Cementing an area of 67,000 acres between Oxford and Cambridge would not be Nature’s arc but greenwashed guff
Environment
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The Green Party should be – and appear to be – this century’s equivalent to the trade union movement. By Councillor Oliver Moran. Protests against environmental taxes in Europe, farmers’ blockades in the Netherlands, urban unrest in France, and the water-charges movement here in Ireland should cast a long shadow for the Green Party in government. The Waste Action Plan for a Circular Economy launched last week contains much that is worthwhile, but an awareness of the political importance of avoiding an environmental transition that lacks social empathy should be visible in everything the party says and does. Climate change and ecological decline disproportionately punish the worst off. The systems of economics that underlie them are exploitative of the poor, both globally and domestically, every bit as much as they are exploitative of nature and the planet. The solutions not only should not add to that but must necessarily challenge the assumptions of ecologically and socially exploitative capitalism. This is not an easy balance to strike. System change, if not implemented well, is more likely to affect the most vulnerable first. The party has progressive values at its core. This is a party that has among its founding principles that (a) unrestricted economic growth must be replaced by an ecologically and socially regulated economy and (b) the poverty of two thirds of the world’s family demands a fair re-distribution of the world’s resources. But the Green Party has missed opportunities since entering government to speak in that sociological voice with the same conviction that it speaks about technocratic solutions for environmentalism. This shortcoming isn’t derived from any malice on behalf of my party colleagues in government but from a cultural reluctance within the party to publicly express these convictions in clear and unequivocal tones. One of the roles of the Just Transition Greens, an explicitly left-wing faction affiliated with the party, is to challenge the party in government. Demanding more of it. Time, both political and in the context of climate and biodiversity emergencies, does not allow us the luxury of waiting. The Just Transition Greens’ critique is evolving. Its end-point is not defined. What unites our members is not particular stances or policy demands that are very different to the rest of the party but a shared conviction. A conviction that it is the duty of the green movement in government to ensure that environmental solutions not only do not punish the exploited further but actively improve their conditions. A just transition For some this conviction is based in eco-socialism. For others it is faith based. One of the most acerbic criticisms of Pippa Hackett’s forestry bill was from the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. Others, like me, reach for the traditional green pillars of peace, democracy and social justice. This does not boil down to simplistic notions of “cycles lanes” vs “social justice”. It is about the lenses through which we see the world. Cycle infrastructure can and should be seen through the lens of social justice too, empowering communities through accessible and safe transportation. The unifying aspect is a philosophy that refuses to disentangle the social from the environmental. A just transition recognises that not everything that is good for the planet is good for people. If, in our rush to save the planet, we neglect the dignity of the poorest in our society, what kind of world will we leave our children? A just transition should lift up the horizons of all people, improving standards of living and protecting at risk workers and communities. Waste policy On 4 September, Eamon Ryan launched the new national waste policy. Justified or not, a far reaching policy that puts emphasis on the producers of waste was overshadowed by two bullet points in an 89-page document that seemingly lacked a nous for social justice. The irony was this drove some people to in effect defending exploitative capitalism. It was lost in some of the criticism that ‘buy one get one free’ on items like confectionery and fizzy drinks does not benefit the lower paid. It is itself a system of exploitation driving consumption and waste. The supermarkets and retail multiples are no friends of the left or workers and producers. They work actively to exploit the poor, labour, farmers and the environment. Neither is ‘fast fashion’ – as opposed to affordable clothing – a source of liberation for the poor. It too is exploitation, based on driving consumption, and it is a source of humiliation for people without the resources to keep up. The waste policy is very good at what it sets out to do. What it does, it does well on its own terms. Where it falls short is in addressing some of the greater social challenges with equal strength. It describes but doesn’t explicitly challenge the inherent wastefulness of capitalism. It lacks a sociological perspective. It doesn’t