A New Role for Governance
Mike Nickerson
Why would anyone bother to start a new
political party? It's no small task, to connect with
people across a country, define common cause and
then attempt to breach the well guarded access to
public communications.
The motivation behind the Green Party's
emergence is compelling. Since industrialization
began, society has focused on building productive
machinery, hooking it up to energy sources and
cranking out ever expanding volumes of material
goods. Until now, politicians of all stripes have made
their careers by promising ever greater volumes of gross
product for their electors.
The continuous expansion of the industrial
process has brought about a fundamental change in
our relationship with the Earth.
When industrialization began, people numbered
a few hundred million. Today there are over six
thousand million of us. Furthermore, each of us
today, on average, consume a far greater volume of
natural resources and produce a correspondingly
greater amount of waste. In the last fifty years, our
waste has increasingly contained dangerous
manufactured chemicals. The change in human
impact is huge.
At a time when human activity is disrupting
everything from the diversity of life forms to the global
climate, what sense is there in continuing to
accelerate expansion?
Rather than disperse what remains of the
natural world for political and economic gain, effective
government should be reorganizing the system to
encourage non-destructive practices. The need for
change is doubly obvious when we see decisions being
made on the blind assumption that expanding the flow
of money (GDP) will increase well-being. This is what
globalization is about. It inflates GDP, but that
money has little to do with the well-being of most
people. What use is the GDP measure when is sees no
difference between money spent cleaning up disasters
brought on by our waste and money spent educating
the next generation. Indeed, education, along with
health care are often sacrificed to feed the "needs" of
capital growth.
Green governance would start with a Genuine
Progress Index (GPI). In addition to the traditional
measurements of economic performance: GDP and
rates of employment, a GPI would measure job
satisfaction and dependency of foreign investment. It
would also measure the value of unpaid work in homes
and communities, resource stocks, pollution levels,
the durability of goods, the nutritional quality of food,
levels of education, public participation in decision
making, rates of crime, signs of equity and inequity
and other factors which Canadians feel indicate
improvements in, or deterioration of their well-being.
A Green government would follow by lowering
taxes on employment and would replace the
diminished revenue with taxes on resource drawdown
and pollution. Phased in over a number of years, this
would have the effect of making it less expensive to
employ people and more expensive to waste resources
and pollute. In the meantime, public resources would
be allocated in ways to encourage renewable energy,
conservation, pollution reduction, local employment,
preventative health care, participatory democracy and
education.
While consumption and waste have to be
managed within limits, education and preventative
health care offer unlimited opportunities for improving
well-being. These public services are based primarily
on good will, sharing of information and caring for
each other. The obsolescence of the old political
priorities is revealed when these activities are
discounted because they do not make the economy
grow.
What is life for? Are we born to shop until we
drop? Or would we actually derive more satisfaction
from clean air and water, quality food and time to
spend with friends. Genuine progress is progress
which leaves the world intact for the generations that
follow.
If your vote counted, would you vote for the
Party that offers to lead Canada toward a healthy
relationship with the land and life? Take the leap of
faith and the Green Party will take steps to establish
proportional representation (PR). PR means that the
seats in Parliament would be filled in proportions
matching the votes cast. Majority power could no
longer be exercised without a majority of votes. Your
vote could be used to express how you feel the country
should be run rather than as a weapon to deter
unsavory parties and politicians. Parliament would
become a place for debating issues from different
perspectives, rather than a setting for opportunism
and categorical opposition.
Consider the possibilities.
http://www.SustainWellBeing.net/GreenParty/challenge-and-goal.html
- 30 -
Mike Nickerson
2799 McDonald's Corners Rd.
RR #3
Lanark, Ontario
K0G 1K0
phone:(613) 259-9988
sus...@web.ca
* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *
"There is only one power available to citizens
which does not require great wealth or the use of violence.
It is the power of collective persuasion.
It works on the subtle levels of thought and conversation
and it works directly through democracy."
http://www.SustainWellBeing.net
--
This forum is hosted by the Peace and Environment Resource Centre (Ottawa).
Viewpoints expressed in this forum do not represent the opinions of the Centre,
its supporters, or the operators of these facilities.