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For further information contact: Centre for Population and Urban Research PO Box 11A Monash University VIC 3800 Australia Phone (+61 3) 9905 2965 Fax (+61 3) 9905 2993 email: <[email protected]> WHICH IS THE MOST IDIOTIC GREEN PARTY IN THE WORLD? Tim Murray Which of the world’s prominent green parties is the most foolish? In this opinion piece the author, a Canadian, surveys some promising candidates. But he also finds a winner for a different contest, the model of what a green party should be: the Green Party of New Zealand. The deadline is fast approaching. Send in he maintains, and only ‘through-put’ your submissions now. The first annual matters. The party stands for Green taxes. contest to establish which indeed is the most Down with those antiquated fair and idiotic of the world’s Green Parties is upon progressive income and capital gains taxes. us. Many candidates were surveyed. The But some party officials like Eric Walton Swedes, the nutty Germans and Brits, the are waking up to the fact that low income hypocritical Canadians and Australians and Canadians aren’t buying it. He now favours even the Green Party of the United States a hybrid mix of progressive and green taxes along with some of its discordant constitu- so that the poor don’t pay the shot for ent parts. The competition for lunacy is punishing polluters and shifting to fierce. Here are but a few of the contest- renewable technologies. That’s the ants. Canadians.2 Let’s take a quick peek at other First, let me present as my personal Green hypocrites. favourites, Canada’s Greens. Their leader, The British Green Party, at first blush, Elizabeth May, argues that we should offers a radical departure in consciousness reduce our individual ecological footprint from its Canadian counterparts with this but at the same time import 300,000 more promise: ‘To promote debate on sustainable ‘footprints’ each year just to strengthen our population levels for the UK, to include ‘cultural diversity’. This ‘Great consideration of consumption and material Multicultural Project’ as she calls it, of comfort’.3 But then they say that: ‘Richer course takes precedence over any project regions and communities do not have the to protect biological diversity or constrain right to use migration controls to protect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which their privileges from others in the long her 300,000 incoming footprints will term’. Note that the first statement calls only increase. The Canadian Greens are a for a debate, as the population skyrockets, masterpiece of contradictions and because ‘the aim is to increase awareness confusion. Ontario leader Frank de Jong of the issues—not to set specific population told us privately that Canada is targets’. In their migration policy the UK overpopulated by a factor of ‘four to ten’. Greens acknowledge an impending human Yet he told others, including an Australian tsunami by saying that: ‘there is likely to audience, that ‘population is a red herring’. be mass migration of people escaping from Now recently, on 30 January 2008, he made the consequences of global warming, the incredible assertion that ‘a higher environmental degradation, resource population means a higher quality of life’.1 shortage and population increase’.4 So how Economic growth is no problem either. The do they propose to respond to this, besides size of the economy can increase ten fold, of course to work for a fairer world that People and Place, vol. 16, no. 1, 2008, page 59 would lessen the urge to migrate? ‘We will a driver’s licence to operate a car within a progressively reduce UK immigration certain speed limit but you can go ahead controls’.5 and have five kids on the dole and have them They will do that in a multitude of ways. dump 100 metric tonnes of GHG per year ‘Families will not be divided by into the atmosphere because it’s your free deportation’.6 ‘We will abolish the “primary choice. Yet polluters would no doubt face purpose” rule under which partners are tough restrictions under a Green regime. refused entry if it is thought that the primary The Irish Greens similarly project an purpose of the relationship is for them to image not of an environmental party but of gain entry to the UK’.7 And ‘Migrants a party obsessed with human rights. Not illegally in the UK for over five years will once in their dense 13-page document on be allowed to remain unless they pose a immigration policy do they mention serious danger to public safety’.8 carrying capacity or the ecological impact The British Greens will also ‘resist all of all the asylum-seekers and immigrants attempts to introduce a “barrier around that they want Ireland to embrace.13 They Europe” shutting out non-Europeans or state that: ‘The Green Party opposes any giving them more restricted rights of common asylum policy for the European movement within Europe than European Union which results in more restrictions on nationals’.9 And finally they have this to say asylum-seeking or in reducing rights for about human trafficking: ‘The Government refugees … [and] We strongly condemn the should grant a temporary right to stay in trend whereby the European Union is the country to anyone who has been becoming a fortress on whose borders there trafficked or appears to have been trafficked. are people dying in the hands of It should also recognize the right of those traffickers’.14 The Greens denounced the who have been trafficked to apply for a Immigration Bill of 2004 as ‘flawed on longer term or permanent immigrant account of the negative tone of the language status’.10 With shameless invective, it labels used in it and the basic lack of provisions as ‘racists of the far right’ all those persons for family re-unification for non- in the United Kingdom and Europe who nationals’.15 In this party’s opinion effective favour increased immigration controls. integration of immigrants and their families The population of the United Kingdom, is best promoted by granting them an island nation of 60 million acres, is citizenship. But why does Ireland need currently 61 million and rising rapidly. It is immigrants? obvious that under a Green Party Economic orthodoxy provides the administration, it would soon be 71 or 81 standard answer. In the words of an Irish million barring an international resource or Green Party policy statement: ‘The Central environmental crisis, in which event it Statistics Office, in their report for 2006– would be even higher. What consumption 36, suggests the State will continue to rely levels would Britons have to tumble down on strong inward migration to maintain to then to achieve sustainability? economic growth. It forecasts that the But let us save the best to last. After economy will need 45,000 immigrant spending much time talking about the need workers every year for the next 12 years to for family planning,11 they declare that: ‘The sustain economic growth’. And then the Green Party holds that the number of Irish Greens pull out the old chestnut that, children people have should be a matter of since those over 65 will in 2036 ‘comprise free choice’.12 That is brilliant. You need a one fifth of the population rather than one licence to catch a certain number of fish and tenth’, it is important that ‘a progressive [sic] People and Place, vol. 16, no. 1, 2008, page 60 immigration policy will be in this country keeping Celtic culture alive. And yet, in the to ensure that the economy will be able to heart of Celtic culture, you have an Irish fund the necessary pension schemes, health government that has quickly allowed one and educational facilities into the future’.16 in seven of its residents to be from another The Irish Green Party, then, fully buys country and where at least one political into the gospel of economic growth and the party, the Greens, promotes the myth of immigration as a cure for an ageing fragmentation of that culture by its support population. Without debating the profound for multiculturalism and the economic vacuity of their ideology, it is best simply growth which drew immigrants in in the to refer them to authors Richard first place. One wonders why the Irish spent Douthwaite, Herman Daly and Phil Mullan. centuries spilling blood to get the British Case closed. In declaring that, ‘as a rapidly out only to invite the East Europeans in. So developing economy, Ireland needs migrant much for Sinn Fein: ‘Ourselves Alone’. workers to provide essential skills and Raised on Irish Nationalist folklore, you services’, the Greens concede the game can’t fathom my sense of betrayal. before it begins. They accept the necessity The Swedish and German Greens of a ‘rapidly developing economy’, not duplicate the same trademark idiocies of thinking that on-going economic growth their sister parties.18 Though one must admit will create labour shortages that, once filled, that the German Greens in the former will generate the growth that demands more coalition voting to shut down their nuclear immigrant labour.