mention the income of households and how this affects consumption and waste patterns. Politically, launching a waste policy – that on the face of it would levy low cost clothing and ban cheap food offers – the day after a report had shown that 18% in Ireland are suffering deprivation is tone deaf. Not wrong, as I have described above, but tone deaf – and seemingly lacking in empathy and equal conviction for matters of social justice. A socio-economic lens Over-consumption and waste need to be seen through a lens that is socioeconomic every bit as much as technocratic. Tackling over-consumption and waste will only succeed if simultaneous efforts are undertaken to tackle income inequality, food sovereignty and human-rights violations. Our environmental policies should recognise the interconnectedness between economic development and environmental degradation. They should, as the UN Sustainable Development Goals demand, seek to reach the furthest behind first. That is why our policies include a Universal Basic Income and a commitment to transform the relationship between producer and consumer, bringing them closer together – without the mediation of the consumption-driven capitalism of supermarkets and retail multiples. Both
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A reply to Adam McGibbon and Michael Rafferty of the Just Transition Greens. By John Vivian Cooke. Quo Virides (Whither the Green Party)? In their recent articles in Village Magazine, Adam McGibbon (Just Transiti ON) and Michael Rafferty, (Just Transition are Left insurgents in the Green Party aiming higher than ¨internal opposition¨), debated the future of the Just Transition Greens. Looking from the outside, as a member of neither JTG or the Green Party, it strikes me as nothing so much as two bald men fighting over a comb. At the moment, JTG are caught up in a moment of self-reflection. They are seeking greater influence within the Green Party when they should be seeking greater influence with the public: eco socialism needs to be outward looking and not inward looking. The debate between McGibbon and Rafferty exposes divisions within a movement that itself is already a division within the Green Party giving outsiders a glimpse of the Russian Doll of factionalism that is incapacitating any progress on both a green or socialist agenda and allowing the centre right to dominate the political landscape by default. The spectacle of a party devouring itself leads to electoral defeat and political irrelevance. It is a lesson that neither article appears to have considered. The Green Party needs a continuing supply of vitality and fresh ideas. Clearly JTG have an ample supply of both and their contributions are to be welcomed. Differences, disagreements and debates within political parties are not only healthy but essential. However, those of us who watched the Labour Party in the Seventies and Eighties know all too well that the spectacle of a party devouring itself leads to electoral defeat and political irrelevance. It is a lesson that neither article appears to have considered. McGibbon`s entryist strategy shares the failed ambition with Militant Tendency to take over their respective parties. Rafferty`s neglect of any sort of electoral strategy or practical policies is just another iteration of the refrain about the imminent overthrow of the capitalist system we have heard down the decades. Eco Socialism needs to be a viable political proposition with electoral appeal. That entails attracting people who are not self-consciously environmentalists through the hard graft of knocking on the doors of voters who have never voted Green in order to convince them that specific practical policies will make a tangible positive difference to their lives. Eco Socialism has the ability to realise that potential but not if it remains in the realm of the abstract, or, remains obsessed with winning obscure places on the party`s executive. It was precisely such a concentration on the granular details of retail politics that allowed the German Green Party to rebuild in the aftermath of its electoral meltdown in 1990. Highlighting how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Socialists have redefined their party`s platform takes away the wrong lesson: Irish Eco Socialists should learn the mechanics and methods of community activism and outreach that propelled them to positions of influence in the first place. The Green Movement encompasses global activists who have effected meaningful and important changes from whom Irish Greens can learn. However, emulating those tangible successes requires detailed and extensive conversations and planning that go beyond 280 characters. The worry is that the disconnect between JTG and the current party leadership is mirrored by a disconnect between the party and Green Party voters The Green Party has to establish a stable electoral base. Unfortunately, the party`s recent electoral gains were not the product of such a vote, but came about by constructing a rickety alliance of, essentially, contradictory voting blocks. On the one hand, the Green Party won the number