The Case for the Green New Deal. Ann Pettifor
on which these wealthy individuals have gorged is not itself a private asset. It is instead a great public asset, financed, guaranteed and sustained by millions of ordinary taxpayers in all the economies of the world. In other words, a great public good has been captured by the 1 per cent. It needs to be restored to collective ownership.
At the same time, environmentalists have treated the ecosystem for too long as almost independent of the dominant economic system based on deregulated, globalised finance. Macroeconomics, monetary theory in particular, are deemed a subject for ‘experts’ – the ‘creatures of finance’ that control the globalised financial system. Much of what is done within that system is deliberately kept hidden from society’s gaze. Even so, many continue to avert their gaze from the activities of the finance sector, partly because the system appears too complex and remote, but also because we all benefit from it in some way. Millennials and pensioners alike enjoy the freedom that globalised finance provides for those who wish and can afford to travel widely among foreign lands and cultures. Many appreciate the ease with which bank accounts can be accessed in remote places, along with the ability to purchase and transport goods from anywhere on earth by making a bank transfer with just the click of a computer button.
I will argue that we can no longer afford to indulge such freedoms and powers, or to bend to the will of the gods of finance. There will be no chance of protecting earth’s life support systems if we do not simultaneously escape from the grip of the masters of the globalised financial system. A capitalist system that is blind to the most vital capital of all: that provided by nature, which finds itself exploited parasitically and used up at a reckless rate, as E. F Schumacher argued in his 1973 classic, Small Is Beautiful.5
By escaping from the inexorable control of the masters of the financial universe, we will find that we can afford to create a new, more balanced system of international economic and ecological justice. That we can also afford to reforest large swathes of the earth and its coastal areas. We will discover that we can afford to urgently end the globalised economy’s addiction to fossil fuels. That we can afford to transform our economy away from its fixation with ‘growth’. That we can, within our own finite physical and intellectual limits, begin to restore our damaged ecosystems to health. That we can work together, collectively, to protect ourselves, our families and communities and the environments in which we survive, grow, develop and create.
In other words, we can – and to survive, we must – transform and even end within the next ten years the failed system of capitalism that now threatens to collapse earth’s life support systems and with them, human civilisation. We must replace that economic system with one that respects boundaries and limits; one that nurtures ‘soils, aquifers, rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological abundance and diversity’;6 one that delivers social and economic justice.
We Green New Dealers know we can achieve that in the ten years or so that the UN’s scientists believe are left to us. One reason it is achievable is this important fact: just 10 per cent of the global population are responsible for around 50 per cent of total emissions. Tackling the consumption and aviation habits of just 10 per cent of the global population should help drive down 50 per cent of total emissions in a very short time. This understanding helps us grasp the rate and scope of what is possible if we genuinely believe climate breakdown threatens human civilisation.7
Furthermore, we know we can do this because we have, in the past, undertaken huge transformations within less time than that suggested by the 2018 IPCC Report. Our confidence should stem not only from knowledge of past transformations, but also from a new understanding of money and monetary systems. I am determined to ensure that this knowledge is shared, in order to empower campaigners and environmentalists with economic evidence and arguments with which to confidently challenge purveyors of capitalist economic dogma, the climate deniers, defeatists and naysayers. Those who consider it utopian to believe society can end a deeply entrenched system of racialised capitalism. Those who are convinced that ‘there is no money’ for transformation, and that government spending is inflationary. Those who feel that capitalism’s hyper-globalisation is working just fine. That poverty, racial and gender inequality and injustice are not a result of globalised capitalism, but rather of human weakness. That decent jobs for all is a pipe dream. That humanity has survived previous periods of climate breakdown – and will do so again. That humanity is essentially evil and driven by greed and self-interest. That there is no hope.
Not true. There is hope; and it rests not on a utopian vision of humanity, but on our knowledge of human genius, empathy, ingenuity, collaboration, integrity and courage. We know that it is possible to transform the globalised financial system because we have done it before – and in the relatively recent past. That too will be a theme of this book.
To transform the current economic and financial system we must ignore defeatists on both the left and right of the political spectrum, and arm ourselves with sound knowledge. Such knowledge can empower millions of people, and be a motor for action.
Above all, it will serve to correct widespread and deliberate misinformation about the workings of the great public good that is the monetary system. Falsehoods peddled by the followers of Hayek and Ayn Rand; by mainstream economists, cryptocurrency fanatics and other monetary ‘reformers’, and all those who either passively or actively defend a financialised capitalist economy that deliberately depletes the earth’s finite and precious resources.
In a fine speech in 1962, President John Kennedy boldly announced,
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
‘We choose to go to the moon.’ In 1962 there were serious doubts as to whether the world’s scientists and engineers possessed the intellectual and physical resources, and astronauts the courage, to build and steer a spacecraft that might reach the moon. But there were absolutely no doubts, or questions, about the ability to finance a ‘moonshot’. In the event, scientists from around the world collaborated on the project, one of the most ambitious international team efforts ever. Just seven years after Kennedy’s speech, in 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of his spacecraft and onto the moon.
We can choose to survive. But in order to survive, everything must change. Everything. Radical action, based on sound understanding of the financial system and moral courage, can transform the present and guarantee a future.
Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything. And I’m sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: we can still fix this. But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses.8
INTRODUCTION What Is the Green New Deal?
Origins
‘A Green New Deal, with Justice for All. Practical. Possible. Inevitable.’
Those words formed the heading of a plain google doc that popped up on my screen in July 2018. They were to be the basis of a carefully crafted manifesto, tested with a range of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC’s) friends and advisers as she prepared for the US mid-term Congressional elections. They helped her win a victory that was to electrify millions of young Americans and reinvigorate the youth wing of the Democratic Party.
Earlier that year members of the AOC campaign team had visited Britain to sound out a range of economists working with, and around, Jeremy Corbyn, and to prepare for Ms Cortez’s upcoming Primary campaign. I met with one, Zack Exley, in a coffee shop to discuss the thorny question of financing their ambitious plans. After that, apart from the odd email, I heard no more. Hardly surprising, as the New York Primary campaign was in full swing and, by all accounts, absorbed much energy. Plus, there was considerable doubt whether AOC could successfully challenge a powerful