14-04-01 Green politicians and activists are planning to form a global network to peg back the influence of multinational companies. The first target will be US oil companies behind US President Bush's decision last month not to implement the Kyoto agreement. Action against the US companies would include international boycotts of their products by green supporters.
"We used to say think globally act locally. Now we say think globally act globally," French Greens party member Catherine Greze, told delegates at the Global Greens 2001 conference. About 800 delegates from 70 countries are attending the three-day conference that started and aims to formulate a Global Greens Charter and begin networking Green political parties and organisations around the world.

Australian Greens Sen. Bob Brown, said the conference was the beginning of a new political force in world. "A global force at the start of this century that is going to challenge the old parties (and) the economic rationalist philosophy which governs politics around the world," said Brown.
Brown said globalisation to date has largely been corporate globalisation, a process that is shifting power from parliaments to multinational companies, corrupting governments, destroying the environment and increasing the gap between rich and poor, all in the name of profit. A global green strategy would attempt to return power to national parliaments and increase Greens representation in them, he said.

Arnold Cassola, Secretary General of the European Greens, said the old Greens strategy of being a protest party is no longer enough. "If you want to obtain change you need some power," he said. Cassola said Greens parties now had parliamentarians in 18 European countries and shared executive power in six major states including Germany. According to conference organisers, there are now 260 Greens members of parliament around the world.
The US Administration's decision to back out of the Kyoto Agreement on global warming was the hot topic at the conference, with delegates drawing up a strategy to bring Bush back to the table. A preliminary meeting of Green activists began drawing up a hit list of multinational firms, predominantly US oil companies, to target. Top of the list is ExxonMobil.

International environmental group Greenpeace is driving the strategy. "Greenpeace now has given a ten-day ultimatum to the American oil companies to detach themselves from the Bush decision," Cassola told. "We European Greens will certainly be backing Greenpeace and any other environmental organizations that will take up this challenge against the great corporations that are influencing politics," he said.