French Green Party places third in regional elections
Europe-Ecologie, the French Green Party, has placed third in regional elections with about 13% of the vote, according to a story entitled “Opposition leads in French Regional Elections” on Xinhua Net. This is an encouraging followup to Europe-Ecologie’s record 16.3% vote in the 2009 European elections.
The resurgence of Les Verts is really surprising. A few years ago people were saying the party was dead because basically every other party had adopted a strong environmentalist stance. “Everyone is a Green now” they said. That left little reason to vote for Greens themselves. You know, it would be like voting for a party that opposes slavery or something.
I think at least part of the reason though is the collapse of the National Front. That sounds weird, I know, but consider that the National Front gained a lot of support from the collapse of the French Communist Party. Les Verts are now the default protest vote.
There’s a huge difference between green rhetoric and green policy, and it seems that Europeans are starting to grasp that.
For example, in the UK the Conservative leader has been trying to greenwash his party for several years. However, in a recent poll of their candidates’ priorities, addressing climate change ranked dead last out of 20 or so issues – well behind “building more prisons” and other issues near and dear to the conservative heart. The growing profile of the UK Green Party is an encouraging sign that British voters realize the last thing the environment needs is more hot gas from the mouths of establishment politicians.
Things are even worse in the US, where a president who was supported by many environmentalists is now calling for nuclear power loan guarantees, spewing the dirty lie of clean coal, allowing mountaintop removal and hydraulic fracking to continue, and pushing ahead with expanded offshore drilling.
Where is your address and phone # s
Where is your phone # s or your fax # or Address