The great physicist and teacher Richard Feynman, lived and taught by an aphorism of Einstein’s, “if you cannot explain it easily, you do not understand it [properly]”.

The greater Green movement has a much clearer view of the future than its political wing. Politics is, in part, the exercise of compromise in exchange for power. From its position of principle, The Greens find it hard to put those principles into practice.

In fact, it is the contention of this essay that, until a practical expression of the Green  vision can be simply laid out, the Green dragon remains a donkey. Thus it is critical to lay out the principles that unite the Green movement and separate it from twentieth century governments.

It’s nature, stupid

The first principle is that human beings are subordinate to Nature, that is, we have to recognise and accept our place in the scheme of things. Brilliant as we are, as adept in creating and employing technology that allows us to challenge the ecosystems that have shaped life on this planet, we do not have the wisdom to wield such power.

To be Green, you have to accept that there are planetary systems that require protection from the excesses of selfish, thoughtless human behaviour.

This is at odds with the traditional and heartfelt belief that we are Nature’s shepherd, tending and improving her pastures as we tend and improve our own lot. Exploring and resolving that issue is a key component of mapping a Green future. Leaving behind the image of a pious bunch of nay sayers is the critical component in finding a supportable plan based on that vision.

Greed is not good

The second principle is that the worship of money is the root of much evil.

The profit generated by economic growth has become the altar at which all modern government worships. The raping and pillaging of the planet takes place in the name of profit, or of the economic growth that makes it possible. Democratic governments, falling prey to the principle that the people will always vote for more largesse, are unable to remove themselves from the teat of economic growth.

The betrayal of its socialist roots is behind the loss of faith in the labour movement.

That does not mean the Greens should inherit that mantle. Separating the simple redistribution of wealth from the reshaping of the economy is a critical component of this project.

It is interesting in this context that the well understood cure for Japanese stagflation, debt and immigration, has been resoundingly defeated at the ballot box for over fifteen years.

Each Japanese government that successively attempts to kick start the economy, is promptly tossed out by the affluent and well educated, middle class who prefer the status quo than economic growth at the expense of their lifestyle.

Learning to identify and express that yearning in the West is the challenge for first world Greens.

Nurturing the bounty

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the Green belief framework to deal with is the notion of a nurtured bounty. While this looks like the radical, red-heart of the Greens movement, it is at complete odds with the notion of state-owned and operated assets.

Greens philosophically tend to sympathise with the pagan spirit of local deities and shared responsibility. Gift-giving economies bind their members into networks of shared responsibility, and Greens basically welcome the spirits of Nature as active members of that network.

When Christine Milne talks about rediscovering the rural roots that The Greens have in common with the farmers it is this spirit that she refers to, knowingly or otherwise.

The ecology of power

Traditional hierarchies of power are the natural evolution of the empire from family to tribe, tribe to kingdom, kingdom to nation and nation to empire. It has been based on the fundamental principle of organisation that requires the consumption of energy to create an increase in orderliness. The application of the second law of thermodynamics to living things has seen bacteria, ant colonies and humans centralise resources into colonies that naturally grow until constrained by the capacity to sustain the supply lines.

The formation of new commercial and power webs that behave more like complete ecologies than individual and parasitic colonies is the underlying shift from a capital constrained world to a resource constrained world.

It is at a community level, though, that The Greens have the most important and difficult role to play. Our collective response to the challenge of climate change and energy descent has been to actively engage in and promote personal responsibility for our ecological footprint.

We need to extend that responsibility into the more difficult aspects of governance, supporting our communities physically and emotionally. Providing guidance, wisdom and leadership rather than hiding behind rhetoric. The expressed preference for grass roots politics often descends into nothing more than distaste for the state. That is only valid, and viable, if we have operating spheres of influence that can take on the state’s responsibilities at a local level.

Mapping the four pillars

The notions outlined above are a re-expression of the currently documented four pillars of the Greens movement. I have deliberately expressed them, for the purposes of this essay, in the spirit of the change that needs to take place and to separate the underlying principle from the policy decisions (such as opposition to war) that might seem to automatically flow from them.

