Environmental theory and collection of ideas/Political environmentalism alliance

Human society works according to the rules of politics. If these rules are bad, it can cause too much suffering to the people. That is why it is worth of making politics more perfect, in which the role of ethics multiplies. Freedom, justice, prosperity and sustainability should belong to the most important goals of politics. In order to achieve this, the democratically elected will and the wise will should correspond more and more to each other, and that is why the basic knowledge about worldview, ethics and politics should be taught in public education, at least briefly. Environmental problems shall cause changes in politics, too. Meanwhile, the hereby mentioned political values should be taken care of, because it is possible that while the weight and role of one value gets stronger, the weight and role of the other weakens.

In hard times, power often gets centralized and falls into the hands of rulers, and it cares about liberal laws less, or at least history shows such examples in wars. In these circumstances, the maintenance of order and the distribution of goods is often done better by intelligent people than by outdated laws. This insight might have been known by the Ancient Roman Republic too, because they allowed official dictators in emergency. Thus, environmental problems mean a threat to the freedom of people, because it is difficult to remove a ruling class once it is not wanted. In many cases, liberal parties are in alliance with green parties, perhaps partly due to the before-mentioned threat but not only because of that, but because freedom and sustainability are good concepts, and these people support good concepts. Perhaps that is why these parties used to ally with the socialists, too, as socialism means social justice, which is a good idea. It is another question whether these parties do what is included in their names.

But how to protect freedom in a world which is less and less free and advances towards a future which may need strong rule? The answer is not by radical or conceptual liberalism that loses the support of the majority by maintaining controversy. If a liberal party keeps choosing the way it deems good, e.g. it supports the marriage of homosexuals, then it can lose a lot of healthy voters, and it is possible that it will not get the support to govern because of this reason. A liberal party should represent the liberal 80% of the population instead of the liberal 20%, but it is better if it represents the 100% of the population. Thus the parties of wise politicians should be similar to each other, as the will of the people is similar to itself, and wisdom is similar to wisdom too. Instead, liberalism shall show itself where it helps in life, for example, in general, due punishing taxes or incentives should be set instead of prohibitive or coercive laws.

It is not sure that changing the political system would prove to be detrimental, provided that it corresponds to the afore-mentioned four values more: freedom, justice, prosperity and sustainability. It is possible that ideal political systems differ very much from what people have had so far. For example, it is probable that more equality of chances can be provided to people if real estates and debts - and even shares and the like - were not inheritable, but every person would start his/her adult life with real estates of approximately equal value, and without debts and public debts. Achieving this goal is, however, not easy, and it needs longer studies in the area of political philosophy, so this is outside of the borders of this book. This was only mentioned as an example to show that probably there would be a more just way to divide land than by inheritance. For dividing money and moveables, however, probably there is no better solution than inheritance, because the parents can give these as gifts to their children, and it might not even be possible to create a good law which restricts the inheritance of these things. As far as there is equality of chances in the area of real estates, it is not very bad that there are wealthier people, because this way people feel motivation for success, and part of them can be happy enough, and the rich can even improve this Earth in some ways a community would not.

Call for more arguments to support or disprove this theory or ideas!

Further reading

Aristotle - Politics (from a famous ancient greek author)

Robin Lane Fox - The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome (Penguin Books, 2006)

Karl Marx - Capital: Critique of Political Economy (1867)