Richard Parncutt: Voting Green. A matter of life and death?

We live in an age of global poverty and global warming, both of which may cause a billion deaths this century (link). Both of these problems could be reduced or even solved surprisingly easily, by relatively small adjustments to national income (taxation) and expenditure patterns (link). People like to deny the truth of this statement with sophisticated sounding arguments, but the truth is simple: The more we invest in stopping global poverty and global warming, the faster we will make progress toward solving these problems.

I am assuming that public funds for global development and alternative energy are mostly invested wisely, just as money for any large project in either the public or the private sector is mostly spent wisely. Given the enormous numbers of experts out there on the fine details of these problems, this is a reasonably assumption. It is basically just a question of putting the right expert in charge of the right task. Every rich country already has functioning structures in place for this purpose, and on the whole they work well.

Given the unprecedented emergency of global poverty and global warming, the seeming inability of human beings to solve either problem, and the radical differences between the usual political parties in their willingness to address these problems (let alone solve them), voting at elections has become a matter of life and death. If you vote for the right party, you can save lives. If you vote for the wrong party, you can indirectly cause future deaths.

The pen that you use to mark your ballot paper is like the sword of a medieval knight. You can use it as a weapon of chivalry to generously respect and defend weakness, and to fight against evil and injustice (cf. Léon Gautier, La Chevalerie, 1883, more). You can also use it as a fatal weapon to end the lives of innocent people in order to defend the interests of the rich and powerful. You alone carry the responsibility to use your sword wisely. You are free to do what you want with it. After the election, you will not appear in the newspaper as a life-saving hero, nor will you face a charge of manslaughter or accessory to murder. But the way you vote will nevertheless cause lives to be saved or lives to be lost in coming decades, mainly in developing countries.

This is not a Hollywood movie, nor am I not talking about some kind of computer game. My argument is not far-fetched. Every day, tens of thousands of innocent people die of hunger, preventable disease and curable disease in developing countries. Global warming will cause this death rate to gradually increase, other effects remaining equal. These people really exist. They really are dying, and their deaths really are preventable by political means.

If you agree that human lives are more important than money, and not many people will openly disagree with that statement, then the way most people vote at elections is deeply immoral. The normal and accepted way to choose a political party is to think about what the different parties will do for your personal financial situation, and vote accordingly. It's the economy, stupid. In today’s globalized economy, that effectively means giving more priority to your personal finances than to matters of life and death for other people.

Given that the human species is gradually destroying the planet (the main problem being that our carbon footprint is too big, but there are many other environmental problems and unsustainable processes), voting on this basis is like putting your personal needs above the long-term needs of your children and grandchildren, not to mention one billion people living in poverty in developing countries. If you look at this kind of behavior logically and objectively, you can see that it is deeply and shockingly selfish. Perfectly normal, decent, warm-hearted people, including many with a good education who really should know better, are thinking and acting in this quite evil fashion.

My argument applies only to industrial (richer) countries that have the means to combat global poverty, for example by raising the official development assistance budget to 0.7% of GDP (as repeatedly agreed in international forums) and encouraging other countries to do the same, and the means to significantly reduce climate change, by supporting the recommendations of climate scientists and economists. Citizens of poorer countries should vote for the party that is best for the future of their country, but that is beyond my scope; a good source is the book "Unbowed" by Wangari Maathai.

In most richer countries, there is only one political party with a serious and consistent interest in reducing global poverty and global warming, and that is the Greens. Let us look at the other standard parties in turn.

The centre-left "social democratic"or "labor" parties are generally a good choice in any election. During the late 20th century, they were probably the most important motor for positive social change, both locally and globally. They have also been realistic about the benefits of free enterprise and capitalism, which after all are the ultimate source of the wealth that they are trying to distribute more equally. In this way, they have significantly improved living standards and opportunities for people with lower incomes. Today, as ever, they typically want to reduce poverty at home, but not in other countries where the situation is often much worse. Most centre-left parties have interesting environmental policies, but they do not give those policies nearly enough priority to bring about significant progress in reducing climate change.