one votes of urban-middle-class soft environmentalists who it is tempting to dismiss as Fine Gaelers on a bike. On the other hand, the Green Party profited by capturing the first preference surpluses of elected Sinn Féin candidates – a phenomenon that only occurred because of the absence of a second SF candidate on the ballots. If the environmental movement makes no attempt to understand the broader electorate with all its contradictions and complexities it can never hope to persuade them. The worry is that the disconnect between JTG and the current party leadership is mirrored by a disconnect between the party and Green Party voters. JTG has been founded by eco socialists who do not want to be in coalition with either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil and who are distrustful of the current party leadership. This dissatisfaction does not mean that the alternatives are any more palatable. It is difficult to see how the party can compete effectively on its chosen ground on the left where voters have a range of socialist options to choose from. Neither should the Greens put blind trust in Sinn Féin as a coalition partner: at the last election they were only too keen to compromise on the environment to win rural votes and their record in Belfast raises legitimate concerns that they might compromise on both the environment and social justice to retain power. Clearly, the parties that appear to be the natural partners of Eco Socialism will prove to be just as difficult to govern with as the current coalition and the party runs the danger of stalling between two fools. Even though it is counter intuitive, there is greater scope to advance a green agenda in coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael than has been assumed by JFG. Neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael is bound by political dogma. This allows them to make greater policy compromises in order to stay in power. It also, however, allows Green ministers to exact a price even as they green and redden the government`s actions in economic and social policy areas. Green ministers can both shape economic policy to moderate the worst instincts of fiscal hawks in other parties, and maximise the impact of their environmental policies. Recognising these factors will force the Green Party to confront a number of painful dilemmas inherent in melding red with
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A reply to Adam McGibbon’s recent article in Village. By Michael Rafferty. Adam McGibbon’s summary in Village of the birth of the ‘Just Transition Greens’ (JTGs) recalls the relatively modest experience of the Green Party’s eco-socialists in mitigating some of the worst facets of their involvement in a previous coalition government. But these counted for little when the party was electorally and organisationally wiped out in the Republic’s general election of 2011 and rightly implicated in the wake of economic and ecological damage caused by that administration. Becoming an ‘internal opposition’ (as Adam McGibbon proposes) therefore seems a rather limited prospectus for the emergent JTGs. Instead of being engaged in a negative war of attrition against centrist Green ministers and government whips over the duration of the parliamentary term, the JTGs’ sights are on a more constructive, consequential – and urgent – reconfiguration of eco-socialist politics beyond party structures on the island. Prospects for such an ‘internal opposition’ hauling the Green Party leftward while it implements a greenwashed, regressive programme for government are challenging at best. Equally bleak is the outlook for having a longer-term impact on government through policy development or in forcing a favourable mid-term readjustment of the coalition programme. These ideas run up against some quite obvious, unavoidable -and, I would argue, insurmountable – difficulties. First, no incremental change or ‘greening’ of the Programme for Government (PfG) can efface its deeply neoliberal underpinnings. Acquiescence to any variation of a basic framework which places a higher value on the maintenance of a tax-haven economy than green public investment in infrastructure, services and housing still amounts to squandering the political capital and good-will reflected in the party’s February 2020 election result. The elements of the PfG trumpeted by broadsheet media as ‘Green wins’ such as the carbon tax are objectively regressive in nature, i.e. they make working people pay the costs of a rather illusory decarbonisation of the Irish economy instead of corporate polluters. The fact that it is these latter aspects which were sold as ‘gains’ by Green negotiators makes it quite absurd that they could be renegotiated with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in a fit of buyer’s regret. Yet this is the magnitude of adjustment required to render the programme in any way reminiscent of a ‘just transition’. The centrist riposte that ‘there is no alternative’ to making an unsustainable economic model less bad is anathema to eco-socialists in an age of Fridays for Future climate strikers