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Richard Heinberg on the Green New Deal (audio)
Jason Bradford, Reality Report
2008 has been a remarkable year. About a year ago James Hansen of NASA gave a presentation at the American Geophysical Union meetings in San Francisco that showed how greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere were already too high.
Energy and other commodity prices rose and then fell spectacularly. Recently the International Energy Agency released a report that said fossil fuel production will not meet future demand without massive, and perhaps unrealistic, levels of investment. Now we are in the midst of epic convulsions in the financial system, and have just elected a new U.S. President.
The global crises of 2008 all relate to growth in debt, pollution and consumption reaching their limits, but will the incoming Obama administration recognize the new reality? This show discusses “Energy Realism and the Green New Deal” with Richard Heinberg of The Post Carbon Institute. Hear what message Post Carbon Institute is presenting to the incoming U.S. President.
(15 December 2008)
The Crisis: An Opportunity to Save the Planet (Lord Stern interview)
Antoine Reverchon, Le Monde via Truthout
An interview with Lord Nicholas Stern, professor at the London School of Economics, who received an honorary doctorate from the University of Paris-Dauphine on November 24.
… Q: Yet, if they succeed in overcoming the economic crisis this way, isn’t there a risk that companies and politicians will immediately revive the model you deem responsible for the “other crisis,” the planetary crisis?
A: It’s up to us – researchers, economists, media and citizens – to avoid that. At issue is a major political choice we must make right now, taking advantage of the opportunity offered by implementation of the rescue plans and recovery policies announced these last few weeks, and also those still to come.
For example, why not direct the aid offered to the automobile industry and all public assistance in general towards research and development of an economic model and technologies that act in concert with the fight against global warming.
Why not guarantee first those bank loans towards investments in clean technology and renewable energy? Why not change the tax code to reduce the relative price of those technologies and those energies?
All those initiatives are recovery measures. Today, we have the possibility to create a technology shock equivalent to the one industry experienced with the appearance of railroads or electricity, the source of long phases of economic growth.
(13 December 2008)
French original at Le Monde: La crise, une chance de sauver la planète
The newer deal for a newer world
Sunita Narain, Down to Earth
After months of downward spiral, the dreaded r-word must be uttered. The world’s major economies are into a recession. Equally recessive is the response of leaders who, after working extremely hard to privatize and deregulate, are falling upon a Keynesian idea, first applied after the 1929 Great Depression in the us, requiring governments to spend huge amounts of public money to bail out the economy. This is what all governments hope to do, once again, in the age of private capital combined with the extraordinary wealth of individual entrepreneurs and excruciating poverty and deprivation among many.
The question is if this old ‘newer deal’ can be reinvented, given fundamental flaws in the economic system now highlighted. It is very clear to some of us (but still not acceptable to the fina-ncial managers of our economies) that the best way to crawl out of the current mess is to change the very nature of our economies. Our economies are built on the principle of consumption. The simple assumption is growth will make people wealthy and they will, in turn, pay for what they want. The more they spend, the greater the overall happiness.
