Neo-liberalism and Green Politics

Abstract

It is now some 38 years since Galbraith (1999) announced that the West was enjoying an ‘affluent society’, yet despite real per capita GDP having much more than doubled since then, the West is now ever more competitively concerned with the objective of maximising economic growth. This period has seen the emergence of the modern environmental movement in the West, yet the movement’s criticisms of the western obsession with economic growth appear to have had little impact. Although a mild version of environmentalism has been accepted into the western democratic consensus, it has only been accepted as an idea that affects the margins, not the centre of politics. Green parties are seen as ‘single issue’ parties by the majority and environmental pressure groups, although influential, are peripheral to the central economic debates.