SEAD (Scottish Education and Action for Development)

Green New Deals are in the news. Brown and Obama both want investment in renewable energy to create jobs. Japan and Korea too have announced big programmes of green investment. So what is a Green New Deal? How should we approach them as communities and campaigners?

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) published their “Green New Deal” report last July and have done some influential lobbying. Instead of a credit crunch, they speak of a “triple crunch” of economics, environment and energy, and suggest ways to stabilise then reform the situation. The report speaks a lot of sense. It wants better regulation of the financial system and taxes, and massive long-term investment in renewable energy and energy conservation.

What is assumed here? Firstly, that it’s the excesses of the system, rather than the basic logic of capitalism, which caused the crisis – something up for debate within our movement. Secondly, that healing the biosphere can drive our economies. This idea is useful when it produces change, but destructive if used to avoid the fact that our whole social structure needs to change, not just what the rich invest in.

So what questions should we as campaigners be asking as Green New Deals become policy?

Are these policy changes isolated or holistic?

We certainly need a revolution in heat and power as the report suggests. To make the revolutionary changes we need, much more investment is required however, sustained over decades, and it must replace not compliment coal and gas.

Are they seeing the big picture?

This crisis might be new to us, but globalisation has always been an economic, social and environmental catastrophe for most of the world’s people. Neal Ascherson describes Scotland’s industrialisation as a hurricane, which tore up whole societies and ecosystems. In the storm’s eye, or perhaps behind the levees, a lot of money was made. Outside the levees, from Sudan to Niddrie, the scale of the problem has always been apparent. Now with every kind of resource collapsing under the strain of exploitation, the hurricane is coming ashore. In other words, change will be massive whether we plan for it or not. So we need bigger plans than this.

Do changes go deep enough?

The Green New Deals from Washington to Seoul are something of a change from the economics of the boom times, when whatever the problem, the solution was the market. Now Government intervention is back. However, a few big investments by themselves don’t constitute creative new thinking. They are still about how business-as-usual might weather the storms, disregarding the scientific consensus that it cannot.

It’s still up to us!

This year has seen radical rhetoric; we must ensure it is accompanied by radical changes. Investment in green energy, along with Scotland’s Climate Challenge Fund, are important steps in the right direction. Now is the crucial time for communities and workers to use green funding to get creative, with much more radical changes of our own.

To read the New Economics Foundation’s Green New Deal report, go to: http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/greennewdealneededforuk210708.aspx

This entry was posted on 12 January 2009 at 9:36 pm and is filed under General news, SOCC News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.