If these are the principles that underpin the Green movement then it is critical to examine how they differ from the views of their most vocal opponents.

The rural Australians who feel so alienated by modern politics (the dust belt) have a great deal in common with the independent working class of the American right (the rust belt). They dislike government at the best of time and have become the victim of poorly thought out and implemented government policy.

Where as US industry lies idle as global manufacturing shifts to Asia, in Australia it is the rural backbone that has been pushed out of the way as the global shortages of energy and water, preoccupy government attention.

The diversion of water from farming to mines is outrageous enough but the enforced delivery of water to something is abstract and nebulous as “the environment” is worse than infuriating, it is downright criminal.

In that context then, the four underpinning principles of the Greens get short shrift

The best greens

Farmers delight in pointing out that they are true custodians of the land. While they need some serious incentives to change traditional farming practice they will consistently and readily adopt techniques that leave the land in better shape than it was given to them. Many farmers remain on unprofitable land for the love of it, and are heartbroken that their sons and daughters have little desire to follow their example. They are hard wired to take the long term view.

What they do not readily accept is that wilderness may be superior to the tended landscape. This difference has to be carefully packaged and put aside to engender agreement on the many issues that farmers and the Greens have in common. At a minimum The Greens have to accept the overwhelming consensus of scientists that managed solutions are better than locking the landscape up.

The holey dollar

Conservatives are, by nature, resistant to change. They prefer to conserve the best elements of existing practice rather than launch into the unknown and possibly cause more damage than good.

Any cry for an end to economic growth, then, challenges this naturally conservative approach of many who are fundamentally uncomfortable with the Greens.

On the other hand, the angry voters who have deserted mainstream politics in droves are not necessarily wedded to the global economy: Farmers have plenty of negative experience with the banks; older people have directly suffered under voracious insurance practices; many families, across economic strata, have suffered from the globalisation of the economy; rural people in general have learned the discipline and value of frugality and marshalling of resources.

The message of putting the brakes on the ruthless juggernaut that is the global economy is a fundamentally conservative one but has not been presented as such.

Gifting and mending

The traditional values of hospitality and providing resources based on needs are common across human culture. The experience travellers have in finding heart warming examples of the highest principles among the most primitive of people  (whether travelling remotely or in their own community) is a constant reaffirmation that if we continually take, then banditry results. Giving is the glue that binds community together.

While the media delights in presenting the Greens social justice agenda as a radical implementation of left wing principles, it is just as easily described as the fundamental human values that underpin most cultures and many aspects of religious observance.

Responsibility not representation

In the same way that many rural people resent The Greens claim to be the guardians of the landscape, they represent the use of the word community. Greens policy, from health and education, to the localisation of the economy are based on the notion of community: Money that changes hands in locally owned businesses remains in the community to nurture it; the closing of supply chains in communities means that waste is processed by the people who created it, encouraging sustainable approaches to resource management, and so on.

Many rural voters do not see this as a convergence of views from different points in the political landscape, they see it as the cooption or theft of their basic principles by the party at the extreme opposite end of the political spectrum.

The local swimming pools that were built by cakes stalls held over years stand as a monument to the rugged independence of these communities and at apparent odds with what they see as the nanny state politics of an environmental movement that wants to regulate access to resources.

They see the word community as being abused by centralised government programs that care for the aged or disabled through the bureaucracy rather than the extended family.

At heart this comes down to an argument over responsibility. Either we are responsible for ourselves and capable of shouldering that responsibility or we pass that responsibility onto the state, church or other institution. Many Greens mouth an allegiance to individual responsibility, but do not recognise the full implications of this.

Opposition to guns, the industrial slaughter of animals and violence as an active expression of political and personal will are all topics that put Greens and Reds on the opposite side of the table.

Given that individual responsibility for our ecological footprint is an essential plank of Greening the world, this misunderstanding is not just a political mistake it is a fundamental failing of the political wing of the Green movement.

Part of the resolution of this dichotomy will come from the networked politics of the future. This politics is already emerging in the online campaigns that have fuelled grass roots movements and the crowd sourcing applications that have built on them. The Greens have a well established tradition of accepting that there are too many causes for the movement to take on collectively and each person must simply pick one cause and take responsibility for that rare bird, or that innovative technology.