united around the slogan “system change, not climate change”. Second, the political reality of continuing as a mudguard for this grand coalition is another electoral and organisational wipeout. The simple fact that the addition of Green Party TDs was not numerically required to bind the civil war parties in a histrionic coalition will not go away. A handful and a half of pliant independent TDs was all that was required. The Green offer to shore this edifice up came too enthusiastically and commanding too low a price to make sufficient impact on the ‘woolly management-speak’ of the PfG. Setting the bar as low as “internal opposition” at the outset not only makes it too easy for centrist Greens to push back, but would also risk the perception that the new group is an inconsequential face-saving exercise for left-wing Green members. Third, the comparisons with insurgent groups within the party frameworks of the UK Labour Party and the Democratic Party in the USA while topically inspiring are also evidence of the limits of this approach. In the end ‘Corbynism’ was undermined by centrist forces within the Labour Party and the Democratic Socialists of America also failed to nominate Bernie Sanders for the Presidency. The consolation prize of some positive-sounding ‘green new deal’ campaign verbiage from an uninspiring Joe Biden, months out from an election, is seen as precisely that. The organic emergences of left-wing tendencies within broad-church parties, including the JTGs, are of course exciting developments in themselves but they come up against strong pushback from centrists which can weigh heavy on their ability to realise the change they strive for. Setting the bar as low as “internal opposition” at the outset not only makes that job too easy for centrist Greens, but would also risk the perception that the new group is an inconsequential face-saving exercise for left-wing Green members. I think it is more accurate to say that while some Green members have joined the JTGs in the hope of regaining control over their party and its policy, most will accept the doubtful feasibility of overturning a 76% majority within the party for entering government, particularly after Eamon Ryan’s retention of the party leadership only last month. And many are not even Green members at all. While the Greens’ decision to enter government was the short-term cause for the emergence of JTGs, the wider factor is the materialisation of a palpable left-right cleavage in Irish politics evident in the February election result. While the Greens’ decision to enter government was the short-term cause for the emergence of JTGs, the wider factor is the materialisation of a palpable left-right cleavage in Irish politics evident in the February election result. A campaign fought on issues of housing affordability and the infrastructural deficit in health, transport and public-services, followed by unprecedented interventions made in response to the coronavirus, has shifted the economic ‘common sense’ decisively leftward. Globally, even the most staid neoliberal orthodoxy is reversing back up the Road to Serfdom towards ‘tax-and-spend’ Keynesianism in anticipation of the economic freefall when social protection measures are cut back in coming months, second wave or no second wave. Globally, 2021 is likely to see the simultaneous arrival of several historic crises in financialised capitalism, public health, mass unemployment and deepening climate emergency. Emerging in these circumstances, the JTGs’ expectations go well beyond reconciling tensions within the Green Party and are focused more on bringing about the necessary coalition in progressive, ecological and Left politics, trade union and community organisations to make an Irish Green New Deal possible. Implementing neoliberalism with the civil
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The Green Party needs Just Transition Greens to make it possible to negotiate a more ambitious programme for government. By Adam McGibbon. As the Green Party leadership election drew to a close last month, a new green-left affiliate organisation – the ‘Just Transition Greens’ – was born. The foundation of the Just Transition Greens, announced in a statement signed by TDs, councillors and Northern Ireland Assembly MLAs, is a hopeful sign. Former Northern Ireland Green Party leader John Barry told a podcast last week that around 400 people have joined JTG, and 10% of the Green membership are now involved. This is a good start. The Green Party desperately needs an internal opposition while in government. The Just Transition Greens could help the party achieve more in government, curb the most dangerous instincts of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, keep members involved who would quit otherwise, resist the rumoured drive to make the party less democratic and more centralised, and in the long term bring forward a more deeply embedded red-green politics in the party. The need for JTG is obvious from 2007-11. The membership trusted their TDs completely to get it right meaning that real dissent didn’t fully emerge until half way through the