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It's not easy being green: On Saturday afternoon I went along to the Green Party meeting introducing its British Columbia leadership candidates -- happily being held in my home town - - and I swear it wasn't to escape the family party taking place at my house. I am green, to the point of fluorescence on some days, but, I was to decide, and not for the first time, not this kind of green. The B.C. Green Party was the first Green Party established in Canada, in 1983, and is polling these days in the double digits, somewhat like Ralph Nader has from time to time over the last couple of months in a few states. Not enough to even steer the election toward Bush by stealing Gore's base out from under him, but enough to steer the discussion toward corporate greed and malfeasance and the need to take vigorous action to protect the environment. If you read Nader's acceptance of the Green Party's nomination, you will realize where Gore found his idea for his tiresome class war. Nader's exhaustive and exhausting 42-page platform outlines his ideas for change "to value-based politics, in contrast to a system extolling exploitation, consumption, and non-sustainable competition." Sounds good doesn't it? I particularly liked the idea of a binding option "None of the Above" on the ballot. Everybody truly cool in the States is planning to vote for Nader and since studies have shown that 42 million Americans have "values centred on the environment," if he can get out the vote, he may play a role of quite the spoiler and we'll have an interesting, if poverty-struck, few years ahead. The only glitch being that the truly cool don't actually get out and vote, which is why Nader's numbers are so low in studies of likely voters. Still, if you look at Ross Perot's first campaign, the wretched little madman managed to steer the debate toward balanced budgets all over the world. So, likewise, in this election cycle, I wondered if Green-ness could have equal punch. And since B.C. has an election coming up, one hopes very, very soon, and since B.C. is virtually the only province wherein the engines of growth have not caught, I thought Greens might have something to add. Oh boy, did they. All three candidates were, at one time in their lives, teachers or social workers, and they know precisely what ails us and how to fix it. And by the way they feel betrayed by the NDP, who have totally ignored them and (surprise, surprise) played only to their union base. They want the tax system completely overhauled, want full cost accounting, tax shifting, and full product stewardship, all of which take into account the impact of any industrial activity on the commons, on resources and on health. They want, enshrined in law, the right to clean water and clean air. They want a guaranteed annual income, they want us to follow the "Natural Step," which is a Swedish plan for sustainable commerce that would require several acres of new laws. They oppose freeways and cars, they want elections wholly funded by the public, and they want no logging in watersheds (with landowners compensated by the public purse), all of which means when you get right down to it, a full- scale invasion into private property rights. Finally (but not really because the Green platform goes on and on), buried in the health care plan, even the idea that an individual has the right to govern his own person is put up for debate. The 20 good souls in late middle age who attended this meeting seemed unimpressed. Greenness is a way of life in B.C., but most everyone pays on a mortgage, or wants to, so private property is kind of sacrosanct. Besides, no one truly knows who or what to believe since the discussion is muddied by statements such as the one apparently made by David Suzuki 10 years ago wherein he announced we had 10 years left before biosphere systems started to break down. Well I'm still breathing, how 'bout you? Or the recent breathless New York Times announcement of an unprecedented hole in the North Pole ice, corrected the next week by climatologist Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. "There's been open water at the pole before. We have no evidence at this point that this is related to global climate change." What is changing is that all over the world individuals are taking action without the help of government. In groups, on their own, and in profit-centred businesses, tens of thousands of innovators are making products and creating systems that integrate biosystem preservation into their operations. Paul Hawken in his latest book, Natural Capitalism describes the "tens of thousands of institutes, associations, foundations, colleges, universities, churches, outdoor clubs, land trusts and NGOs who are addressing the complete range of environmental issues." These groups have quietly become the world's largest and fastest growing activist movement. And now it isn't uncommon to see corporations such as Mitsubishi Electric, which worked with 160 environmental organizations to forge a new vision for the company. Or Home Depot, which sells 25% of all the wood products in Canada, and refuses to buy old-growth timber. This is where the true revolution is happening. In the heart of our much maligned corporations, flush with the profits of the last 10 years of happy consumer spending, goaded and prodded by their investors, employees, clients, customers and consumers, that is to say, us.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.