Publications

Peter Emerson is the director of the de Borda Institute, which aims to promote the use of inclusive voting procedures on all contentious questions of social choice. This applies specifically to decision-making, be it for the electorate in regional/national polls, for their elected representatives in councils and parliaments, for members of a local community group, for members of a company board, for members of a co-operative. Peter has written ten books on voting systems and published several articles on democracy in peer reviewed journals. A vocal critic of the Majority Rule, he has helped design an app for multi-option voting.

This talk was given at a TEDx event in Vienna in October 2017 using the TED conference format but independently organised by a local community.

In many instances, a majority vote identifies not the will of the people, not even the will of the majority of them, but the will of those who wrote the question. Most political problems are complex; to reduce them to a win-or-lose binary vote, or even a series of such dichotomies, often turns what should be a discussion into an argument. Preferential voting in contrast can be win-win: indeed, a points system can identify that option which, if not the most popular, is at least the most generally acceptable.

The Cork Summer School held in June 2018 proposed policy changes not only in response to the Milan Urban Food Policy pact but also to the review of the EU Common Agricultural Policy which will take place in 2018. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, signed by over one hundred cities across the globe, called for co-ordinated international food policies to tackle the pressing issues of food as a human right, the underlying systemic causes of food insecurity and the need to create sustainable and socially just ‘food systems’.

This article “Don’t Fear the Wind: Can community owned wind farms overcome the stigmas surrounding wind energy?” was written by CONOR McGOOKIN.

Connor is a PhD Researcher in the MaREI Centre, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork.

The MICRO RENEWABLE ENERGY FEDERATION (MREF) is a members based organisation representing the majority of companies and stakeholders engaged in developing, installing and/or supplying rooftop solar generation and battery storage in Ireland. MREF is also a voice for the thousands of households and businesses waiting for the long overdue delivery of the Government’s commitment to support micro energy generation.

ABOUT “Power to the People”
The policies of the Federation detailed in this document have already received support from community representative organisations and environmental groups. For example, the Irish Farmers’ Association is advocating that the Government change direction and allocate at least 20% of the PSO levy towards micro generation.

In July 2017 Green Foundation Ireland made a submission to the Citizens’ Assembly on the topic “How the State can make Ireland a leader in tackling climate change”.

The Citizens’ Assembly is a body comprising the Chairperson and 99 citizens, randomly selected to be broadly representative of the Irish electorate, established to consider some of the most important issues facing Ireland’s future.

The recent UK election has thrown up a number of surprises. One is the monumental mistake that Theresa May made in thinking a snap election would see her gain a large majority and thus legitimacy for a ‘hard Brexit’.  The second, and related, is that her failure to secure enough MPs has left the Conservatives in need of securing support from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party for a minority Conservative government in London. This has ramifications not just for UK politics, but is an unexpected and potentially destabilising issue in the negotiations to form a power-sharing executive in Belfast which have been ongoing since March this year.

JOHN BARRY, Director of Green Foundation Ireland, has written an article on this topic which was published in the Green European Journal on 6 July 2017.

Brexit has been a shock. It wasn’t the European Union that smashed the trade unions, depleted Britain’s social housing stock and then went on an orgy of privatisation, but Brexit has handed complete, unregulated control over to those who did, and the potential consequences reach far beyond Britain’s borders.

NUALA AHERN, former Chair of Green Foundation Ireland, has written an article on this topic which was published in the Green European Journal on 11 August 2016.

DICK PELS is a Dutch sociologist and freelance political writer.

In his book “A Heart for Europe” he asserts that European civilisation is the never-ending quest for a more gentle, more relaxed, less dangerous society: a society in which people are no longer afraid of each other and themselves. But Europe currently faces a ‘perfect storm’ of populist nationalism, Russian revanchism, neoliberal financial havoc, religious terrorism and refugee chaos. Facing these violent challenges, we urgently need to rethink our ideals of peace, freedom, democracy, sustainability and the good life. In this book, Dick Pels makes a valiant attempt to regain the original passion behind the European project, and to rescue the idea of a civilised European patriotism from the politics of fear which is conducted by both right-wing and left-wing nationalists.

“Green Values: Religion and Secularism”

Six European Green foundations participated in conversations on religion, Green values and secularism with Green activists all over Europe.

Why did Green Foundation Ireland engage with this topic? It is distressing, for anyone with the eyes to see it, how completely human behaviour is destroying the earth and its creatures.

We decided to ask some of our elders here in Ireland, such as Seán McDonagh, Margaret MacCurtain, John Dillon and others not yet elders, such as Mary Condren and Dolores Whelan, all of whom are part of the Green movement or sympathetic to Green values, to give us their perspective on all of this. You can read their contributions, along with those from John Barry, Trevor Sargent and Mary White.

Edited by: NUALA AHERN (Green Foundation Ireland)
          and ERICA MEIJERS (Bureau de Helling)

Green Values, Religion and Secularism is a book published by Green European Foundation in 2015, in which Green activists from different European contexts reflect on the relationship between politics and religion, both in their own lives and in society.

Six European Green foundations participated in conversations on religion, Green values and secularism with Green activists from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland and Turkey.

During 2015, the Climate Gathering worked with Christian Aid, Ibec, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, The Environmental Pillar and Trócaire to stage a series of five conversations, lectures and debates with the theme “Bringing People Together for a New Understanding on Climate Change”.

In 1997 JOHN DILLON, who is a Director of Green Foundation Ireland, founded the Dublin Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition, based in Trinity College Dublin, of which he is still an active member. He is the author or editor of over 30 books in the area of ancient philosophy, as well as over 150 articles. His study of Plato has led him to develop strong views on the destruction of the environment endemic to modern civilisation, and the capitalist concept of incremental growth. He has now written an article entitled “Platonism and the World Crisis”.

ROSEMARIE ROWLEY, who is a Dublin-born poet and author, has published five books of poetry, and has four times won the Epic award in the Scottish International Poetry Competition.

She is very interested in green issues and has now published a review of “The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism” which is edited by Greg Garrard.

European Citizens’ Initiative Pocket Guide is published by the Green European Foundation

The Green European Foundation presents its new publication on the European Citizens’ Initiative, a complete user manual to this first transnational tool in modern direct democracy. The publication is authored by Bruno Kaufmann, president of Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe.