The Case for the Green New Deal by Ann Pettifor

Author:Ann Pettifor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

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The Green New Deal Economy

The Green New Deal is not a brand in the commercial sense of the word, demanding ‘brand loyalty’. Nor is it a binding manifesto that commands absolute adherence. However, while the British and American GNDs differ in some respects, both are built on key principles. The following economic principles can fairly be said to underpin the British Green New Deal and are almost entirely shared with its American counterpart.

Principle Number One: A Steady State Economy

An economy that sustains life on earth will be a steady state economy and will not exceed the nine ecological boundaries: stratospheric ozone depletion; loss of biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss and extinctions); chemical pollution and the release of novel entities; climate change; ocean acidification; freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle; land system change; nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the biosphere and oceans; atmospheric aerosol loading.1

Minimising waste by adopting closed loop recycling methods will be central to a steady state economy, as will the rapid development of mutually supporting, circular energy and resource networks where people live and work. Reuse, remanufacture, and secondary material supplies can address resource insecurity. Some products are already designed to be converted back to raw material, allowing for repeated use and the remaking of the same product over and over again. Such activity will ensure that the stock of physical capital is kept steady, while economic and social activity builds and rebuilds overall system health.

Herman Daly, the world’s leading proponent of the steady state economy, argues that it is composed of two physical populations – people and artefacts – existing as elements of a larger, natural system. Artefacts (physical capital) yield services that serve human needs (as opposed to ‘wants’), and so do people.

These two populations may be thought of as a fund, like a lake, with an outflow necessitated by death and depreciation, which can be reduced but never eliminated. The outflow is offset by an inflow of births and production which may exceed, fall short of, or equal the outflow.2

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