The Green New Deal

The global economy faces multiple, linked crises. It is a combination of accelerating climate breakdown driven by fossil fuel use, corrosive inequality, and debt-fuelled over-consumption by a global minority pushing us beyond planetary ecological boundaries. These overlapping factors threaten to develop into a perfect storm making social collapse highly likely. To help prevent this from happening, and to lay the foundations of the economic systems of the future, we need a Green New Deal.

There is still time. Act now and a positive course of action based on the framework set out in the Green New Deal can pull the world back from economic and environmental meltdown.

Sainsbury’s plan for net zero-carbon ignores all the emissions that they enable – and that’s not good enough

28 January 2020

Richard Murphy explores Sainsbury’s announcement that it will go carbon neutral by 2040, and finds a hole in the accounts. “Sainsbury’s cannot say they will be carbon neutral by simply ignoring the consequences of its own actions. Doing so is, in fact, is a caricature of the denial implicit in the whole climate crisis to date, where it has always been pretended that emissions are an externality and someone else’s problem. They’re not.”

Investment in the Green New Deal could revitalise democracy

18 January 2020

A massive green investment programme in energy-efficiency would generate jobs in every constituency and result in “democracy in action”, since it would require the involvement of every household and local community, with the practical perks of improved living conditions and reduced bills. Since the general public lack trust or optimism that politicians can really improve people’s lives, this approach should garner all-party support. says Colin Hines in a letter to the Guardian.

From emergency declarations to practical action

17 January 2020

Across the world, national and local governments are declaring a climate emergency on the back of dire warnings from UN scientists about the need for urgent and far-reaching action.

Green New Deal Group Member and coordinator of the Rapid Transition Alliance, Andrew Simms, explores the initiatives around the world that are setting our to turn declarations into action.

About the group

Meeting since early 2007, the membership of the Green New Deal Group is drawn to reflect a wide range of expertise relating to economics and politics, and the climate, nature and inequality crises. The views and recommendations of the Green New Deal Group set out in a series of reports starting in 2008, are those of the group writing in their individual capacities.

The Green New Deal Group is, in alphabetical order:

Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of the Guardian, Colin Hines, Co-Director of Finance for the Future, former head of Greenpeace International’s Economics Unit, Jeremy Leggett, founder of Solarcentury and SolarAid, Clive Lewis, Labour MP, Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP, Richard Murphy, Professor of Practice, City University, Director Tax Research LLP, Ann Pettifor, Director, Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), Charles Secrett, Advisor on Sustainable Development, former Director of Friends of the Earth, Andrew Simms, Co-Director, New Weather Institute; Coordinator, The Rapid Transition Alliance, Assistant Director, Scientists for Global Responsibility. Geoff Tily Senior Economist, TUC.