Elements of a Green economic vision

Vienna – The very day Al Gore and the IPCC were awarded the Peace Nobel Prize, satisfaction was tangible at the European Green Party’s Council opening in Vienna. Most participants were very pleased at the world-wide attention the Greens’ (not any more) unique selling proposition is now getting even in the most polluting countries. But as Greens always beeing avant-garde , especially on climate protection, they went a step further at once: for a thriving economy, combat climate change!

This was the main theme of this Autumn’s EGP Council, taking place 12-14th October in Vienna. Co-spokesperson Philippe Lambert and Ulrike Lunacek welcomed the delegates representing the 34 national member parties in the same historic chamber of the Austrian Parliament which had already long before been populated by 32 parties representing 8 nations at the beginning of their long parliamentary emancipation process from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

climate change won’t be stolen from the Greens,

commented MEP Eva Lichtenberger from Austrian Tirol, underlining that other parties were still stepping back, in the interest of big business, from decisive action:”It’s just words, words, words – and very little action.” The Austrian Greens are campaigning for Energiewende 2020 , i.e.

an ambitious turn-around: 100 % renewable energy supply by 2020!

This is manageable, maintains their leader Alexander Van der Bellen, a Professor of Economics.:”As always, the first movers will have the advantage, and the last movers will be punished by the market. Let’s push our national governments in the EU to be the first!” Van der Bellen sees no real contradiction between

calling climate change the worst market failure ever,

and at the same time conceding that a solution to this failure cannot be found by ignoring market mechanisms. Where else, agreed Ralf Fücks of the Böll Foundation: if it is true we have not more than 10-15 years left for a turn-around avoiding catastrophic climate change, then we are bound to use market instruments.

“We cannot abolish private property, but we can try to generalize it”,

Fücks thinks, “for example by shifting taxation from labour to consumption of resources, and by introducing basic income for everybody, possibly together with civic work.” To this regard, Prof. Vandana Shiva, the award-winning environmental activist from India, recalled an old Women’s Lib slogan:

let those who’ve created the mess clear it up!

Referring to the emission trade system, Prof.Shiva criticised that “those who pollute the most are rewarded most” – a remark which prompted some other speakers into defending, for the sake of climate protection, the sheer efficiency (if not the morals and the current practice) of resorting to such market instruments. But then,

where does our economic vision still differ from others?

An answer to this core question comes from Czech Green Party leader and deputy Prime Minister responsible for the environment Martin Bursik: while the market economy does not count external costs, we advocate just that: an “internalisation of externalities”; a new concept of “environmental justice” with a -fiscally neutral- environmental tax reform, i.e.

strongly promoting innovation towards a low carbon economy:

everybody should pay the price according to the level of damage he causes: it’s not about more or less market, but about a more fair market, e.g. by strongly incentivating environmentally sound production and behaviour. In Vienna, the EGP Council listened (and politely applauded!) to big business too, (and viceversa!): Christian Jourquin, CEO of Solvay (a Belgium-born chemical and pharmaceutical group employing some 29.000 people in 50 countries), participated to a panel, trying “to bring back industry as part of the solution rather than the problem”, as he said:

don’t underestimate the triangle industry science and innovation.

If you think of your life expectancy, health, nutrition, quality of life, comfort, communication etc, you will concede industry can be extremely useful, as well as harmful, Solvay’s CEO went on: I know I am not going to convince you but we still might agree that

it is useful for the future of this planet if we listen to each other;

and that long-term global problems cannot be solved by people whose time horizon is restricted to days (like news media) or to months (like politicians standing for elections). Finally, and happily, Green Minister of Labour Tarja Cronberg, French Green MEP Martin Lipietz and Belgian Ecolo’s former Party Leader all pleaded

for a re-introduction of the concept of happiness into the economic debate,

with slogans such as: less lonelyness, more happiness; more time, less junk for the young and for the elderly; more service society, less consumer society; How right they were: the concept of happiness, essential though it is (and well-researched at that), is far too often absent from political debates in many countries – even among Greens, where it should in fact be most at home!

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