Is it really so hard to understand (and accept, if not support) the fielding of Green Party candidates?
“Since the origin of life on earth 3.8 billion years ago, our planet has experienced five mass extinction events. The last of these occurred some 66 million years ago when a six-mile-wide asteroid is thought to have collided with earth, wiping out the dinosaurs. The Cretaceous extinction event dramatically changed the composition of biodiversity on the planet: Marine ecosystems essentially collapsed, and about 75 percent of all plant and animal species disappeared. Today, Elizabeth Kolbert writes, we are witnessing a similar mass extinction event happening in the geologic blink of an eye. According to E. O. Wilson, the present extinction rate in the tropics is ‘on the order of 10,000 times greater than the naturally occurring background extinction rate’ and will reduce biological diversity to its lowest level since the last great extinction. And we are risking our own future by fundamentally altering the integrity of the climate balance that has fostered the flourishing of human civilization.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/books/review/the-sixth-extinction-by-elizabeth-kolbert.html
“Disruption of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current could freeze Europe, scorch the tropics and increase sea level rise in the North Atlantic. The tipping point may be closer than predicted in the IPCC’s latest assessment.”
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Excuse me for advocating for a more radical change of direction than what’s reflected in the programs of the Republican and Democratic parties.
I do understand that it was hard to even get Biden’s tepidly progressive “Inflation Reduction Act” passed in Congress, no less AOC’s Green New Deal. But some of the compromises, some of the lack of ardor on the part of the Democrats, can be attributed to how much money that party takes from Wall Street, the mega-corporations, and the wealthy. So there surely does need to be a Green Party that tells the full truth about the crises we face, proposes appropriate correctives, and steers clear of counter-influences.
The need for a more thoroughgoing change of direction is recognized all over the world and it has motivated the development of an international Green politics movement. Green parties are being built up in almost 100 countries. It may be difficult to do so under the duopolistic U.S. “only two significant parties” system, but more and more Americans are coming onboard to help, the Green Party is growing, and it’s not going away. If Green candidates “spoil” Democratic Party campaigns it’s the fault of the electoral system and the Democrats ought to join our efforts to implement ranked-choice voting and proportional representation instead of suppressing our ballot access.
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To those who will vote for the Democrats in today’s election:
I can be sympathetic to your idea of prioritizing the defeat of Donald Trump. I hope you can be sympathetic to those of us pursuing the project of opening up the electoral system and making room for better choices. Especially if you can appreciate the possibility that the Greens have a point when we say that the current trajectories are leading to such an extent of social and ecological unsustainability that civilization as we’ve known it for millennia could soon be prone to collapse.
Collapse: The already-underway phenomenon of failed states at the periphery can be seen as a harbinger. And what do you hear from the Democratic Party about it?
Consider: An historian writing 500 years from now . . . “The dominant power during the critical twentieth and twenty-first centuries was the United States of America. During this period American policy was implemented by rotating regimes of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.”
Do you think they then will conclude: “If the Democrats had been in power for all or most of that time correctives would have been put in place such that the trajectories would have been directed toward sustainable praxis. The problematic outcomes we now are having to deal with can be attributed to the policies of the Republican administrations.”
Or will they write: “In regard to the most fundamental issues relevant to overarching trajectories re: economic development, fealty to the corporations and the wealth/power elites, militarism, geopolitical influence, energy policies, etc. the Republicans and Democrats were both responsible and culpable.”
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Of course, the historians could say that the populace was at fault for electing representatives from parties that were more part of the problem than part of the solution. Right now only ten percent of the electorates in the most advanced countries support the Green parties. But that’s a function of political cultures that reflect deeply-seated lifeways inertias in general that the broad “greening of society” movement is working hard to address. The point is that dramatic changes are needed and neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are advocates of such. Again, it’s understandable that some people prioritize electing the better of the two — but it also should be understandable that others, like me, choose to focus on the project of opening up the electoral system, making room for truly alternative voices, and pushing hard for a civilizational change of direction.
https://www.gp.org/green_party_candidates_in_state_and_local_races_in_2024
