Green Transition

Government procurement has long been used to help further public policy goals and European countries such as Italy and France are willing to still use it today to support renewable industries. However, at the European level something quite different is afoot that threatens the ability of procurement to be used to develop industry.

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.

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 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.

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.

Can Croatia’s entry to the European Union create an opportunity to change the country’s economic and ecological paradigms? That potential exists, but will only succeed if new political alliances are created that bring together a broad range of social movements.

How can markets work for sustainability? True Price aims to display a product’s true costs – including its environmental and social costs – to enable consumers to make more informed choices.