A Green New Deal published by nef on behalf of the Green New Deal Group, outlined a series of joined-up policies to tackle the triple crunch. The Green New Deal Group bring together a range of expertise from the City, to the oil industry and the labour and environmental movements.
Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programme launched in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929, this modernised version is designed to tackle our current crash: the interlinked crises of climate change, recession and energy depletion.
Key points:
- It’s about a massive environmental transformation of the economy to tackle the triple crunch of the financial crisis, climate change and insecure energy supplies.
———————– - It’s about jobs, more jobs and secure jobs. And, it’s about the skills and training to create and sustain them: in a time of recession, with unemployment already rocketing in the US, and growing here, shifting to green energy will produce countless new jobs, and create many more pound-for-pound of investment, than propping up the current system.
———————– - It’s about an investment now to tackle the current recession, and an investment for the future: there are lots of ways we can invest in the future – as a country public spending on a green new deal will reap economic, environmental and social benefits. We can spend ‘better’ by reforming taxes, so that we tax more what we want less of (like pollution and reckless speculation) and less what we want more of (like green goods and services). Investment can come from public and private sources, as well as our savings. Shutting tax havens and ensuring that corporate tax reporting accurately reflects profits made in a country, would raise billions more for public investment in both rich and poor countries.
———————————————————————————- - It’s about new checks, balances and directions for a banking system that has become unfit for purpose: everyone agrees that new rules are needed to prevent a repeat of the banks’ catastrophic errors, but there’s also a new opportunity for change. With the taxpayer now owning several banks we can make sure that they invest and lend at low, affordable interest rates to support the economy’s environmental transformation.
———————————————————————————- - It’s about greater security for our pensions and savings: many people’s pensions have taken a battering, but now there’s a chance to create new, low risk steady return vehicles for saving. New bonds and pensions targeted at the green renewal of the nation’s infrastructure could help bring mutual long-term benefits to both savers and the nation as a whole.
———————————————————————————- - It’s about warm homes in winter, protecting us from high and volatile energy prices and ending fuel poverty: too many people can’t afford to keep warm in winter. Whatever the international price of fuel, homeowners seem to have to pay ever higher prices. A Green New Deal will begin by improving insulation and energy efficiency in UK households and start to break our dependence on volatile, expensive and ultimately declining fossil fuels.
———————————————————————————- - It’s about the UK showing real world leadership, setting an example and helping to build global security: unless rich nations like the UK show that they can implement change at home, poorer countries are unlikely to make the shift. The Green New Deal is about setting the economy, nationally and globally, on a path to live within its environmental means. It is also about fair play in a warming world and calls for the new financial mechanisms to help the majority world adapt to climate change as well as breaking the carbon chains of fossil fuel dependence.
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4 December, 2008 at 11:41 am
OutofRange.net » Blog Archive » What Should Have Been in The Queen’s Speech
[…] Brown should have stolen the policies recommended by The New Economics Foundation’s A New Green Deal and put them in the Queen’s Speech it would have been a bold and radical resolution to the credit […]
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[…] July 2008 the Green New Deal Group around the UK new economics foundation has published their Green New Deal with concrete policy proposals to overcome (what they regard as) the triple crunch of the […]
16 March, 2009 at 8:24 pm
KNOWLEDGEABILITY » Blog Archive » New Technologies Will Not Solve Everything
[…] is clear that we need a Green New Deal. The current economic crisis provides us a possibility to transform our consumption and production […]
23 March, 2009 at 9:23 pm
greendealmanchester
What might this mean at a regional level?
I’ve been exploring this in the context of what some call the Manchester City region and I call the Manchester Bioregion. See http://greendealmanchester.wordpress.com/
This does have a more radical take on both the casues of the crisis and the necessary actions, but nevertheless it does share a point of departure with the NEF NGD and concurs with much of its programme.
Constructive feedback would be appreciated.
13 May, 2010 at 4:53 pm
David Chester
First make the land available for landless people to work on. Then allow them to grow something and take away all the results.
The programme as described in the article is a somewhat constrained economists way of doing this comparatively simply thing, that of no longer denying the worker his natural rights to land and opportunity. That all it takes.