UN Drafts Green New Deal For President Obama

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

There has been some debate over the impact of this financial crisis on President Obama’s ability to address global warming. Well, UN leaders and top economists are not buying the can-not-do meme. Instead, they are drafting a “Green New Deal” to “create millions of jobs, revive the world economy, slash poverty and avert environmental disaster, as the financial markets plunge into their deepest crisis since the Great Depression.”

The Green New Deal will ask world leaders, including our new President Obama, to “promote a massive redirection of investment away from the speculation that has caused the bursting ‘financial and housing bubbles’ and into job-creating programmes to restore the natural systems that underpin the world economy.” Inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Green New Deal is based on providing work for the poor as well as reforming financial practices while sustaining environmental resources.

This new initiative has already received funding by Germany, Norway and the European Commission and is based on a 2006 G8 summit study on the economic value of ecosystems. The Green New Deal addresses 3 interrelated crises:

It argues that the world is caught up in not one, but three interlinked crises, with the food and fuel crunches accompanying and intensifying the financial one.

A common causation factor is the failure of governments and corporations to even consider sustainability when depleting natural resources, which then results in “soaring prices for grain and oil.”

The purpose of the Green New Deal is not just to address the financial crisis, but also prevent an eco crisis that is even larger:

Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director, adds that new research shows that every year, for example the felling of forests deprives the world of over $2.5 trillion worth of such services in supplying water, generating rainfall, stopping soil erosion, cleaning the air and reducing global warming . By comparison, he points out, the global financial crisis is so far estimated to have cost the world the smaller one-off sum of $1.5 trillion.

The sustainability approach means that we should be investing and preserving natural resources (e.g. forests, peatlands and soils) that absorb carbon dioxide rather than destroying them and then spending significant monies to develop technology to replace the functions previously performed by natural resources. For example, when we clear-cut forests, we also are eliminating beneficial services that those forests provided:

So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or farming foods that were once naturally available.

The point is that environmental sustainability saves money while also providing green jobs and technologies:

…Mexico is now employing 1.5 million people to plant and manage forests, … China has created the world’s biggest solar energy industries from scratch in just a few years, and …Germany has leapt from being a laggard to a leader in renewable energy by giving people attractive incentives to install it in their home.

The US and global markets tried it Bushie’s way.  Let’s hope the rising food and energy prices as well as the financial crisis wakes up America to try the Green approach.