This one cause each approach is not too dissimilar from the get on and do it ethic of the pioneers who founded the rural landscape that nurtures the red dust culture supposedly so antithetical to The Greens.

Bridging the gap

In both the 2007 and 2010 election campaigns, I did a lot of work with members of the Nationals Party in an attempt to open the dialogue across this divide. I addressed a number of party conferences and sat below the picture of Earl Page in his grandson’s electoral office discussing the obstacles to some sort of joint action.

I am not so naïve I can’t see the danger in attempting to resolve these apparently conflicting points of view. I understand that for many Greens, even the discussion of the four pillars of Green politics in this context is seen as a step to the right, the desertion of basic principles in search of the elusive middle ground vote.

I come from a completely different point of view. Just as the group PoliticalCompass.org divides the political access into authoritarianism v libertarianism in one direction and management of the distribution of the wealth v market forces in the other, I consider the primacy of the economy v the ecology as the fundamental dividing line between the current outdated parties and the future.

Once you take that point of view as every Green has, then the other two political axis become somewhat foreshortened.

Rednecks become socially conservative ecologists and Greens socially progressive ecologists. Both authoritarians and libertarians can agree that the pure application of economic rationalism will lead to the long term destruction of the landscape that supports us.

This appeal to well-established agrarian socialist roots exposes the person advocating it to the charge of being a watermelon, ie green on the outside and red on the inside. The critical component in avoiding this is to establish the credentials of a closed, stable and networked economy before engaging in a discussion about the distribution of wealth.

It is in the interests of those who drive economic growth to reap the rewards of other people’s debt to raise the spectre of state managed economies as the logical opposite to a free market. This dichotomy has been institutionalised by the left but is a dead end.

The little work that has been done on the development of a resources constrained economy is so nascent it is of little use for the practical politician. Rather than trying to develop economic plans based on principle, it may be necessary to engage in economic practice informed by principle and extract the underlying philosophy based on experience. This is the way that practical science works – the hypothesis often follows the development of working prototypes that defy existing theory.

Given the geopolitical realities facing Australia today, what would a good Green government look like? What would any good government look like?

One way to answer that question is to confront the handful of major issues that will dominate government agenda over the next few decades.

Those challenges have been spelt out in detail by many authors, some focused more on one problem than the others. One general and generally sound analysis is Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded.

The combined challenges of population pressure, energy decent, international greed and climate change will make every government of the twenty second century fundamentally Green, in exactly the way that every democratic government in the world is now liberal humanist.

The challenge for the coming century is to meet these challenges and make that transition in a robust and intelligent manner that combines the real-world-politic of planet earth with the principles just outlined.

Population

The most optimistic estimates of the population experts who helped governments agree on the Millennium Goals put the world’s population at a peak of 9 billion by 2050. The intention of the Millennium Goals is to provide sufficient education, economic and political freedom to women to bring down birth-rates so that population falls from that almost sustainable peak. We are two thirds through the official timetable for those goals and unlikely to hit our targets.

Unfortunately, the likely constraints on population are likely to be disastrous disruption due to the other challenges dealt with below. The displacement of billions of people due to climate chaos and the resulting food shortages will require a radical rethink of the way we employ our population and manage immigration.

A national transport infrastructure and a sustainable development plan for the north and west coast of the continent that engages Australia with the world on its doorstep is a sensible and pragmatic preparation for this geopolitical reality. If begun now, it can be developed in the most ecologically way possible. The longer we leave it, the more urgent the response will be and the more expensive the cost of Greening that response. To do nothing and pretend that the best use of the Australian continent is as a wilderness preserve is not only unrealistic, it is dishonest. The feral animals are currently changing the landscape in ways that are different to and not necessarily more sustainable than Aboriginal land management practices that tens of thousands of years old.

Our active participation in the global challenge of managing population is critical in a stable future for the Australian continent and would be a welcome contribution to a global problem that is beset by vested, and desperate, interests.

