FROM GREEN PRINCIPLES TO POLITICS (original) (raw)

"Arguing that a principled standpoint is a condition for any person or movement seeking to effect real social change, this book foregrounds social and environmental justice as against economic imperatives based on accumulation, profit and endless growth. If the world's resources are to be saved for future generations, the world's citizens will have to assume a standpoint based on a set of ethical considerations and principles which are directly opposed to the overarching imperatives of the global economy. But these principles will also have to be in favour of something, confronting the world with a positive vision of change in order to inspire and motivate effort. This book argues that the reality of environmental crisis and the prospect of future social transformation challenges our science and our values. Whilst it is plain that change is normal in the history of the planet and that human beings, as change agents, are very adept at responding to change, the nature of the contemporary environmental crisis is the uncertainty with respect to the levels, character and timings of changes. And the evidence is that the rates of change may well be increasing, with a whole number of practical implications. The book examines the key questions within the many-sided predicament concerning the factors influencing environmental change and how to respond to that change: How is nature conceived and how should nature be conceived? What should human beings do and how should human beings act? What are the objects and what principles should action be guided by? In putting these questions the paper is concerned to relate Green politics not only to the scientific analysis of the environmental crisis but above all to moral, cultural and psychological states and attitudes. This implies that ecologists need to discover and advance answers to the moral, social and political questions that are of most concern to individuals. This comes with the corollary that ecologists in politics should leave most of their scientific capital behind and address individuals on the level of the issues that most concern them. What kind of world do people want to live in? What kind of social and natural landscape fits this world? What contribution can people make and what can people do to move that part of the world in which they live and work in this direction, whether as individuals alone or as part of a collective project? Of course, the life support systems of planet earth is a universal cause which gives some substance to notions of the common good. Humankind as a whole has a common interest in protecting life on this planet. Ecology as politics can therefore envisage the inclusive politics that has been pursued by the great religions and the grand narratives of politics, but which has continued to prove elusive. The elusive character of the general interest and the universal ethic should warn anyone thinking that building consensus is easy. In pursuing the common good, human beings are approaching the universal from very uncommon ground. So the goal of an inclusive environmentalism involves a re-thinking of ethics, one capable of integrating a diversity of social movements in a common moral cause. The goal is to act and make a contribution so as to create a liveable and sustainable world for all, humans and nonhumans alike. The main challenge is not technical and institutional but moral and psychological, the way that the human personality has been moulded to fit the system. For the best part of a century, a long succession of thinkers, politicians and advertisers have urged individuals to throw off moral, psychic and communal restraint to act on impulse, yield to desire, and abandon measure in self-gratification. The result is an inability to think for the long term common good. These observations are shown to point to the need to embed a cognitive praxis within the institutional framework of government and politics so that actions and outcomes are more closely connected, greater cooperation and coordination is achieved between actors, greater clarity is expressed with regard to decision making results, and insight into long term ends comes to inform short term choices. Rather than concentrate on achieving predictability within existing modes of thought, action and organisation, the argument of this book is that the emphasis should be upon increasing adaptability through the innovation of new modes on the basis of immanent lines of development. This makes the affirmation of ecological and social capacity building as at least a much a part of Green politics as campaigns for votes and office. The position emphasises human beings as makers, as doers, as change agents capable of assuming ethical and political control of a world which is in large part self-made. This argument is developed in terms of concepts and values, mentalities and modalities, which allow for a plurality of meanings, institutions and practices which are adaptable in face of new developments and unforeseen events — and which also facilitate positive and coherent responses to change. This commitment to praxis as the means by which human agents reclaim the ethical content of a self-made world is considered worthy in its own right, as well as being an integral part of dealing with the challenges presented by climatic change."