About 40 years ago, perhaps some more, different people in different countries had a powerful realization. They had few years hearing about ecology, about extinction, about pollution. Probably they had read the infamous “limits to growth” pamphlet from the club of Rome, a group of 100 wise people (that ended up not being that wise as policy makers) who wrote saying that the resources available to humankind were seriously stressed, and famines were coming, besides peak oil moments and all sorts of fancy-end-of-the-world scenarios. So our people, coming from all sorts of left parties and mostly disillusioned with whatever it was their flavor of left, founded political green parties. They realized that improving, even rescuing the environment could not be left to NGO’s or civil servants. There had to be a concerned political effort. People had to be mobilized, elections had to be won and governments formed. Without, no better environment is possible. So they created green political parties.
We are living in a very similar moment.
Green parties are still growing. In Germany they entered government this year, for second time in their history. Brazil is another large economy that, at least for few years, counted with a government with -not only, but also- green politicians. There are other few examples. The share of local politicians elected belonging to a green party is constantly in the rise, and a great deal of european cities are actually run by green local governments. It is not unthinkable that the greens will end up being a political force as relevant as the social, or the christian democrats were.
The greens, or at least the founding mothers of the political green parties, were able to sense a growing concern, There was the cold war and the promise of total -and senseless- anihilation. There were the first global phenomena that hinted at our capacity to destroy our environment, as the acid rain and the ozone hole. The greens felt that, and created political parties, those machines that we created to deal with big problems. In that sense the greens were not only political visionaries, but also people attuned to their societies and their concerns. Yet in our current years there is a growing awareness that the greens are missing.
As much as the traditional lefties missed the green political movement, the greens are missing the movement of people as a global phenomena shaping our present, and our future.
Interestingly enough, politicians at the right side have not missed it. We all know how successful have been, all across Europe, the anti-migrant rethoric. We all remember the “malos hombres from Mexico” statement that Trump used to kick off his campaign. And we all know about so many other successful conservative politicians tying their political capital to the idea that people should remain wherever they are born. So indeed the idea of the left wing as intellectuals gathered at the top of an ivory tower debating interesting and ultimately irrelevant issues might not be that wrong after all. The right has been capable to read the time, realize that people moving matter, so they re-created the (never totally extinguished) ghosts of xenophobia and racism. The important question of our days, then, is if the left, or the greens, are capable of mobilizing people and ideas about our moving masses.
I don’t think so.
As much as the social democrats and other lefties nowadays have some green elements in their programs, they weren’t, aren’t and won’t be able to really integrate environmental issues in their political identities. It is the greens that realize that a green economy is needed, that green cities are possible, that climate change refugees are for real, other left wing parties weren’t capable of making the link, even if they recognize it nowadays. Green parties formally recognize the relevance of migration and diversity for our present and future, but fail at produce a coherent political agenda on the matter, let alone to include political leaders from other ethnicities or backgrounds.
Our time is the time for a moving people party.