'New Deal' to tackle economic and ecology problems

Published on Sunday 20 July 2008 22:01

A PANEL of environmentalists and economic commentators today issued a call for a "Green New Deal" to help Britain respond to the current economic crisis while tackling global warming.

The Green New Deal Group proposed a package of massive investment in renewable energy plus action to rein in financial speculation and provide capital for low-carbon projects.

The group – which includes two former directors of Friends of the Earth, a Green MEP and the former head of the Jubilee 2000 anti-debt campaign – released new analysis suggesting that the world has 100 months to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions before hitting a potential point of no return.

Some 75 years after US president Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the Green New Deal Group warned that the credit crunch, rising energy prices and climate change were combining to create a threat to stability on a scale not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

They called for a new vision for a low-carbon energy system, a "carbon army" of workers for environmental reconstruction and an Oil Legacy Fund to deal with the effects of climate change and smooth the transition to a low-carbon economy, to be paid for by a windfall tax on oil and gas profits.

And prices of fossil fuels including gas and coal, and that of petrol, should be increased to reflect their environmental costs.

The group also called for large financial institutions to be broken up and for the government to clamp down on corporate tax evasion and introduce tighter regulation to prevent a repeat of the credit crunch and speculative hikes in commodity prices.

Tony Juniper, former director of Friends of the Earth and a member of the panel, said: "The credit, climate and oil crunches are all individually serious issues, but in combination their impact could be catastrophic for our economy and our way of life.

"Politicians from across the spectrum should signal their willingness to think differently."