LONDON, United Kingdom —
A group of people representing the United Kingdom nonprofit, journalism, finance and political spectrum is calling for a climate change strategy similar in scale to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
The "Green New Deal" calls for a major shake-up of taxation and financial systems, as well as a massive investment in energy conservation and renewable energy. The report, released by the New Economics Foundation, claims that greenhouse gas emissions must be stabilized within the next 100 months lest we pass the "potential point of no return."
Inspired by FDR's programs that followed the Great Depression in the U.S., the Green New Deal promised to address a "triple crunch" of challenges that include climate change, high oil prices and credit crisis. It calls for spending more than 50 billion pounds per year turning every U.K. building into self-generating power stations. A "carbon army" of workers needed to expedite the environmental reconstruction plan must be trained.
The price of fossil fuels must factor in environmental costs in order to provide an economic incentive to pay for the transformation, including a windfall tax on profits of oil and gas profits.
Other financial innovations and incentives must also be developed reduce energy demand and finance the an energy efficient infrastructure.
Inspired by the financial programs implemented during the Great Depression in the U.S. during the 1930s. For instance, the group calls for re-regulation of the financial systems to enable low interest rates projects aimed at building the new transportation and energy infrastructure.
The group also suggests a radical reshuffling of the financial sector. Big banks should be broken up in order to reduce failure risks and the need for massive bailouts. Capital controls should be introduced to the international finance sector to limit its ability to transform national economies and restrict their role as "servant, not master."
Tax havens, corporate reporting and derivatives should be strictly enforced.