see feasible to attack the horribl trade-offs that are foisted upon us like jobs vs. the environment is to go to root causes.
The neo-classical economics school came into existence at the turn of the 19th century fundamentally changing the three seperate and distinct factors of production (land, labor, capital) into a dualistic debate (labor vs. capital) as land as part of the commons was purposely conflated as private capital.
The ONLY result that could come of this was the problem we have today called negative externalities - as cost/benefits are allowed via government granted privilege to be accrued/shifted from one group (politically connected) onto society as a whole.
The way to address this is to go back to the classical liberal view and SOCIALIZE the natural benefits of enclosing the commons and PRIVATIZE the externalities so that true costs are reflected at the point of purchase.
So rather than pushing for job creation - we should be pushing for a citizens dividend that is capitalize from the private enclosure of the natural commons to once and for all break the back of capital.
Interestingly at the same time as the neo-classical revolution was the fraudulently decided supreme court case that allowed corporations artificial personhood status.
This can also be viewed as an enclosing of the social commons...