immense potential energy in the GND, ‘converting that heat to power – to real results on the ground – will involve a great deal of political and policy engineering, almost all of which lies ahead.’7 If we are to convert that heat to power, supporters of a Green New Deal must explain how policy can be engineered so that their visionary programme can be financed – without transferring the burden of higher taxes on to the working class (often defined in the US as the ‘middle class’).
At the heart of the scepticism around the GND lie these questions: how, realistically, can such a radical transformation be brought about within ten years or so? How can today’s governments and their allies in the private sector afford to finance such a transformation? What will happen to workers in fossil fuel industries?8 This book will attempt to address those questions.
But first things first.
What Is the Green New Deal?
The Green New Deal demands major system change: both economic and ecological system change. It demands structural (governmental and inter-governmental) changes, not just behavioural, community or technological change, in our approach to the financialised, globalised economy and ecosystem. In addition, and as in the 1930s, such change must be driven by a radical structural transformation of the economy, particularly the financial sector.
The idea was developed in Britain in 2008 on the understanding that finance, the economy and the ecosystem are all tightly bound together. Protecting and restoring the ecosystem to balance cannot be undertaken effectively, we argued, without the transformation of the other sectors. Joined-up policies are needed. Financing the hugely costly overhaul of the economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels cannot be achieved without the subordination of the finance sector to the interests of society and the planet.
Environmental advocates tend to focus on individual (‘change your lightbulbs’) or community (‘recycle, reuse, reduce, localise’) action. We have been slow at understanding and promoting the need for radical systemic change across sectors and at a global and national level; that is, change that involves state action. And such structural change cannot just be undertaken at the level of international agreements on carbon budgets.
Its ambition is on a far grander scale than Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal (even if his administration also faced an ecological catastrophe: the Dust Bowl). The climate threats we face are of a magnitude beyond the imagination of New Dealers. However, we can learn from Roosevelt’s administration. To tackle climate change we need simultaneously to tackle the root cause of growing toxic emissions: a self-regulating, globalised financial system that pours exponential quantities of unregulated credit into the hands of speculators and consumers. This credit is used in turn to inflate the prices of existing assets, while failing to finance the creation of new tangible and intangible assets. Further, it is used to accelerate the extraction and consumption of the earth’s finite assets. Only once we switch off the ‘tap’ of ‘easy money’ will it be possible to switch off the flow of oil and other fossil fuels.
These joined-up policies lie at the heart of the Green New Deal.
The demand for a Green New Deal is realistic in that it harks back to an era when the global economy was transformed almost overnight by the revolutionary Keynesian monetary policies of an American president. As Roosevelt began dismantling the globalised ‘gold standard’ on the night of his inauguration, on 4 March 1933, he freed up his administration to end austerity and unemployment, then running at 25 per cent, before deploying fiscal policy to create jobs and transform the domestic economy, but also to address the Dust Bowl crisis. He affirmed, as Keynes had done, that ‘we can afford what we can do.’ Because the financial system – as a system – exists to enable us to do what we can do, no more and no less. As then, now it must be returned to its role as the servant, not the master, of the economy and ecosystem.
The Green New Deal is, therefore, a plan. It is not an idea, nor a proposal, but a comprehensive plan for stemming the breakdown of earth’s life support systems. It is comprehensive in that its drafters understand that the earth, in all its diversity, needs a ‘new deal’, and so do the men, women and children who – in all their diversity – are the victims of ongoing global economic failure, and, now, of climate breakdown.
The GND recognises that in the future we must derive energy only from renewable sources. We also need to expand and support ecosystems that suck huge amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air and store that carbon in trees, soils and oceans. But societies also need to end their dependence on a globalised economic system that drives climate breakdown and encourages toxic emissions; an economic system that leads to ecological imbalances alongside economic, political and social inequality and injustice. Its name is globalised, financialised capitalism.
While there is widespread agreement on these essential elements of both the US and British Green New Deals, there are also differences.
The US Green New Deal (2018)
The US Green New Deal is ambitious. It is presented in impressive detail in the Resolution submitted to the US Congress by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, Democrat-Mass., on 5 February 2019.9 It is a comprehensive plan for achieving five major goals in the course of ‘a ten-year mobilisation’:
• to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;
• to create millions of good, high-wage jobs, and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;
• to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the twenty-first century;
• to secure clean air and water, climate and community resilience, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all;
• to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing the historic oppression of frontline and vulnerable communities.
The Resolution begins by acknowledging that ‘whereas the Federal Government-led mobilizations during World War II and the New Deal created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen … many members of frontline and vulnerable communities were excluded from many of the economic and societal benefits of those mobilizations.’
The Job Guarantee
The Resolution goes on to recognize ‘that a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal is a historic opportunity to (1) create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States; (2) to provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States; and (3) to counteract systemic injustices.’
A key assumption within the Resolution is that the state will provide and leverage ‘adequate capital … including through community grants, public banks, and other public financing … for communities, organizations, Federal, State, and local government agencies, and businesses working on the Green New Deal mobilization’. The formulation is deliberately vague.
Research and policy development for the US Green New Deal is undertaken by scholars at the nonprofit think tank, ‘New Consensus’. Demond Drummer and Rhiana Gunn-Wright are leading the policy work including the proposal for the creation of a ‘green bank’. In an interview, they explained that this public bank ‘would be used to invest in zero-carbon technologies under development in the public and private sector that need to be commercialized. The bank would be designed to offer financial enhancements and support to communities that haven’t had access to clean energy and transportation.’10 But that is just the beginning. ‘Right now we’re focused