government term by which time many members had already left The need for JTG is obvious when the Greens’ previous time in government from 2007-11 is considered. The membership, excited to finally implement some of their agenda, desperately wanted the FF-Green coalition to work, and trusted their TDs completely to get it right. This implicit trust, combined with a less radical wider environmental movement and a relatively more centrist membership compared to now, meant that real dissent didn’t fully emerge until halfway through the government term. Many members had already left by 2009, but discontent had built up too slowly to exert any real pressure on the party’s TDs. The exodus of dissenting members meant it took longer for real discontent to emerge. In 2009, after the Greens threatened to pull out of the government, a more ambitious programme was negotiated with Fianna Fáil and voted through by the Green membership. But it was too late – as the government fell apart, few of the new renegotiated policies were implemented. The Green Party of 2020 desperately needs Just Transition Greens to prevent this from happening again. The climate crisis demands that the Greens use their position to demand fairer, faster climate action than what has already been negotiated. In voting to go into government, many members felt forced to prioritise environmental action over social justice, despite believing both are equally important. A 45 degrees Celsius heatwave in the Arctic during the voting period may have also focused minds for immediate climate action. Despite important wins like a new Climate Act, an end to oil and gas extraction and the blocking of gas terminals, the current programme for government will not achieve the internationally-agreed Paris Agreement climate goals – more is needed, and the action must be structured in a way that will benefit the worse-off. The Greens are a small party – if members who feel the deal is not ‘red’ enough (as opposed to just ‘green’) – and I count myself among them – can be properly organised within the party, they can exert a huge influence on party policy. They could even pull the party out of government if not enough is being achieved fast enough. Internal opposition can achieve things, acting as pressure on the TDs to be more aggressive in government and giving them much-needed perspective on the world outside Leinster House. In 2009, the Irish Young Greens managed to prevent the introduction of a formalised UK-style tuition fees system in Irish universities, during the renegotiation of the FF-Green programme for government. A well-organised group could hope to achieve much more, as others have done across the world – it’s well-known that the UK Labour Party in government has often been forced into its better governing moves by the pressure of their affiliated trade unions and membership. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Socialists of America have had a noticeable impact on Joe Biden’s surprisingly bold climate plans, which some have labelled ‘a Green New Deal in all but name.’ Members who either voted for the Programme for Government – while recognising its shortcomings – or against it, can feel comfortable in Just Transition Greens. Rumours abound of a shake-up of party structures, which could dilute membership control, potentially including the removal of the ability of members of the (more left-wing) Northern Ireland Green Party to have a say in government formation, and more generally, the member’s powerful ability to pull the party out of government. These moves must be resisted – it would make a mockery of the Greens claim to have ‘grassroots democracy’ as one of its four principles, and further centralise power around the party’s TDs. But it can only be resisted if members who disagree stay involved and organise themselves effectively as an internal opposition. Members are free to leave or join other parties, but the Greens are uniquely democratic (for now) and more is likely to be achieved inside. Saoirse McHugh and her colleagues are natural leaders of an internal opposition. Although she has ended her membership of the Green Party, she could still play a huge role through the Just Transition Greens. It is likely that McHugh and allies could have more impact doing this, than by joining another organisation – Fis Nua, the green-left splinter group formed by Greens who left over the FF-Green government, got 0.3% of the vote in the 2011 general election and disappeared. Saoirse McHugh and her colleagues are natural leaders of an internal opposition JTG will not find it easy, from supporting TDs voting against the government, to harnessing the power of youth climate-strikers and the wider climate movement, to recruiting members branch-by-branch – and if too much is being compromised, organise to pull the party out of government. This isn’t factionalism – it is
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Extinction Rebellion Ireland rejects the proposed draft Programme for Government as being “full of fluff, and not good enough” to address the climate crisis. In a statement, a representative of Extinction Rebellion Ireland said: We in Extinction Rebellion believe it is our role to always tell the truth as backed by science, and the truth is that this programme for government is not good enough. As young activists, it is not good enough for our futures. As parents, it is not good enough for our children’s futures. As citizens we do not believe it is good enough for Ireland’s future or the planet. The PfG is a textbook example of spin, jam-packed with fluffy aspirations, but lacking in substance. Paying lip service to environmentalism should not be used as a cover for austerity. It demonstrates a lack of commitment to dealing with the climate crisis and a lack of understanding of a just transition. The UN Environment Programme has been clear that we need a MINIMUM of 7.6% emissions reductions every year till 2030. If we do not achieve those reductions we will trigger irreversible runaway climate change. The PfG fudges the question of how to achieve a 7% reduction, essentially kicking the can down the road to a future government, which all but guarantees we will not meet our 2030 targets. We believe that the climate and biodiversity crisis should be treated as an emergency, and that this programme does not do so. We urge members of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and the Green Party to consider this when voting on the Programme for Government. A half-hearted, delayed approach to solving the climate crisis is not good enough. Net-zero by 2050 is not good enough. The Programme for Government is not good enough. Appendix: Extinction Rebellion Ireland have pointed out the following as examples of some of the specific shortcomings in the Programme for Government: Greenhouse Gas Emissions – The PfG makes no concrete pledge about how much greenhouse emissions will be cut over the lifetime of this government, instead making a target for the decade, and saying the “strong climate action” will be left to the next government, outside the scope of this PFG. According to Professor John Sweeney stated, ‘backloading the 7% commitment to the second half of this decade is not good, and runs the risk of repeating the experience of the past, when aspirations and commitments were not realised’. Full of fluff – The PfG uses the word ‘review’ 127 times, ‘examine’ 68 times and ‘consider’ 44 times. It also promises a dozen different commissions. This is clearly politics as usual, promises little solid progress, and will not deliver the systematic change we need. Agricultural emissions – The PfG refers to “The special economic and social role of agriculture and the distinct characteristics of biogenic methane” which, as John Sweeney has pointed out, is nonsense. Methane is methane and it traps heat at 72 times the rate of CO2. Eco-Austerity, not Climate Justice – The PfG plans to quadruple the Carbon Tax from its current level, re-introduce water charges by the back door, and will guarantee more austerity in the later years of the government. This stands in contrast to the climate justice advocated by the school strikes, XR, global movements, etc and directly contradicts the idea of a real just transition. Fracked Gas and LNG terminals – The PfG does announce withdrawing the Shannon LNG Terminal from the EU projects of Common Interest in 2021, but makes no reference to the possible Cork LNG Terminal. On the broader issue of importation of fracked gas, it promises to “develop a policy statement” opposing it, but includes no guarantee it will be banned. Biodiversity – Nature is dying and the PfG offers nothing concrete to address this. One example of this is in the lack of commitment to Marine Protected Areas. This is absolutely crucial in the fight against climate change. Ireland is signed up to the Convention on Biological Diversity committing us to 30% of our marine water being Marine Protected Areas (MPA) by 2030 with 10% by 2020. We are only at 2.3% now and there’s no mention of this in the PfG. —
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Agreeing the Programme for Government has forced a defining debate on the Green Party but it is best left to the leadership contest. By Peter Doran. The Comhaontas Glas/Green Party’s internal debate on the Programme for Government will be a defining moment for both party and the country. We are at tipping points for the earth and for our country, one that converges with the long-awaited end of civil war politics. A new page in our history is unfolding as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael concede what many of us have known for a generation: they have always needed each other, for their differences were always more contrived than real. They have defined themselves only in relation to their civil war shadows. So a new narrative of transition is about to emerge and the Greens can be authors because they are more than a political party, they are participants in the world’s most powerful critical ‘social‘ movement. I underline ‘social’ because the modern movement for climate and ecological justice is about root-and-branch system change, embracing economic, societal and cultural shifts – personally, locally and globally. Last weekend, the voice of a new generation of climate justice activists, Greta Thunberg, who can take a large part of the credit for the boost to the Green Party’s recent membership intake and success in the recent General Election, made a remarkable intervention. Thunberg told us that the rise and rise of the Black Lives Matter protests has shown that society has reached a tipping point where injustice cannot be ignored. She told the BBC, “It feels like we have passed some kind of social tipping point where people are starting to realise that we cannot keep looking away from these things. We cannot keep sweeping these things under the carpet, these injustices”. This is also the worldview of the emergent radical wing of the Green Party, especially among the younger global citizens who are connected to a vision of global justice, are embedded in an organic movement demanding a new world beyond the enclosures of the Western consuming elites and their preoccupations with mass distraction, and who know from their history that Ireland’s liberation must have an ecological dimension. ‘The radical caucus of the Green Party, much of which has rallied behind Neasa Hourigan TD’s opposition to the PFG, heralds the decisive entry of ecology into the history of Ireland’s post-colonial narrative’ The radical caucus of the Green Party, much of which has rallied behind Neasa Hourigan TD’s opposition to the PFG, heralds the decisive entry of ecology into the history of Ireland’s post-colonial narrative. Young activists know their history, they know that their island has been used as a petri dish for capitalist and colonial adventures, as a template for economic dispossession, plantation and enclosure that would reach beyond these shores to the Americas. The frontier of England’s colonial expansion was once Ireland’s forest, swamp and bog but did not end here. From the plantations in the 16th century to neoliberal austerity in the 21st, our Atlantic home has been a laboratory for economic and ecological regimes that have sought to colonise our moral imagination. From the foundation of the State, successive political regimes have obscured the ways in which our colonisation was also a form of eco-colonisation by the forces of capital, private property and hyper-individualism. Our political masters pursued a contemporary colonisation of our commons, celebrating and raising the figure of the ‘developer’ as the new sovereign, unquestioned, heroic and scandalously empowered to conflate greed and private profit with national interest. Faux performances of opposition by the civil war parties, in harness with a reactionary church and media, could cope with early environmentalism that was little more than a middle-class cultural aesthetic that has sought only to hold the disenchantment of modernity at arms-length. Thunberg and radicalised young greens in Ireland – within and beyond the Green Party – are embedded in an organic movement that harks back to the vision of Die Gruenen [German Green Party] founder and friend of Ireland, Petra Kelly. She understood that green parties are “anti-party parties”: parties that can only be true to their core vision by working tirelessly within and beyond the corridors of power. It is in the nature of political parties and power to compromise to the point that people and are ideas risk co-option by the very forces they seek to resist. Indeed this is the art of capital! Moreover, no contemporary struggle for climate and ecological justice can be reduced to environmental demands and legislation. The ecological emergency is a ‘sign of the times’, a call to arms for a system change that is defined by the intersections of demands for social, gender, racial, economic and cultural transformation. These linked struggles are the elements of the “great transition” celebrates in contemporary literature and movements that seeks to move beyond capitalist modernity in the image of the privileged West. And, in the words of James Baldwin, let us remember that “whiteness is a metaphor for power.” These systemic and intersectional understandings of the climate and ecological emergencies – are novel for the Irish Green Party, which has sometimes lacked an organic link to the political, economic and colonial history of the island. This has been reflected in an absence of a distinctive Irish cultural or political ecology, with the exception of occasional glimpses of such a project in the works of John Feehan, John O’Donohue and John Moriarty. The debate about the Programme for Government within and around the Green Party and the wider movement for a socio-ecological transformation of Irish society has been forced to the surface by the imminent decision on entry into government. This was, perhaps, inevitable given the salutary lessons of the 2007-2011 government mandate, when Green Party TDs lost all of their seats in return for modest gains while in government during a cyclical crisis of capitalist financialisation. The urgency of the debate, however, has led to a conflation of arguments that are essentially ideological (and unapologetically led by
