Third Party for the Climate Win
The Greens get the job done in Australia.
All non-indictment news will likely get buried today, but climate activists need to know what happened in Australia this week.
A third party (The Greens) played climate hardball, and pushed for a bigger win than the two major parties alone would have considered: A hard cap on fossil fuel polluters. In the process, establishment environmental groups showed that they are too chummy with the "liberal" (Labor) party to be effective.
After the legislative win, Australian Green Party Senator Nick McKim had advice for those trying to reform the Labor Party from within:
“He said the idea within the movement that Labor could be changed from within was “1980s thinking”, dating back to before the Greens were a third political force, and would not shift the dial quickly enough in “the critical decade for climate and nature”.”
US: Reform or Political Revolution?
In the US, well-intentioned reformers remain committed to an inside-outside strategy for reforming the Democratic Party, even as it breaks climate promise after promise.
People are noticing those broken promises. Voting people.
”Despite our generation saving Democrats year after year at the ballot box, despite the more than 650 million views on TikTok of mostly young people screaming to #StopWillow, the White House made a decision to throw a middle finger to our generation.”
— The Sunrise Movement, in In These Times
Merely withholding its endorsement is likely insufficient to sway an administration that has proved it doesn’t care about climate policy consistency. Even getting millions of people in the streets, as the movement has vowed to do, might not be enough; consider that 2020’s unforgettable protests failed to produce meaningful police reform legislation. What other options are left? Organized vote withholding? Aligning with a new party?
Tick-Tock, Politicos
Increasingly, U.S. electoral politics and the four-year presidential cycle feel ill-suited to the type and pace of change needed. At a time when fossil fuel infrastructure sabotage is in the zeitgeist, how long do our institutions have left to prove that they can rise to the moment?
Of possible interest: The "Inflation Reduction Act" Is Not the Green New Deal, The Climate Activist Bad-Faith FAQ
This is exactly what we need to do. We can't coax these established parties forward. They've proven that they're not listening or perhaps they just don't fear our votes.
The Australian Greens have power because they win office. They can win office because Australia has better election structures, with instant runoff voting for the House of Reps, and multi-member proportional elections for the Senate.