Industry

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.

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.

Greening industry is crucial to our ability to combat climate change and maintain a prosperous society. But to achieve this, we need a whole new relationship with the environment.

The German Greens won the premiership of the German land (region) of Baden-Württemberg in 2011, giving them a unique opportunity to implement green policies across a range of areas. For food and agriculture, this meant an ambitious strategy based on high ecological quality standards, versus the industrialisation of our natural resources.

On March 13th the European Parliament (EP), now co-legislator on agricultural and budgetary issues, adopted its position on redesigning the CAP. A period of intense negotiations opens-up between the Council of the EU and the EP. But the complete shift of the CAP towards an ecological transformation of agriculture is now very unlikely to take place. This will not prevent the Greens and other progressive actors to continue to prepare this transition. If the CAP can’t change, can we?

The growth-degrowth debate is a non-issue that hampers a fundamental discussion on the reasons underlying the wish for (or against) economic growth.