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Conventional thinking maintains the view that Green parties will not be effective until at least one elected Green sits in Canada\u2019s parliament or a provincial legislature.<\/p>\nThe BC Green party should not go cap in hand to business<\/p>\n
Conventional thinking maintains the view that Green parties will not be effective until at least one elected Green sits in Canada\u2019s parliament or a provincial legislature.<\/p>\n
This ignores the fact that the mere threat of Green environmental candidates has already forced Canada\u2019s major political parties \u2014 even Campbell\u2019s pro-business BC Liberals \u2014 to hurriedly \u2018green\u2019 their public image.<\/p>\n
Even though Green parties were formed to offer an alternative approach to politics, the provincial council of the BC Green Party seem to have swallowed this conventional view. It seems that these supposedly \u2018green\u2019 councillors want political power at any price.<\/p>\n
\u2018Business-friendly\u2019 policies?<\/p>\n
Interim BC Green party leader Christopher Bennett has publicly professed his admiration for BC premier Gordon Campbell, and even though he was not elected by the membership, Bennett has promised more \u2018business-friendly\u2019 Green policies, the meaning of which has yet to be explained.<\/p>\n
The last time a Green politician offered unabashedly pro-business policies was when federal Green leader Jim Harris came out with his infamous 2006 Green Platform. The resulting backlash did not guarantee Harris a long tenure. The next leader, Elizabeth May, was an environmentalist.<\/p>\n
Harris, like Bennett, didn\u2019t grasp two basic political facts: first that there are already many green business owners who don\u2019t need to be persuaded to be eco-friendly; and second, that a party claiming to adhere to ecological principles should not bend over backwards to pander to a corporate class who are far from Green as they can be. They are busily plundering the planet.<\/p>\n
The NDP tried it<\/p>\n
The NDP has tried moving to the middle \u2014 or at least, tried to persuade the swing voter to come their way. Their efforts have mostly been unsuccessful. Voters know when they are being sold a line. Harris, Bennett, and the NDP should by now realize that voters are looking for principled and sincere politicians, not sycophants who will bend their promises to the latest political breeze.<\/p>\n
Instead of proclaiming \u201cbusiness-friendly\u201d policies, Green parties should point out to business leaders that greening their business practices will increase efficiency. Cutting back on the use of fossil fuels will save money, increase sales, and in the not-too long run, boost bottom-line profits.<\/p>\n
Green economics<\/p>\n
The BC Green party should not go cap in hand to business. Instead, it should let the business class, lead by those who are already enlightened green business practitioners, come to it.<\/p>\n
Because the real bottom line is that Green economics is superior to the destructive exploitation that unfettered, free enterprise corporatism has created in the world today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![\"The](\"http:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/2\/images\/Legislature_night_small_half.jpg\")
Conventional thinking maintains the view that Green parties will not be effective until at least one elected Green sits in Canada’s parliament or a provincial legislature. This ignores the fact that the mere threat of Green environmental candidates has already forced Canada’s major political parties to hurriedly ‘green’ their image.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-politics","category-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.stuzog.com\/greenpolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}