Green Party's Breathtaking Confusion of Purpose

This post discusses my observation of the confusion of purpose of the Green Party and how they avoid the elephant in the room - overpopulation.

I had a long discussion with a Green Party (GP) activist over a beer or three last night. He confirmed the Greens are a socialist group that concentrates on the environment and therefore wasn't a single issue focus group. He felt that the environment would be best served through socialist policies.

I am old enough to remember the 1980's when the GP actually really stood apart as a focussed concern for the environment. I was impressed that a political group cared for something that was dear to my heart and even considered voting for them. The policies on the GP website now have the main headings of banking system, health and NHS, pensions, housing, jobs and living wage, transport and young people. While some of what they say on housing seems to make sense, one cannot help wondering if the GP is primarily a socialist party that puts the needs of socialism before the needs of the environment. In other words, any of their green policies are based on an indirect approach to ecology and conservation based on the foundations of socialism and not through any primary concern for the environment. In this way, they will prioritise socialism above any policies that might improve the environment. Where there is a conflict in between these policies, socialism will always be put first.

I raised the point with my beer drinking partner that the subject of human overpopulation was studiously avoided in published statements of GP policies. While it is within the socialist mindset to never even discuss the subject of reducing the planet's human population explosion, it is more acceptable to let the environment suffer the needs of the population if need be by humanity's given right to expand as it seems fit. Instead, the GP would rather concentrate on the more cosy subjects of wind farms and other techniques to reduce carbon emissions while conveniently forgetting that the more humans there are on the planet, the more carbon will be emitted.

My beverage sipping companion agreed that a major GP policy was one of redistribution of wealth in the UK. Also it is interesting and perhaps not surprising that when one scours the GP website for its foreign policy, the only subject that seems to come up is that of criticism of Israel. No mention is made of the hungry, dying masses of Darfur or countless other countries that have such appalling records of sordid violations of human rights. Of course redistribution stops at the borders of the British Isles. As with so many other socialist intellectual groups that pride themselves on their bleeding hearts, redistribution only concerns the people of one country, foreign policy concerns centre around the plight of Palestinians and the rest of the abused, hungry, raped and murdered world can go hang.

After I made these points to my redoubtable companion of the brew, I asked what the GP really stood for. The answer was not easily forthcoming.

I concluded that the Green Party was not a party for the environment but a home for socialists disaffected with New Labour and the Lib Dems. It is about time they changed their name to make it clear to all what they really stand for