The Covid-19 pandemic is pushing us towards the edge on many levels. It's seriously challenging our mental health, redefining what matters to us as individuals and societies, and is triggering a significant economic crash.
As dooming as it sounds, we do have a few advantages. Firstly, we know when the economic crash is going to happen. Secondly, we have the tools in hand to alleviate and transform our economy. Thirdly, we have the capacity to save as many people as possible while mitigating climate change. This is why today, more than ever before, putting the Green New Deal into practice makes economic, environmental and social sense.
It is in time of crisis that we usually take opportunities to implement something new. This was shown in the 1930's, when US President Franklin Roosevelt implemented the New Deal (where the "new deal" of the Green New Deal comes from - thank me later). It was a domestic program put in place to counteract the impacts of the Great Depression. The latter caused massive unemployment (almost a quarter of Americans), acute deflation and severe declines in outputs. The New Deal drastically reduced the market "laissez-faire" (leaving markets alone to take care of the economy and social issues - a big failure) and applied a government-regulated economy. It enabled investment in key sectors to create and provide jobs for all Americans and implemented programmes to ensure a safety net, akin to social security. It was, overall, a success.
We need to take this crisis as an opportunity, and turn economic disruption into a positive social and environmental force. The Green New Deal can do exactly this. First coined during the last recession in 2008 by the New Economics Foundation and the Green Party, the Green New Deal has reappeared on the global agenda thanks to the US Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The concept is to guarantee high-pay and secure jobs across all sectors, whether energy, transport, building or agriculture while reducing carbon emissions. The overarching goal is to lift people out of poverty and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050. It focuses on scaling-up and shifting investments to new sectors of the economy to ensure a just transition to a sustainable world. The New Economics Foundations has published a comprehensive plan for a Green New Deal that you can find here.
Both public and private sectors have a key role to play for its implementation and success. Nevertheless, the Green New Deal is inherently democratic and therefore requires a state-led programme and leadership. This entails that governments must enact clear policies to re-nationalise some industries (when relevant) to favour clean energy and low or zero-emission transportation; find alternative to polluting extractive industries; favour energy-efficient building sector and to rethink the global food system. Indeed, developing countries already account for more than 60 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions and are expected to contribute nearly 90 percent of emissions growth over the next two decades. We need to act faster.
A Green New Deal isn't an option, it's a necessity.
We now have what governments have been waiting for to justify great political will for a Green New Deal: an economic depression. Whether we will experience a recession (two consecutive quarters of economic contraction or negative economic growth) or a depression (negative economic growth and rising unemployment) is debated, although I personally think we're heading toward the latter. Regardless, the negative impacts of Covid-19 are going to be real and global. We know that the drop in emissions is not sustainable. In times of crisis, the environment doesn't matter as much to people as putting food on the table (understandably), or for corporations to maximise their profits (less understandable). I fear that we'll go back to business as usual, albeit "usual" will never exactly be the same.
Naomi Klein showed in The Shock Doctrine that crises are used by neoliberal forces to implement further market-driven mechanisms, which are detrimental to the planet and most people. Today, we have the cards in hand: we know where we're heading, we know it's going to be bad, we know that we have to tackle the climate crisis to stay within secure-ish levels of global warming, and we know we need to do all of this by addressing increasing social inequalities.
Governments must be leaders, by redirecting the huge subsidies which support the fossil fuels industry (which is dying anyway) into clean and renewable energies; by borrowing money at low-interest rates; by implementing fair carbon taxes must; and by providing rescue plans only if companies commit to environmental action, unlike the billions that airlines have already secured in government funding with no climate targets attached.
A Green New Deal isn't an option, it's a necessity.
Covid-19 showed us that our global economy is not resilient in the slightest to disruption - and disruption is going to become the norm due to climate change and resulting environmental disasters. We must take this opportunity to reshape the economy and to ensure that the systems in place support both people and the planet.