One thought on “Sunday outing”

1. Like yourself, I suspect I’m a bit too libertarian to be a comfortable fit for the Greens in general; I agree that there is too much of a sense of trying to legislate against sin.

   However, unlike in the US, the more ‘sensible’ position on climate change which you describe is basically now mainstream for almost all European political parties (the British Tories, being closest to the US parties, have the most visible climate sceptics but even there they are a minority), and (though this may be my Brussels perspective) sustainable economic development is now hardwired into the general EU approach (see Article 3.3 of the Treaty).

   In fairness to the principles of the Green movement, the Irish Greens’ failure is much more a moral and human failing from the party’s leaders than any particular problem with their ideology. The Green Party’s unique selling points in the 2007 election were stopping a natural gas refinery being built in Mayo, rerouting a planned motorway in Meath, and stopping your air force from using Shannon airport. Any or all of these could have been implemented, not without cost of course, once they had got into government. But they delivered on precisely none of them (indeed, one of their ministers ended up supervising the construction of the refinery which he had pledged to prevent). They lost the moral high ground by failing to deliver, and their reason for eventually withdrawing from the government was on a point of political strategy rather than high principle. Essentially, they were put in a position to turn their words into actions, and failed to do so, and at that rate even those who agree with every word of their electoral programme will have difficulty in voting for them again.

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