This is my response to this comment, left on my post about who wrecked Copenhagen (apparently it was the Chinese). Its too big for the comments because of all the text I've pasted in so its earnt its own post:
I'm a little confused by your post as there seems to be some punctuation missing. Possibly I have provoked a fit of frenzied typing. I'm not going to argue about whether the Green Party are left or right as I find such terminology to be redundant and unhelpful and I try to avoid them.
The group who wrote the Green New Deal (please note the lack of Lib Dems) are:
- Larry Elliott (Economics Editor of the Guardian)
- Colin Hines (Co-Director of Finance for the Future, former head of Greenpeace International’s Economics Unit)
- Tony Juniper (former Director of Friends of the Earth)
- Jeremy Leggett (founder and Chairman of Solarcentury and SolarAid)
- Caroline Lucas (Green Party Leader & MEP)
- Richard Murphy (Co-Director of Finance for the Future and Director, Tax Research LLP)
- Ann Pettifor (former head of the Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaign, Campaign Director of Operation Noah)
- Charles Secrett (Advisor on Sustainable Development, former Director of Friends of the Earth)
- Andrew Simms (Policy Director, the new economics foundation)
"The global economy is facing a ‘triple crunch’. It is a combination of a credit-fuelled financial crisis, accelerating climate change and soaring energy prices underpinned by an encroaching peak in oil production. These three overlapping events threaten to develop into a perfect storm, the like of which has not been seen since the Great Depression. To help prevent this from happening we are proposing a Green New Deal.
This entails re-regulating finance and taxation plus a huge transformational programme aimed at substantially reducing the use of fossil fuels and in the process tackling the unemployment and decline in demand caused by the credit crunch. It involves policies and novel funding mechanisms that will reduce emissions contributing to climate change and allow us to cope better with the coming energy shortages caused by peak oil.
The triple crunch of financial meltdown, climate change and ‘peak oil’ has its origins firmly rooted in the current model of globalisation. Financial deregulation has facilitated the creation of almost limitless credit. With this credit boom have come irresponsible and often fraudulent patterns of lending, creating inflated bubbles in assets such as property, and powering environmentally unsustainable consumption.
This approach hit the buffers of insolvency and unrepayable debts on what we think of as ‘debtonation day’, 9 August 2007, when the banks suddenly fully understood the scale of debts on the balance sheets of other banks, and stopped lending to each other.
In the same year, natural disasters struck body blows to entire national economies, and rising prices began to alert the world to the potential scarcity of oil. At both ends of the climatic spectrum, Australia saw a prolonged drought decimate its domestic grain production, and Mexico saw floods wipe out the agricultural production of an entire large state. In the oil markets, growing numbers of whistleblowers pointed to the probability of an early peak in production, and a possible subsequent collapse of production. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said an oil crunch is likely in 2012.
Drawing our inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s courageous programme launched in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929, we believe that a positive course of action can pull the world back from economic and environmental meltdown. The Green New Deal that we are proposing consists of two main strands. First, it outlines a structural transformation of the regulation of national and international financial systems, and major changes to taxation systems. And, second, it calls for a sustained programme to invest in and deploy energy conservation and renewable energies, coupled with effective demand management."
As for the transition movement, whilst I applaud the sentiment it is simply laughable to suggest that it can make more than a tiny difference, what with the eminent lack of broad public support for sustainable development, and that will be too little and too late. As George Monbiot observes, the only plausible solution to climate change, peak oil, and the economic meltdown involves the mobilisation of the nation and its resources as if for war. Its a battle for our children's survival.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/12/02/whistling-in-the-wind/
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/06/23/stop-building-tanks/