Remember, the Green New Deal is ostensibly about saving the world from ‘climate change’. Strange how it seems to be about so many other things
A ‘Green New Deal’ Needs to Be Global, Not Local
In the US and the U.K., the Green New Deal movement has galvanized hope for transitioning to the more equitable zero carbon world we so desperately need to address poverty and keep global average temperatures to below 1.5°C. But there has also been criticism of an apparent initial focus on jobs in “every town and city across the U.K.”, rather than on transformational justice globally. The challenge for Green New Deal advocates is to recognize the historical roots of the climate crisis, and avoid being the PR face of ongoing climate colonialism.
In a challenge to current inadequate emissions reductions targets (80 percent by 2050), Green New Deal supporters are calling for Britain to go “zero carbon by 2030”, alongside addressing the social and economic impacts of neoliberalism and inequitable deindustrialization in many parts of the U.K.. Such plans could radically reduce poverty rates and low-paid precarious work across the country, and could be designed to address the fact that poor people and people of color are disproportionately negatively impacted by environmental pollution.
But it can’t stop there. Nathan Thanki argues that a Green New Deal cannot be allowed to be “eco-socialism for [us] and barbarism for the rest of the world”. Thanki argues for a larger transformation of the structure of our energy, housing, food, transport, and health systems, alongside de-growth. And Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler propose an International Green New Deal that would fund a transition to renewable energy and commit to providing climate reparations and energy based on need rather than means or geography.
Anyone getting the idea that this is about all the standard left wing tropes, let’s just call it Modern Socialism, simply wrapped up in the banner of Hotcoldwetdry?
Supply chain justice in Labour’s Green New Deal should be a key demand for members. While a Green New Deal for the U.K. can’t resolve these issues on its own, it can be allied to the workers and communities resisting green colonialism. Public procurement contracts could require the protection of human rights of workers and communities in their supply chains. Changes to the law to allow impacted communities in the Global South easy access to sue companies for damages in the U.K. courts could also be effective.
Interestingly, that is the wrapup from several paragraphs explaining how, to put it bluntly, the push for alternative energy sources has led to massive problems for workers in the nations where the necessary metals, such as cobalt, come from. So, Warmists want “justice” for the people they’ve harmed in the first place? Good grief.
The need for reparations
But just addressing supply chain justice would still not be enough. Countries in the Global North—with high per person consumption habits—used up their fair share of carbon emissions decades ago. Since then, these rich, minority world countries have been delaying their responsibility to decarbonize and provide financing for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage to countries whose quotas they have eaten into.
Redistribution of your money.
And we must also address the root causes of the injustice multipliers that climate change sits upon, including systemic exclusion due to poverty, gender, age, indigenous or minority status, disability, sexuality, sexual identity, lack of access to sexual reproductive health and rights, national or social origin, birth or other status. It is past time to address the multiple injustices and histories of slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism which have created our current crises.
