Policy Research in Macroeconomics

System change – not climate breakdown

System change - not climate breakdown

The director of PRIME is a co-author of this new report by the Green New Deal group UK, published on the day a wave of schoolstrikes swept the world – demanding action to reverse the potentially catastrophic impacts of earth systems collapse . It accompanies the publication of the Decarbonisation and Economic Strategy Bill, a Bill first tabled by Caroline Lucas MP (Green Party) and Clive Lewis MP (Labour Party) in March 2019, now published in full. It is designed to implement a Green New Deal for the UK.

Fundamentally, the Bill lays the foundations for the changes to the way that government manages the economy needed to make transformation possible.

The Bill establishes a Green New Deal Commission, which will draw on the expertise across society and from every corner of the land to draw up the comprehensive, localised and detailed plan that will begin the transformation of our society and economy. The Bill also sets out our international obligations. The decarbonisation of the British economy must not come at a cost to other less affluent nations. Our historical and long-sustained responsibility for emissions means we must provide significant financial, technical and other forms of support to countries and communities in the global south. That plan, combined with the changes to the way we manage the economic system, is the Green New Deal.

Campaigns for a Green New Deal are taking off around the world: sunrise movement in the United States, the pact for a Green New Deal in Canada, the Green New Deal for Europe initiative, and the Green MEPs who have been arguing for a Green New Deal for almost a decade. Labour for a Green New Deal have campaigned to put the Green New Deal front and centre of Labour Party policy and a new Green New Deal UK movement launches this week. The Green New Deal has been Green Party policy since 2008 and is undergoing a revival today.

In the UK, think tanks, normally characterised by the desire to find unique solutions are uniting around the call for a Green New Deal. Common Wealth published their comprehensive Roadmap for a Green New Deal, IPPR are publishing a series of essays with WWF and are hosting the Commission on Environmental Justice and the New Economics Foundation, publishers of our 2008 proposal for a Green New Deal have published reports on the changes needed to our finance system.

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