The Green New Deal solution
In the wake of the financial crash of September 2008, governments started talking about a Green New Deal – meaning fiscal stimulus to the economy targeted at infrastructure spending, and hence job creation, in environmental industries or industries in the process of going green. A group of British economists and green thinkers had produced a paper advocating a green new deal in June 2008. It’s difficult to know how much influence individual papers have when an idea – at one level – is so obvious. But the fact is that the paper lays out a good few of the policies subsequently adopted around the world. The beauty of the concept is that a genuine green new deal (rather than the grey new deals that many governments try to dress up as green new deals) tackles all three legs of the triple crunch at once: job creation - in naturally job-rich industries - to help rebuild the damage created by the financial crisis, greenhouse-gas emissions reductions to help ameliorate the climate crisis, and uptake of energy efficiency and renewables to help soften the energy crisis.
