WHY THE GREEN PARTY WON'T PROPOSE A GREEN NEW DEAL FOR NEW ZEALAND

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launching the Green New Deal.

While the Green New Deal proposed in the United States represents what has been described as a bid to reset economic and social policy in favour of ordinary Americans, don't expect the New Zealand Green Party to propose something similar here.

ONE OF THE MAIN criticisms of the mainstream environmental movement is that it has consistently failed to acknowledge that we cannot address environmental issues without addressing fundamental economic issues as well. We cannot pretend to even get to grips with climate change if we don't accept that a fundamental overhaul is required of our economic system - because it is that very economic system, driven by the twin motors of even more growth and even more profit, that is driving the planet over the cliff.

While the demand for 'system change not climate change' has grown louder around the world, the call has gone ignored by those in government. This is not surprising given that as the protectors of the interests of the one percent, they are not going to endorse anything that threatens the economic and political status quo.

In New Zealand we have a Government, aided and abetted by a corporate-friendly Green Party, that is continuing to act on the disastrous assumption that we can create an environmentally friendly capitalism. We are sleepwalking to disaster as the Government tinkers with a system that is literally eating up the planet. There is little comprehension within Government that we cannot just carry on the way we are, despite the Prime Minster claiming that climate change was her generation's 'nuclear free moment'. Right now, she's comprehensively failing her generation.

The recently released Inter-Governmental Panel Report on Climate change warns we have no more than twelve years to effectively tackle change before we reach the point of no return. But Jacinda Ardern's government is slouching toward supposed carbon neutrality by 2050.

A week or so ago Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, backed by a broad alliance of Democrats, launched the Green New Deal (GND). It is as economist Michael Roberts notes, '..a welcome attempt to reset the agenda for economic and social policy in favour of labour in America, for the first time since the New Deal of the 1930s.'

The GND stands as an alternative to neoliberalism and market ideology. It provides a program to tackle global warming and environmental pollution and aims to reduce the US’s net carbon emissions to zero within ten years - while initiating policies to provide a federal job guarantee, the right to unionise, action against free trade and monopolies, and universal housing and health care.

Significantly it plans the re-entry of the state in the American economy while devolving more decision-making power to the community. It proposes the massive mobiisation of the state not only to tackle climate change but also re-balance the American economy in favour of working people.

Naturally the GND has been furiously attacked by the acolytes of neoliberalism who view the re-emergence of the state in the economic affairs of the country as akin to the United States being declared a Marxist country. But it has also been opposed by that corporate-friendly strain of 'environmentalism' which is based around the premise of free market capitalism 'transitioning' to carbon neutrality via business incentives. Under this plan the political and economic status quo remains gloriously undisturbed.

James Shaw : A misguided belief in 'green capitalism'.

The road that supposedly leads to the land of 'green capitalism' is the one that New Zealand is being led down by the Government and the Green Party. Listen to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Climate Change Minister James Shaw and you will hear them talk of the market economy transitioning to carbon neutrality. As part of this corporate-friendly scenario the Government launched its $100 million investment fund in December, which Shaw says " will work to invest with business to reduce emissions while making a profit.” Profit remains god. 

The Government and the Green's would not support the kind of GND being proposed in the United States because it cuts right across its market-based policies. Even though as journalist Paul Mason has wrote, the GND stands as 'a decisive revival of the state as an economic entity in Western capitalism and a fusion of environmental justice with redistributive justice on a scale not currently envisaged by any left party in Europe.'

But the Green Party won't be taking the opportunity to propose a similar Green New Deal for New Zealand.

Indeed one of the Green Party's co-leaders, James Shaw, said in his maiden parliamentary speech that he was 'a huge fan of the market'. "When it comes to setting prices and allocating scarce resources it usually beats the alternatives hands down.” he told Parliament.

Given the Green Party's failure to take up the challenge of a Green New Deal for New Zealand it presumably still thinks that 'the market' continues to reign supreme. And given the political cowardice on display by the Green's, its not surprising that Extinction Rebellion Aotearoa is attracting more and more support. Its a sign that public displeasure with the government's approach to climate change continues to grow.