Green politics
Ecological limits are the binding constraint on everything else, and economic and political institutions should be rebuilt around them.
What does this mean?
Green politics starts from a claim the other traditions treat as secondary: that human economies are subsystems of a finite biosphere, and that an arrangement which degrades that biosphere will fail regardless of how well it distributes income or protects rights. From this follows a programme of decarbonisation, conservation, precaution about new risks, and — in its stronger forms — scepticism that growth can continue indefinitely.
Most green parties pair this with a distinctive political style: decentralisation, participatory decision-making, non-violence, and attention to those who bear environmental costs without receiving the benefits. In practice they usually sit on the left, because pricing environmental damage and funding transition both require collective action. In India the tradition has been shaped less by parties than by movements — Chipko, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and campaigns over forest rights — which have consistently linked ecology to the rights of the people who live in the affected places.
Where did it come from?
Emerged from the environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s; the German Greens, founded in 1980, were the first to enter national government. Indian environmental politics has run mainly through movements and litigation rather than parties, from Chipko in 1973 to the Forest Rights Act of 2006.
Major thinkers
- Rachel Carson
- E. F. Schumacher
- Vandana Shiva
- Murray Bookchin
- Kate Raworth
Historical figures
- Petra Kelly
- Wangari Maathai
- Sunderlal Bahuguna
- Medha Patkar
What it looks like today
- Green parties in Germany, Austria, New Zealand and the European Parliament
- The Chipko movement and the Narmada Bachao Andolan in India
- Climate litigation and green new deal programmes
Where it sits on each dimension
Wealth and inequality
The state in the economy
Personal liberty
Tradition and change
Nation and the world
Strongly internationalist, because the problems it identifies do not respect borders.
Religion and the state
Power and its limits
Environment and growth
At the protection pole, and treated as the axis all the others have to accommodate rather than one consideration among many.
Crime and punishment
Its strongest arguments
- The physical constraint it identifies is measurable and does not depend on any particular political preference.
- Costs imposed on people who never agreed to bear them — polluted air, flooded land — are a straightforward injustice on almost any moral theory.
- Its emphasis on precaution is well suited to risks that are irreversible once they materialise.
Its strongest criticisms
- Limiting growth in poorer countries would slow the reduction of poverty, which is itself a serious harm.
- The costs of rapid transition fall on identifiable workers and regions, and are often heavier than the programmes acknowledge.
- Some green currents have opposed technologies, including nuclear power and genetically modified crops, on grounds that other environmental scientists dispute.
Common misconceptions
- That greens are indifferent to poverty. Most green programmes are explicitly redistributive, on the grounds that environmental costs fall hardest on the poor.
- That it is anti-technology. Green parties differ among themselves; many favour renewables, public transport and efficiency, which are technological answers.
- That it is a single-issue politics. Green parties hold full programmes on the economy, civil liberties and foreign policy.
A caveat
Green politics is not confined to the left. There is a real conservative conservationist tradition, and this entry’s left placement reflects where most green parties actually sit rather than a necessary connection.
Sources
- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring · 1962
- E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful · 1973
- Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group III · Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change · 2022 Source (opens in a new tab)