Why should you vote for the Green Party at the next election?

Because the risks to the planet, to us and to our children now justify the presence in Parliament of a voice focussed on saving us from our own folly. Only the Green Party is leading the way in trying to reverse the harm we are doing to ourselves. The so-called major parties are quarreling among themselves about other issues - surely important, but not the only ones - while we slide towards a precipice.- We are polluting the air with carbon dioxide and cocktails of industrial chemicals- We are polluting the oceans with plastic and other waste- We are polluting the ground and water supplies with nitrates, pesticides, medical compounds and other chemicalsThe air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat are day by day becoming more of a danger to us. Pollutants and irritants of all kinds are settling in our lungs every day. We are ingesting - whether we like it or not - preservatives and hormones from food, water and their plastic packaging. More and more young people have allergies and pollution-related illnesses. More and more cancers are appearing as a result of the chemical "soup" around us.Probably like me you are simply irritated when you see someone just chuck their cigarette ends out of their car window, or their burger packet on the pavement.I expect like all of us you have grown to accept the plastic rubbish everywhere or the dirt and grit on your skin and clothes after a day walking around Hammersmith.But this rubbish, this dirt, these products, break down into pollution that insidiously enters our bodies and those of our children,And this is what we as a species are doing on a massive scale - throwing out our rubbish, a lot of it actually toxic, and then absorbing it back in as fast as we tryot get rid of it.It is not too late to do something about it. The Earth and its environmemt is a huge complex organism, it is is reeling under the attacks we are making on it. But it is resilient. We can reverse the damage - if we start acting decisively now.And for that the major parties in Parliament need to be watched and held to account every minute and every day.Only the Green Party is totally dedicated to this issue, and will fight relentlessly to reverse the damage and make this Earth a safe, healthy place again for us and our decendants.I live in Hammersmith and I have two very young children. I look at my son and I apply what I call the "50-year test". By the time he is old enough to have a child, and by the time that child in turn reaches majority, probably at leat 50 years will have elapsed.50 years seems a lot, but just look back 50 years from here - to the 1960s - and look at what we have done to the world in that time.In 1960 there were x people on the planet - now there are YIn 1960 the global economy and the massive industrialisation of the Third World hardly existedIn 1960 the oceans were still largely unpolluted and still full of fish, the great areas of rain forest still largely intact.In 1960 .....It has taken us - the whole human race, but led by us, the industrialised "civilised" nations - just 50 years to wreck this through selfish exploitation and consumption of the Earth's resources, and our "dustbin" mentality, where we just dump all the by-products of our over-consumption into the sea, the air, and the ground.So let's apply the "50 year test" now.What will the earth and our environment by like 50 years further on, bearing in mind the damage is actually accelerating with globalisation and world population growth?In the view of many experts it will be so polluted, and our natural resources so pillaged and wasted, that it will already be a pretty unpleasant place, even before we add in the ongoing changes to or world climate.Do you want this for your own children and grandchildren?We need to stop this trend.We cannot do it all overnight, but it is still possible to act. Progress is already being made with reducing packaging, stricter monitoring of what goes into our food and a reduction in industrial farming methods and pesticides, reducing carbon emissions, cutting down on the pollution caused by the petrol engine, finding alternative, renewable sources of energy, installing better insulation, and so on. We need to act both globally - through international pressure, conferences, regulations - and locally at the same time. For example here in Hammersmth we could speed up adoption of renewable energy and good insulation, we could cut down on air pollution and plastic packaging, we could get our children eating purer, healthier food. These things are not rocket science, we just need to make them a priority.But the major parties only act in this area when pushed relentlessly.They will tell you that the key problems facing us are the world financial crisis, and extreme religious fundamentalism leading to terrorism and issues such as the growth of Al Quaida and Iran's nuclear programme. Of course these are important, but if we spend all our efforts trying to deal with them and at the same time destroy the envirnment of the very planet we live on, it is not going to help us or our children very much.Let's imagine in a few years we have restored some sort of responsible world financial system, Let's imagine that we somehow manage to remove some of the causes that enable world terrorism to flourish. Are we only then going to start looking round and trying to clean up the Planet?It will be too late - we need to start now, in parallel with these other efforts.We must clean up our air, soil, food and water, we must ensure a healthy future for ouselves and above all our children and grandchildren.We must vote for the Green Party if we want to make a difference.