Your Green Wales

People’s Assembly, Cardiff June 15th 2013 – Pippa Bartolotti, Wales Green Party

pippabartolotti:

Sometimes, when we wish to protect those we love, and those who are less well off, we cling to old and outdated ideas.

 

One of these is the idea that only economic growth will save us all. But it is impossible to have infinite growth in a finite world.

 

The stresses and strains on the natural world are now becoming clear – alarming losses of our natural pollinators such as bees (which fertilize almost 90% of everything we eat) increases in the price of food, and greenhouse gas emissions – particularly CO2 – which has now reached levels not seen since the dawn of humanity.

 

In the face of melting sea ice, salination of river deltas and rising global temperatures, we have to question those old paradigms and open a new debate.

 

In our need to invest in the future, we must not be wedded to continual resource consumption, because sharing out the deckchairs on the Titanic more fairly will not stop the ship from sinking. You cannot rebuild biodiversity with economic growth.

 

Those of us concerned with social justice must look for ways of sharing a shrinking cake more fairly, and ensure that the poor are protected the most from the consequences.

 

We need to weaken the link between money and material consumption. We need to think less about the acquisition of more stuff, and more about properly valuing and rewarding a person’s time and skills. Money counts for little when there isn’t enough food around.

 

Austerity hasn’t worked, that is clear right now. The deficit is growing, less hours are being worked for less money, the welfare bill is rising. The scandal of zero hours contracts is growing. The less well of are being asked to pay more and more to line the pockets of the already wealthy.

 

There is a way out of this. The Citizens Income.

 

 

We cannot expect people stuck in the poverty trap to think of biodiversity as a priority. Creating a fairer society and leaving the planet in good shape for the next generation go hand-in-hand.

 

The Citizens income is an unconditional payment made to each individual as a right of citizenship – like a tax credit paid to everyone whether they’re working or not.

 

A Citizens Income would not leave people struggling on benefits in an unfair world. A Citizens Income would allow people to work part time, it would give jobseekers time to find the right job for their skills and locality, it would make sure that every man and woman would be better off taking paid work. Above all, a Citizens Income would be fair, and it wouldn’t cost one extra penny.

 

I meet many Labour activists on my travels. They are good people and many are very clued up on the environment. Yet, I ask myself, why do they pretend Ed Milliband is speaking for them? The two-Edded monster of the Labour leadership is now just a paler shade of Tory. No new ideas, nothing to promote fairness and equality, no recognition of the shrinking resources which will define the future world.

 

The left, the right and the centre are all equally in thrall to the Emperor of Growth, but he has no rational or moral clothes.  His party is over.

Simplistic calls for no cuts, no recession and no austerity do not advance the real debate at all. We cannot risk sacrificing fair shares for the global poor, other species, and future generations on the altar of sorting out today’s mess - by going for the old idea of growth.

 

You can hang as many greenish bells and whistles on the old paradigms as you like, but the facts of life remain: To get from a greedy 3 planet economy to a workable 1 planet economy, we have to redistribute and re-direct what we already have.

 

I look around this room today, and see worried people. We are all sacred, we all deserve security and the opportunity for decent jobs. We all deserve a job you can build a life on.

 

Let’s open the real debate – the one about how we can all work together for survival and a redefined prosperity firmly rooted in the real world.

 

We all have a lot to learn, and a lot to teach. But we’re not going achieve anything lasting without working together. Let’s do it!

 

 

THE SLEEP OF REASON BRINGS FORTH MONSTERS - by Clive Shakesheff, Gwent Green Party

According to an opinion poll conducted by the Washington Pew Research Centre in May of this year, only 45% of a sample poll of 7,600 EU citizens now support the Union. A year ago the figure was 60%. The blame for this decline in support for the Union is attributed to the prolonged financial crisis, particularly the crisis in the Eurozone. However the crisis arose in the first place in the USA and was the inevitable result of irresponsible bank lending, particularly in the form of sub-prime mortgages, that is, mortgages to people too poor to make the repayments.

This foolish policy stemmed from the greed of the finance sector but was ultimately due to the recklessness of the Republican Government in allowing excessive levels of leverage, that is the ratio of bank lending to bank holdings, levels which had been controlled since the Great Depression by something called the Glass-Steagall Act.

 With the support of Alan Greenspan, chair of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary  Robert Rubin  (former co-chair of the vampire squid Goldman Sachs*) this Act was repealed in 1999 (after the finance industry had spent $300million lobbying Congress and another $150million in political campaign contributions). Immediately after Glass-Steagall had been consigned to history Rubin took a top job with Citicorp and the floodgates were opened to astonishing levels of lending which go under the general name of “derivatives”.·

 Boring stuff, isn’t it? But that’s just the point. While your average Joe is supping his pint and pontificating about some football or rugby match, very clever but unscrupulous people are busy robbing him blind and this poor innocent victim, not understanding why he has suddenly lost his job and home falls easy prey to UKIP and the racist fringe of the Tory party in blaming it all on immigration or the European Union. It’s an old trick, but it works every time. “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters” runs a caption on one of Goya’s etchings. Yes, and the name of this particular monster is corporate greed.

* ·” a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” (Famous description of Goldman Sachs by Matt Taibi, a contributor to Rolling Stone magazine.

