The European ‘Greens’ parties are a disaster in domestic as well as foreign policy

On these pages, I have several times remarked on the rabidly Russophobic foreign policy being practiced in Germany by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens party.  Lest anyone mistakenly believe that Baerbock’s views on Russia are strictly her own, allow me to remind you that the German Greens were the most vociferously anti-Russian bloc in the European Parliament going back a dozen years or more. In that regard they were in a close competition with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) party headed by former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, another Russia-hater who concealed his animus by making friends with anti-Putin Russians like Boris Nemtsov.

But in terms of vicious rhetoric, I submit that the Greens, with MEPs like Rebecca Harms, had the upper hand. Back in 2012, they were actively campaigning for a European version of the Magnitsky Act whereby the United States imposed severe sanctions on Russia for fabricated charges of human rights violations. They did not succeed in hitting hard at Russia until 2014 and the annexation of Crimea, but they did their best.

As we all know, thanks to the drumbeats coming from Germany’s centrist parties, the Alternativ fuer Deutschland, is an extremist party of the Right with neo-fascist tendencies. If you have any doubts, just ask the editorial board of the Financial Times and they will chime in with their vote of support for this interpretation. However, here we have just another case of mirror image propaganda, where the allegations are more appropriate to those making them than to those who are the target of them.  What I am saying is that the anti-Russian German Greens are the true extremist party of the Right with neo-fascist tendencies while the pro-Russian AfD are defenders of German sovereignty against the American occupation forces. The Green’s rejection of post war contrition for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers finds expression in the new ‘holier than thou’ posture towards Russia and revanchism.

The Greens’ brand was built on environmentalism. But the Greens in power in Germany have enthusiastically sacrificed their environment-friendly policies on the altar of war with Russia. In the wake of a domestic energy crisis precipitated by rejection of Russian hydrocarbons, the Greens have brought back coal-fired generators. If there is anything environmentally friendly about Baerbock’s policies in government, it is the ongoing deindustrialization of Germany thanks to the departure of manufacturing capacity to countries with better energy and regulatory conditions.

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The cuddly, pro-environment brand of the European Greens parties brought them particular success among young people during the 2019 parliamentary elections across Europe.  Here in Belgium, they did well in all three of the regions that constitute the kingdom. In the Brussels-Capital Region where I live, they were a major factor in the formation of governing coalitions. In my own commune of Ixelles, they are the bosses of local government.

So what have they achieved in power to make our daily lives “greener,” that is to say less polluted, more compatible with nature and more sustainable? My answer is unequivocal: in every way the domestic policies promoted by the Greens are as detached from economic welfare of the population and joie de vivre as the foreign policy pursued by Baerbock in Germany is detached from the real economic, not to mention security interests of her country.

Among the diverse domestic policies in Belgium that I have in mind are the war on automobiles and on road access to our cities which effectively choke the local economies to no purpose, the implementation of pro-biodiversity programs which have only a cosmetic effect if that while contributing to the destruction of park and forest land that took centuries to develop.

Here I will focus attention on the last-named consequence of Belgian Greens’ policies, since it was precisely in this matter that an incident occurred yesterday which prompted me to write the present critique.

In the past decade and a half that Greens’ issues have shaped environmental policies of the Brussels-Capital Region and surrounding territory of Flanders, the Forêt de Soignes, known as the lungs of the city on the one hand and on the other hand as a favorite weekend destination of Bruxellois for horse riding and promenades on foot, has become a waste land littered with debris.

To be sure, this park land is superintended by Environmental custodians who are empowered to maintain the rules of park use and who are now, this year, dressed in smart green uniforms and wear something akin to tyrolean hats. But the rules they enforce are cockeyed to say the least and do not at all address the ongoing degradation of the forest.

When I arrived in Brussels in 1980, the Forêt de Soignes was still pristine, shall we say.  I covered a lot of it on horseback during Sunday promenades in a group organized by a public stable situated at the edge of the woods. We had to be careful, because the forest was alive with chipmunks, squirrels and other little creatures which easily cause horses to shy. The forest was also a place to gather berries and mushrooms and other comestibles if that was your fancy.

Most importantly, the Forêt de Soignes looked as it had from the 18^th century when it was planted as the largest beech tree forest in Europe. Magnificent hundred year old trees created an open air cathedral that was a pleasure to view in all seasons.

Two hundred years of tradition was thrown to the winds by the Greens and other environmentalists when in the new millennium the new principle of bio-diversity took power.

Beech trees have shallow roots and the extraordinary wind and rainstorms that have passed through the region in this age of climate change take a toll.  But the Greens’ dictated policies of back to nature have meant in practice that the fallen trees are left where they fall to rot. The forest floor now is filled with such debris. If it were not for Belgium’s heavy rainfall, this forest would go up like a candle in a heat wave like the one now hitting southern Europe.

Replacement of fallen beech trees by their own is out of the question thanks to the biodiversity creed. But the very notion of biodiversity is mocked by another reality: the forest has become dead to animal life. There are no squirrels, no chipmunks, no birds whatsoever in the forest today.  The only moving animal life is slugs.

I cannot say to what extent the disappearance of little animals from the forest is caused by Greens’ or any other human policies. But it does put in question the entire concept of forest management practiced today. Moreover, the once clean forest floor is now obstructed to walkers not only by debris from trees but also by a vast proliferation of nettles and bushes.

Some of those bushes do have value, and I was busy collecting that value yesterday when I picked a couple of kilograms of blackberries to make this season’s batch of blackberry jam. And as I was leaving the forest, I was stopped by a young man probably in his late 20s wearing one of the new forest ranger uniforms. He came running up to me, lest I escape to a nearby bus stop with my trophy bag.

This ranger asked me to open my bag, obviously in the hope that I had been gathering boletes and so could be handed out a summons to pay the 500 euro fine for poaching. That would put another feather in his tyrolean hat.

Disappointed though he was, he lectured me sternly, saying that it is forbidden to take anything from the forest.  If you want to gather blackberries, do it in your own garden, he told me. 

“But then who will eat the blackberries in the forest?” I asked in my one, weak attempt to engage him in argument.  “The insects?”

“Yes, the insects” he said with satisfaction.  “And if I catch you at this again, you will get a summons!”

I did not pursue the discussion, though a year ago in a similar check by forest rangers on what I was taking from the forest, they told me good naturedly that I had done well, that the blackberries make splendid jam.

Now, let me step back and raise the question of mushrooms, the collection of which has been proscribed in widely posted warnings at the entrances to walkways into the forest for more than a decade. That ban is also supposedly to serve the interests of biodiversity as if gatherers of mushrooms for an omelet lunch will in any way damage the mushroom stock.  In Russia the whole population is mushroom crazy and picks the forests clean every autumn, but the little funghi rise anew the next year with no loss of fecundity. Meanwhile, Belgium’s ‘protected’ mushrooms only fill the bellies of slugs and diminish in numbers and quality from year to year.

Does the degradation of the Forêt de Soignes say something about the idiocy imposed on the Brussels population by our Greens and other environmentally friendly politicians in power?  It says, in my view, that environmentalism has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with seizing and holding power.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023