Energy descent

In a world that crowded, the reality is that scarce resources will be hard fought over:

• The reality of energy extraction is that coal is the remaining abundant fossil fuel and the end game over oil and gas is already underway;
• the net energy profit of shale and coal seam gas if vastly inferior to that of sweet crude;
• renewables are the only long term future and coal, like it or not, is the transition fuel.

Future governments are going to have to trade in energy in a big way.

For the Greens movement, coal is the elephant in the room. On one hand it is a no brainer that burning pure carbon and combining it with oxygen leads directly to a more chaotic climate. On the other, it is so closely tied to our economic well being that its replacement with renewable energy has to be very carefully managed to maximise the chance of success.

The implementation of solar thermal plants as not just energy sources for electricity generation but other chemical processing, will not only reduce the amount of coal required for such processes, but also facilitate the conversion of coal into cleaner, albeit carbon intensive fuels.

Asset protection

The only escape from the commodity boom and bust cycle and the extractive approach to economic growth which drives it is to innovate and add value to the resources we currently extract. Some of that innovation will be put to better utilising the resources we continue to extract, some of it will go to creating non-extractive alternatives to ensure a sustainable, long-term basis for civilisation.

The only way for governments to ensure that public assets such as air, water, land, energy, transport and communications infrastructure is to say no to market forces when they attempt to wrest them away from the nation itself.

China only became the economic powerhouse it is today, by closing its doors to foreign trade from 1949 until 1979 while it rebuilt its internal industrial and economic apparatus. This is a pragmatic rather than an ideological observation.

Even the most strident free trade advocates have kept critical aspects of their infrastructure under close protection. Witness the USA policy on shipping between US ports, while aggressively pursuing free trade agreements that usurp national sovereignty abroad.

One good example of the Australian government sticking to its guns has been the protection of the pharmaceutical benefits scheme despite frenzied lobbying at the highest levels by international pharmaceuticals.

This is not to say that protectionism is Green. Simply that any wise government will embrace policies that support a diversification of the national economy, support for innovation and an upskilling of the workforce that makes this possible. The Taiwanese government lends money to industries interest and tax free to support investment in infrastructure that will build the national economy. That is a positive and readily saleable policy that builds an economic future and can be applied using Green principles. Backing renewable energy as an alternative to extractive industries is one such application. Investment in Aquaponics and other intense farming approaches that allow populations to feed themselves sustainably is another. Supporting the development of an infrastructure that manages global population pressures realistically is another.

All those examples can be applied without straying into the fraught arguments about protecting iconic industries from international competition. Perhaps the definition of iconic needs to place an emphasis on future vision rather than past glory.

Climate Chaos

In a world so addicted to economic growth and the cheap energy that makes it possible, it is inconceivable that we are going to win the battle to avoid dramatic climate chaos. All governments, therefore, will battle with major disruptions to economic water and food supply.

The challenges of water use are already well defined. The debate currently divides water between irrigation and the environment or between agriculture and mining. The debate needs to grow up and move away from those uses that are sustainable to those that cause degradation of the resource itself and the environment that supports us all.

The recognition that wilderness cannot be created simply by locking up a resource and that we are going to have to find managed solutions goes a long way to resolving the most fundamental of the disputes between Greens and Reds.

Four pillars to build on

The notion of Green development or sustainable infrastructure breaks some of the hard and fast rules about what the Greens are. These stereo types underpin the opposition mantra against Extreme Greens, much of the media presentation of the Greens and some important aspects of The Greens internal thinking.

A political wing of the Greens movement that announced plans for sustainable cities in the north and west, linked by a vast public transport network and an industry subsidy scheme that would see us reinvest, sustainably, in steel production, manufacturing, food processing and fundamental research would put some meat on the currently skeletal though sound Greens economic policy.

Part of the challenge is to spell out both the Malthusian limits that constrain our possible responses and the Solovian innovations that may give us room for optimism. It is also important to consider the transition strategies from the present reality to a sustainable green future.

The crafting of this plan to meet the fourfold challenge of overpopulation, energy descent, climate chaos and international greed would see the vast majority of the Australian people come naturally to recognise the Greens as the logical government for the twenty first century.

Those of us who have dedicated ourselves to realising a sustainable future need to get off our butts and start building. That is the only way to garner respect and support.