Building a Green party at the national level is occurring only in the relatively few "democratic" countries. It is necessary for Green politics to spread to other parts of the world. But the content of the various Green party programs will have to adapt to differing political and ecological situations and will inevitably show great differences. Internal strife can be kept at a minimum by being clear about the differences between the fundamentalist and pragmatist positions in Green parties.

Fundamentalists take a hard line on ecological issues; pragmatists are willing to consider compromises for the sake of social justice, for instance. Some compromises will have to be made. In Norway, fundamentalism has been strong, although there is a willingness to maintain the welfare profile of the political left. What follows is a short resume of the Norwegian Green political program as one example of Green politics in a First World Country.

The publication describing the Norwegian Green program consists of ten chapters, the first of which outlines the "basic values". The introductory statement in this chapter consists of six sentences, the first two of which are as follows: "We who are alive today have an obvious responsibility, in relation to future generations, for other life-forms and for the global community. The Greens wish to leave behind them an Earth at least as rich and diverse as the one we humans have inherited." The phrase "global community" does not mean the same as "human community", but refers rather to the coexistence of all living beings in the Earth's ecosphere. Richness and diversity is intended to include deep human cultural diversity, as well. Clearly, it is implied that we humans have many special obligations towards our fellow humans.

After the introductory note, there are twelve points outlining basic values, some of which are:
* current rates of social development can proceed only at the cost of the quality of life, which, after all, is a basic value;
* social and global solidarity implies reversing the trend toward the growing differences between rich and poor;
* the material standards in the rich countries must be reversed; and
* bureaucracy and the power of capital must also be reduced. These reductions are the inevitable consequences of emphasizing certain basic human values; they are not independent goals in and of themselves.

Other basic values in the Norwegian Green program include a technology adapted to nature and humans, cultural diversity, viable local communities, and a respect for nature and life. Other key issues include:
* an increase in the minimum wage;
* the redistribution of wealth;
* decentralization and the support of small organizations;
* the participation of children and the young in productive work;
* ecological architecture that gives small children access to free nature, not just parks;
* transfer of military resources to environmental tasks;
* global cooperation and security; and
* the support of groups who work for alternative kinds of societies.

The above list of key issues provides an impression of the comprehensiveness of the Norwegian Green party program. Like most European Green parties, the Norwegian program tries to include the main concerns of the three great social movements of our time: the peace movement, the social justice movement, and the ecology movement. This is a formidable task and requires great discipline; but, in my opinion, the extreme positions within the three movements cannot all be accommodated. For example, antiracist feelings are strong in Norway, resulting in liberal immigration policies but, unfortunately, these policies often ignore ecological considerations. Because today's lifestyles in the richest countries of the world ensure gigantic waste per capita, compared with lifestyles in poor countries, immigration from poor to rich countries creates more ecological stress. It is clear that the children of immigrants will adopt the fatal consumption patterns of the rich countries, thereby adding to the ecological crisis.

In my estimation, Green parties, including the Norwegian one, do not sufficiently see that solidarity and compassion for people in the Third World, especially for the children, demand a tenfold increase in the contribution to the daily fight against devastating hunger and degrading torture in many poor countries as a more ecologically sound solution.

The main driving force of the Deep Ecology movement, as compared with the rest of the ecological movement, is that of identification and solidarity with all life. Humans are our nearest, in terms of identification with all life: Green parties should include political plans for participation in the fight against world hunger and for basic human dignity. Green programs in the richest countries should include proposals to help poor countries which are invaded by immigrants from even poorer countries. Immigration policies must be seen in a global context.

It is a widespread practice to accuse politicians, and the heads of political parties, of being weak in their support of environmental matters, and of adopting Green slogans but never proposing strong actions towards solutions to the ecological crisis. But party politicians must have voter support, and it is fairly clear that powerful pressure groups will fight any decisive ecological program. Politicians will not propose programs or projects that are unacceptable to the leadership of major pressure groups whose well-organized effective action supports special interests. Special-interest group democracy, as it functions today, prevents major changes in ecological policies.

People need help in recognizing their inconsistencies: for example, they may profess strong environmental concern but, through their actions, they support special interest groups which prevent responsible ecological policies from being adopted, or even proposed, by the main political parties. What everybody can do in this situation is to spend some time analyzing how they, directly or indirectly, support the continuation of local, regional, or national policies which are ecologically irresponsible.

The special role of the Deep Ecology movement in political life has several aspects. For one, it rejects the monopoly of narrowly human and short-term argumentation patterns in favor of life-centered long-term arguments. It also rejects the human-in-environment metaphor in favor of a more realistic human-in-ecosystems and politics-in-ecosystems one. It generalizes most ecopolitical issues: from "resources" to "resources for . . ."; from "life quality" to "life quality for . . ."; from "consumption" to "consumption for . . ."; where "for . . . " is, we insert "not only humans, but other living beings."

Supporters of the Deep Ecology movement have, as a main source of motivation and perseverance, a philosophical/ecological total view (an ecosophy) that includes beliefs concerning fundamental goals and values in life, which it applies to political argumentation. That is, it uses not only arguments of the usual rather narrow kind, but also arguments from the level of a deep total view and with the ecological crisis in mind.

But supporters of the Deep Ecology movement do not consider the ecological crisis to be the only global crisis; there are also crises of social justice, and of war and organized violence. And there are, of course, political problems which are only distantly related to ecology. Nevertheless, the supporters of the Deep Ecology movement have something important to contribute to the solution of these crises: they provide an example of the nonviolent activism needed in the years to come.