The Green Party sees its role not just in terms of 'saving the planet' but also to save the capitalist system. In an insightful and perceptive blog posting, Green co-leader Russel Norman - who previously saw himself as some sort of anti-capitalist - now sees the Greens as playing the same role that earlier left parties - such as the First Labour Government in NZ - had in rescuing capitalism from decline and possible death. As with the first time round, when capitalism was under threat in the 1930s, Norman believes that the more natural defenders of capitalism - business and its political parties - are out of touch with what capitalism actually needs to survive. His posting is worth quoting at length. It gives a good indication of where the Greens are going, especially in terms of their wholehearted adoption of market solutions to environmental challenges:
It’s a funny position we find ourselves in. Just as the social democrats (Europe), labourists (UK, Oz, NZ) and new dealers (US) of the 1930s and 1940s had to save capitalism from its own destructive tendencies by introducing a range of modifications and interventions on the market system, so now the Green Parties of the world find ourselves in possibly a similar position. The best of the old social democrats like Michael Cullen are too locked in the old paradigm to understand it, and the sectional interests like the business roundtable and employers federation are too narrow to see it, but we have to intervene on the market system to place a price on resource use and pollution so that we can save the planet. And in the process we will quite possibly save the market system from its natural tendency to destroy or consume all resources leading to its own demise as well as the demise of the planet and all of us living on it.
