Green New Deal

From school strikes to the Green New Deal, the current political energy around climate change is an opportunity that must be seized.

As the world rapidly continues to urbanise, cities will have to play a progressively greater role in the move towards a low carbon economy. By working towards the creation of a closed circular economy and a slow economy cities could be well placed to lead the transition.

A debate between Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and Reinhard Bütikofer, MEP and co-chair of the European Green Party.

The Green Industrial Revolution is clearly a positive and inspiring story, but there is room for doubting the ability of green technologies to stimulate a new wave of growth comparable to the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Can Europe’s economy remain competitive without a low-carbon transformation? The answer is a clear ‘no’. How then can we achieve such a reality? Only through a clear change in Europe’s budget priorities and a range of innovative measures.

Today’s mainstream economic debate around investment vs. austerity is failing, but a truly comprehensive Green New Deal could offer the alternative. The right support from the EU and national governments could encourage different structures of business ownership, focused on sustainability and social ownership that will help the transition to a truly sustainable economy.

The decisive question for the coming decades is not ‘if’ but ‘how’ the global economy will grow. We are currently in the middle of a green revolution in which millions are already participating. To advance, however, we need effective environmental policy at national and international levels. And above all, we need a European Green New Deal.

The Greens must remain faithful to their European commitment by continuing to promote a European alternative to the austerity policy of the ‘Merkozy’ duo. But passing on an unsustainable debt to the future generation is just as ecologically unsound as leaving a planet in ruins. Whatever their differences, the Greens must present their alternative to the neoliberal’s prioritising of market forces and the “statism” of the old left. This alternative must begin with a recovery package funded by a tax on financial transactions.

In October 2011, the Heinrich Boell foundation presented the results of a long collaborative project on the future of Europe. This project was an invitation to debate the project that we wish to see implemented for Europe in the 21st century. This reaction calls for a debate to be developed on two levels: firstly, to debate the causes and solutions to bring to the crisis and, secondly, the transitional dialogue to undertake in order to widen the social base of a renewed concept of European solidarity.

As the economic crisis continues, many forces are beginning to question whether capitalism can survive in its current form. In this piece, Finnish Green activist Anne Bland asks whether there is a means of changing how capitalism works, in order to make it more inclusive and supportive of green thinking.