The centre-right "conservative" parties are right that free enterprise and capitalism are the main reason for the high standard of living in today’s industrialised countries. They are also right that, in general and on average, democratically regulated free enterprise is the best for everyone. But they take this idea too far. They generally do not care about poverty, either at home or abroad. There is a tendency to believe that poverty is the fault of the poor, because the poor are lazy. People are usually too polite to say that, but the belief is evident. That must be one of the greatest lies of all time. Of course there are individuals out there who seem to want to suffer (please visit my internet page on victim mentality to understand that), but you can find such individuals among both the poor and the rich. Sociologists know that large groups of people are not like that. Besides, if you study poverty, you find out that the average poor person is working just as hard as the average rich person - they are just not being rewarded properly for their work (please read the lyrics of “Dear Mr President” by Pink). The centre right often have interesting approaches to reducing climate change, but they also tend to place the interests of big business above the interests of developing countries and future generations, which is not only naïve and obsequious, it is also profoundly short-sighted and selfish. On the whole, the centre right gives the impression of being too cowardly and dishonest to defend the moral principles (often Christian) that they themselves proclaim. The centre-right parties are also largely responsible for the growing wealth gap: the gap between rich and poor, within both rich and poor countries. That is because they consistently and powerfully oppose any tax that primarily affects the rich, such as wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, environmental taxes, and transaction taxes. But tax has always been paid mainly by those who have the ability to pay (where else is it going to come from?). Given the shocking consequences of the growing wealth gap (which includes the rise of far-right politics) and the urgency with which government revenue is needed just about everywhere to reduce deficits and combat global poverty and global warming, the centre right have a lot to answer for.

Many far-left "communist" parties have interesting policies, mainly for combating poverty, but also for climate change (given the effect it will have on poverty). But given the bad reputation and uncertain status of communism, they are usually too powerless to have any significant effect on mainstream politics. As a pacifist, I cannot support the idea of violent revolution in any form. Violence leads to more violence, so it is unlikely to be a good solution to any problem.

Many European countries have smaller "liberal" parties that are strong on freedom of speech, improved education, equal opportunity for all, and European cooperation. All of these things may be good reasons to vote "liberal". But if these parties otherwise support free enterprise and capitalism in much the same naive way that the centre-right parties do, and if their representatives are not courageous enough to oppose the undemocratic forces of multinational business, in order to defend the basic human rights of people living in poverty both at home and abroad, then they are surely problematic -- in spite of their good intentions and glossy image.

The far-right parties, with their thinly disguised nationalist, racist, sexist and fascist ideologies, are one of the most important indirect causes of global poverty and global warming today, because they consistently oppose the promotion of human rights and development aid, and the reduction of climate-changing emissions. Given that we are talking about enormous numbers of deaths as a result of policies of this kind, far-right politicians may be indirectly and unintentionally causing enormous numbers of deaths in the future. One could discuss whether it is democratic or not to allow such political parties to exist, but that raises the larger question of the extent to which modern democracies are democratic at all; the enormous and growing wealth gap between rich and poor in most countries means that democracy is only barely functioning (see my comments on the centre right above).

Please excuse me for being so devastatingly honest, but the stakes could not be higher. A billion lives are on the line, a fact to which most people seem to be entirely oblivious. I refuse to leave the bottom billion and future generations in the lurch. If to get my point across I have to invent a new term such as “indirect multicide” (for the indirect, unintentional killing of many people), I will do it. From a legal point of view, one could argue that we have a duty to rescue people who are likely to die as a result of global poverty or global warming, as Peter Singer has convincingly argued (more).

From this argument, it follows that the only morally defensible course of action at elections is to vote Green, or for a party that is strong on ending global poverty and global warming. It's the human species, stupid. It's our own children and grandchildren, stupid. It's the only planet we will ever get, stupid. Of course there will be exceptions to this rule, given that political parties are constantly changing their policies in an attempt to attract more votes; and in any case every country offers a different spectrum of political opportunities. And of course not all Green politicians are good, a point that applies to politicians in every party. But there is also remarkable stability in the way in which the Greens in different countries have been promoting practical solutions to the world's biggest problems. The other parties have been similarly consistent in their tendency to ignore those problems and instead focus on local short-term issues.

The aim of this political statement is to encourage people to vote for whichever party is most likely to promote the human rights of the bottom billion and future generations. This is no ordinary political manifesto. The usual approach is to focus on economic self-interest and assume that people will vote on that basis. I am instead appealing to your altruism. I am not writing as if my readers have never heard of morality, or have their heads in the sand. Many people already vote altruistically, and they are not abnormal or psychologically sick. In fact, depending on your definition, they may be the only psychologically healthy people on the planet. They vote for the party that they think will do the best things for the entire world and all of humanity. That party is not always the Greens, but in most cases it is.

Our grandchildren deserve to inherit a planet worth living on. They are not going to live anywhere else. They are counting on us, and we should not let them down.