WE DON'T NEED A 'CLIMATE EMERGENCY', WE NEED A GREEN NEW DEAL

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: A Green New Deal for America. Why not for New Zealand as well?

A Green New Deal would match the scale and urgency of the climate crisis in a way that the ultimately meaningless declaration of a 'climate emergency' would not.

CALLING FOR THE Labour-NZ First coalition to declare a climate emergency, as organisations like Greenpeace have, simply lets this Government off the hook. Yes, it could call a climate emergency but what, in practical terms, will it mean? Unless there's a dramatic change in the market-led ideological heart of this government, it will carry on with its insane market-friendly policies that are based on achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Given that we have been warned that we have no more than twelve years to effectively tackle climate change, we'll be approximately twenty years too late - with or without a climate emergency being announced.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has already said that she's sympathetic to the call for a national 'climate emergency'. This isn't altogether surprising. Not only does it mean she'll have to make zero charges to the present inadequate climate change policies of her Government she'll get the added bonus of some favourable media coverage and the opportunity to shore up the support of a middle class base susceptible to empty slogans and gestures.

So rather than giving Jacinda Ardern the soft option of a 'climate emergency' , we should be playing hard ball and demanding that she implement a Green New Deal (GND). Then we'll see if Jacinda Ardern is prepared to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk.

A GND, perhaps something similar to what is being campaigned for in the United States, would mean a fundamental transformation of the very market economy that is the fundamental obstacle in the way of effectively combating climate change. Rather than playing with the levers of the very machine that is eating up the planet as this government is doing right now, a GND would be ambitious not only in terms of the policies needed to fight climate change but also in reinventing our economy and our society, freed of the demands of corporate and market interests.

We need a radical restructuring of our economy on the basis that the economy and the ecosystem are tightly bound together. No one is pretending that a GND is the end solution but a GND would spell the end of neoliberalism and tilt the balance of power in favour of the 99 percent and away from the one percent.

At the very heart of a GND would be the drive for system change not climate change. In contrast calling for a national 'climate emergency' demands next to nothing from the political representatives of the very system that is destroying the planet. But we cannot deal with the climate crisis in an effective way while conforming to the logic of a globalised capitalist economy.

While Jacinda Ardern has talked of climate change as being 'the nuclear free issue of her generation' she has comprehensively failed to match her words with deeds and continues to pander to corporate interests and with the Green Party tagging along behind her. That the Green Party is not calling for a GND amply highlights the rancid conservatism of this dismal party.

A Green New Deal would provide a tremendous opportunity to organise around a comprehensive and radical climate reform proposal that sits alongside a proposal to fundamentally transform the economy. A GND would match the scale and urgency of the climate crisis in a way that the ultimately meaningless declaration of a 'climate emergency' would not.