Not easy being Green (or: It’s not easy to develop a whole new vision)

Something like the Green New Deal is badly needed. It’s a great program point for the Green Party. But it’s just a technocratic reform. It doesn’t constitute a holistic new vision for the direction of our society.

Here we are, at an unusual juncture of history, hearing discussions about a “New Normal.” In other words, transformational ideas are being seriously entertained.

An inspiring vision of a Green World based on our Ten Key Values — Ecology, Community, Responsibility, Democracy, Justice, Feminism, Sustainability, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Diversity — would figure to be especially appealing right about now. Instead, the poor Green Party (at least in this country) is bogged down, distracted with identity politics and retrograde socialism.

Granted, it’s not so easy to figure out how to explicate a new-direction transition (how to get “from here to there”) or how to craft electoral platforms and legislation that will foster the greening of society. But I’m afraid the Green Party has been and remains deficient in regard to “the vision thing.”