Statistics and other lies, how governments deceive us - by Clive Shakesheff, Gwent Green Party

Impressions are everything to politicians, either those seeking power or those keen to hold on to it. What people think is true matters far more than what actually is true. Take emissions of global warming gases for example: The Government tells us that the UK’s carbon emissions have been reduced by 20% over the last two decades. However a report recently published by the Government’s own Climate Change Commission (CCC) shows that when account is taken of the “embedded” carbon in imported goods our emissions have actually increased by 10%. Carbon emissions are a function of industrial output. We have not cut our carbon; we have exported it because we have exported so much of our industry. Statistics have been manipulated to serve party-political ends

In recent years one of the most prolific practitioners of the art of statistics manipulation has been the Work and Pensions Minister, Ian Duncan Smith. (though it is a competitive field!) Andrew Dilnot, head of the UK Statistics Authority has stated that Duncan Smith’s claim that his benefit cap has led to 8,000 people finding work is not supported by any evidence. Needless to say, Dilnot’s correction received far less prominence than Duncan Smith’s lie and so, once again, a politician has proved true Mark Twain’s famous comment : “a lie can be halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”]

For some time now Conservative politicians have been beating themselves up over the UK’s membership of the European Union. This is strange given that the EU figures as a prominent issue in the minds of only 10% of voters and even stranger when it is known that these same politicians have nodded through measures which the majority of voters find highly objectionable- or they would do if these measures had been accurately and honestly reported in the press. The Government can get away with such actions as the £3 billion NHS “Reforms”, Michael Gove’s ideology-driven, bull-in-a-china-shop approach to education and the savage attacks on the nation’s poor which go under the name of  “welfare reform” because the reality behind these measures is  concealed by a sugar coating of PR spin. The truth will come out eventually but by then much harm will have been done, perhaps irreversibly.

Actually, most of the decisions coming from the European Union are very favourable to the Conservatives or at least to the people whose interests they represent. In fact there is plenty of evidence that corporate lobbyists have far too much influence on the European Commission, the body responsible for drafting new Europe-wide laws. By comparison, Trade Unions and NGOs have much less influence. Nevertheless, the EU does sometimes enact legislation in support of workers’ rights and it is this, together with legislation in support of human rights that so many Tories object to.  A particular cause celebre among Tories is the EU’s Working Time Directive which, they object, hinders Britain’s competiveness and forces people to work less hours than they might wish to.  In fact, the Directive is designed to protect vulnerable workers from unscrupulous employers

Con Dem-ing the Future

“We must do the right thing, and not worry about whether or not we will be successful. For if we do not do the right thing, we will be part of the problem, not part of the solution”.  Schumacher

C02 in the atmosphere this month has reached the 400 parts per million level. This means the atmosphere has more C02 in it since the dawn of humanity. If we look at C02, as many scientists do, as the proverbial canary in the mine, then it is about to fall off it’s perch.

As C02 rises, so does the sea, so does precipitation in already wet climates and so does the heat in already hot lands. Food production is threatened alongside a rising tide of hungry mouths. Demand could soon outstrip supply and this is not a pretty thought.

The World Bank is now telling us that without urgent and radical cuts in emissions, global temperatures will rise by 4C or more by the end of the century, resulting in “devastating” environmental impacts for all of us. The case for political action becomes clearer by the day.

Tinkering with the deficit will not help. Neither will bedroom tax, immigration debates or baying into the wind for economic growth. Growth of the type we used to have is not the solution. The government know this, but do not act. Fatigued by their own rhetoric, they are the problem.

Those who believe that technology will solve our problems had better start investing in it fast. Without sizable investment in the technologies of the future, how can technology possibly come to the rescue.

We need the doors of finance opened to innovation, and now is not soon enough. This tired old world needs new ideas. For example, digging up the ground for fuel seems almost Neanderthal when above us shines an almost infinite supply of clean energy. It is ironic then, that the more fossil fuels we burn, the less the sun seems to shine, and the less the sun shines the more fossil fuels we burn. We are being forced by bad government policy and multinational corporations to pick up a shovel and dig our own graves. The future is being ConDem-ed.

We need to plough money – not into banks – but directly into research and development, innovation and universities, to solve the problems of our time.

We need a dynamic economy to surge ahead and overtake the old. We need to let the old economic order die. We need to apply green economic thinking and seek out the benefits of a steady state where constant innovation continually moves us forward to the goals we seek. Goals such as enough food for all, enough energy for all, democratic energy and full employment.

The pressing needs of today are climate change, energy and food. To have these needs equally distributed requires new thinking – Green thinking.

It is not enough to carry on the way we are and hoping something will turn up. It won’t. 400 ppm of C02 in the atmosphere is too much, and nothing can be heard from government on the subject but a resounding silence. This government is presiding over the biggest mistake humanity has ever made. It is condemning the future.

Shortermism and bankers bonuses will do little more than make rich people even richer. Every thinking citizen knows there is a better way forward. It has never been said that Greens are part of the problem. We are a huge part of the solution and we are ready to apply it.

askthegreens:

Pippa Bartolotti: Con Dem-ing the Future

pippabartolotti:

“We must do the right thing, and not worry about whether or not we will be successful. For if we do not do the right thing, we will be part of the problem, not part of the solution”. Schumacher

C02 in the atmosphere this month has reached the 400 parts per million level. This means the…