Reading the post on green radicalism might aid your understanding so if you have yet to read the post on green radicalism, click here! (Please do come back to continue reading this post once you’re done with the other!)

Deviation to Politics 

Under one of the main categories of ‘Green Radicalism’, there is another sub-category, where the discourse of Green Politics lies in. In green politics, it centres around the desire to make political change of the social structures, while also making people have a change in their consciousness. In green politics, as the name might suggest, it focuses more on the political aspects of creating change. Green politics would then be a political ideology of sorts that is aimed at creating a sustainable society that is based on the ideas of environmentalism, social justice, where environmentalism should not be at the expense of the poor and grassroots democracy. Grassroots democracy is the idea where power is given to the commoners and the power is not restricted to isolated leaders at the top.

Real Life Example: Green Party of England and Wales

The GPEW is a left-wing political party, meaning that it supports social equality that is also rooted in the ideas of environmentalism. The GPEW has a Green Guarantee that they promise to their supporters, where they do not only promise green goals, but they also promise other general goals that are found in other non-green parties as well. An example of such a goal is that of promising to ensure the welfare of their supporters for Brexit.

However, what makes the GPEW different from other political parties is that the GPEW promises and emphasises more on the green goals on top of the other common goals that they promise. In their 2017 policy manifesto, the party promised a multitude of pro-environmental goals, such as restoring and protecting biodiversity, provision of equality of access of green spaces and implementing a zero waste scheme.

If you wish to read further on their manifesto, click here!

Looking at GPEW, we can observe the commitment that the party has to environmentally friendly causes. Linking back to the discourse of green politics, we can see that the GPEW aims to change the social structure by entering the political scene with their ideologies but also ensuring to keep up to their promise for other promises that may not be related to the environmental cause. Through promising both general and green goals, we can see that they hoping to permeate to the general public by not making themselves too different. This could possibly change the consciousness of the public over time.