From green jobs to Green New Deal: What are the questions?

Abstract

Proposals for development of ‘green jobs’ emerged when environmentalists, labour organisations and political economists recognised the need for economic restructuring to reduce climate change. Current proposals for a Green New Deal go further by putting additional emphasis on fiscal stimulus, ‘just transition’, reducing socio-economic inequalities, and political empowerment. This article analyses the development of this more comprehensive policy approach, its rationale, the constraints it would face and its prospects in the Australian context. JEL Codes: B50, H12, L78, P18, Q58

Inequality, sustainability, and public policy: Historical and spatial perspectives

“…The principal alternative to business as usual is what has come to be known as the Green New Deal. The 'new deal' terminology has a distinctively US origin, stemming from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's employment-creation policies during the Great Depression of the 1930s (Chomsky and Pollin 2020;Stilwell 2021). The 'green' element, of course, signals the need to ensure that the policy program also responds to the challenges of dealing with climate change and other environmental stresses.…”

“…As Chomsky and Pollin (2020) argue, the urgency of dealing with climate change requires the first steps to be taken within the existing structures of corporate and state power. How the policy program develops in the longer term would then depend on the evolving balance of interests, ideologies, and social forces, interacting in an 'arena of struggle' (Stilwell 2020(Stilwell , 2021. A pullback on the expansionary Keynesian aspects, relative to the redistributive and 'deeper green' aspects of the program, could become a stronger feature in the medium term, depending on the shifting balance of political forces and the as-yet-unknown environmental and economic outcomes.…”

Ecological Boundaries of Green Keynesianism

“…GND proponents argue that addressing climate change requires involvement of the government, public investment, industrial policy, and economic planning. They believe that this approach represents a significant deviation from conventional economic thinking (Altenburg and Rodrik, 2017;Tienhaara, 2018;Aronoff et al, 2019;Eckersley, 2021;Stilwell, 2021).…”

Towards sustainable development in the European Union: a critical raw materials perspective

“…The growing importance of sustainable development, as well as the circular economy, the assumptions of which have been fully accepted by individual entities, requires a number of actions (Mancini et al, 2015). The implementation of the European Green Deal by the European Union in 2019, which is a kind of roadmap covering a number of policies, should be considered part of these actions (Smol et al, 2020;Stilwell, 2021). The European Union aims to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.…”