The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy, 2nd Edition

THEORY

3.5 The ‘four pillars’ of green politics

The 1983 political programme of Die Gr ̈unen,

the German green party, set out four core

political principles which have subsequently

been adopted by most green parties

elsewhere:

1. ecological responsibility


2. grassroots democracy


3. social justice


4. non-violence

The concept of ecological responsibility, or

sustainability, is informed by the two core ideas

of ecologism: (1) the need to recast

human–nature relations; (2) the limits to

growth. However, it is less clear how the

practicalpolitical commitments to grassroots

democracy, social justice and non-violence

reflect these two ideas. If the primary aim of

ecologism is to achieve a sustainable society,

does it really matter how we get there and what

the green polity looks like?

and geared towards the satisfaction of basic needs. Development must be

guided by the principle of futurity so that the impact of economic activities

on natural resources today does not prevent future generations of humans

from meeting their needs and will allow non-human nature to flourish; thus

futurity mixes the anthropocentric aim of protecting future generations of

humans with the ecocentric aim of preserving the well-being of non-human

nature.

The sustainable economy will require a fundamental transformation in

attitudes to economic growth, consumption, production and work.^5 The

relentless pursuit of economic growth that characterises the existing capi-

talist economic system creates a range of environmental problems, notably

resource depletion, destructive production and pollution. In contrast, greens

advocate ‘an economic system oriented to the necessities of human life today

and for future generations, to the preservation of nature and a careful man-

agement of natural resources’ (Die Gr ̈unen 1983 : sect. 1, p. 7). If we aim to

satisfy ‘needs not wants’, the pressure for continual economic growth would

be removed. Many greens advocate a steady-state economy in which the lev-

els of population and wealth are kept constant (Daly 1992 ), or dramatically

scaled back (Georgescu-Roegen 1971 ).

Greens identify consumption, in particular ‘unnecessary’ consumption,

as a major problem. They argue that the rate of economic growth is main-

tained by the creation of artificial wants, through advertising, fashion and

peer pressure, that generate the unnecessary and wasteful levels of economic

activity characteristic of the consumer society. The ‘needs not wants’ princi-

ple poses an explicit challenge to the supremacy of the profit motive. Greens

believe that the pursuit of profit stimulates activities that create unneces-

sary consumer wants and encourages wasteful production strategies such

as built-in obsolescence. Instead, a green economy would be based on pro-

duction primarily for use rather than profit, and would thereby rule out

such frivolous consumption. In thisconserversociety, people would be edu-

cated to consume less, thereby reducing production, protecting resources