Economic Crisis

Over the past decades, markets have invested in damaging industries such as fossil fuels and financial speculation. This has contributed to unsustainable development, and may well be creating an enormous ‘carbon bubble’. However, there are steps we can take to stop this bubble turning into another subprime-style crisis.

The topic of greening the economic and financial system is broad and daunting. However breaking it down into a few key questions can highlight the steps that we as Greens must urgently take to reign in the financial industry.

The lessons of the last crisis always seem to be forgotten, and the financial world continues to grow and pose a risk to economy and planet. We Greens must marshal all our energy and ideas to reign it in.

The idea of degrowth has always been a strain Green thought, but what exactly would degrowth mean for our economy, society and relationship with the planet? Does degrowth provide the answer to the social and ecological crisis?

In Greece, probably one of the first victims of austerity has been environmental protection, just at the moment where there can be no response to the crisis without considering the environmental dimension. A recent article by the WWF takes issue with the EU response to the crisis which has seen environmental protection sidelined like never before.

While there is a growing consensus that it is now unlikely that any country will leave the Euro. However, other groups suggest that parallel currencies for northern countries alongside the Euro may be better for Europe, but this is hotly contested.

5 years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the beginning of the worst economic crisis in decades, the EU has not delivered on promises of strong regulation of the financial sector. A swift overhaul is needed.

The German Green’s manifesto tries to strike a difficult balance between a clear commitment to Europe and a vision of another, greener Europe. In doing so, it makes it very clear that with Greens in government European politics would be different.

We should recognise that the national context and legitimacy is here to stay for some time. We might overcome it one day, but not tomorrow. We therefore need to develop a new approach that allows for combining the national more legitimately and more democratically with the European.

These four debates are gateways to penetrating the transnational complexity of the European environmental debate, interconnecting national public spaces where debates on the fundamental issues for our future are still being carried out in an overly compartmentalised fashion.