A Green New Deal: Joined-up policies to solve the triple crunch of the credit crisis, climate change and high oil prices

A Green New Deal: Joined-up policies to solve the triple crunch of the credit crisis, climate change and high oil prices

Description

The global economy is facing a "triple crunch": a combination of a credit-fuelled financial crisis, accelerating climate change and soaring energy prices underpinned by encroaching peak oil. It is increasingly clear that these three overlapping events threaten to develop into a perfect storm, the like of which has not been seen since the Great Depression, with potentially devastating consequences.

The Green New Deal Group, drawing inspiration from the tone of President Roosevelt's comprehensive response to the Great Depression, propose a modernised version, a "Green New Deal" designed to power a renewables revolution, create thousands of green-collar jobs and rein in the distorting power of the finance sector while making more low-cost capital available for pressing priorities.

The most serious global crisis since the Great Depression calls for serious reform the like of which has not, yet, been considered by politicians. This entails re-regulating finance and taxation plus a huge transformational programme aimed at substantially reducing the use of fossil fuels and, in the process, tackling the unemployment and decline in demand caused by the credit crunch. It involves policies and new funding mechanisms that will reduce emissions and allow us to cope better with the coming energy shortages caused by peak oil.

The Green New Deal is a response to the credit crunch and wider energy and food crises, and to the lack of comprehensive, joined-up action from politicians. It calls for:

- Massive investment in renewable energy and wider environmental transformation in the UK, leading to,

- The creation of thousands of new green collar jobs

- Reining in reckless aspects of the finance sector, but making low-cost capital available to fund the UK's green economic shift

- Building a new alliance between environmentalists, industry, agriculture, and unions to put the interests of the real economy ahead of those of footloose finance

The Green New Deal is published by nef on behalf of the Green New Deal Group

Information

Author(s)
Andrew Simms, Ann Pettifor, Caroline Lucas, Charles Secrett, Colin Hines, Jeremy Leggett, Larry Elliott, Richard Murphy and Tony Juniper
Publisher
new economics foundation
Place published
London
Date / journal vol no.
July 2008
Pages
48 pages

References