NEW ZEALAND NEEDS A GREEN NEW DEAL

 

With the National-led coalition intent on pursuing environmentally damaging economic policies, the time is now to propose an alternative that doesn't put the interests of an economic elite ahead of everyone else.

THE FORMER MINISTER for Climate Change under the Labour Government, James Shaw, must be feeling, at least, a little disheartened right about now. In the space of just six months, his fantastical notion of an environmentally friendly capitalism has been overturned by the National-led coalition government. For some six years Shaw preached his 'green capitalism' to the business sector, the same business sector that has now welcomed the Government removing 'inconvenient' climate change measures, declaring them to be an obstacle on the way of economic progress. In the end, capital has no other loyalty but to itself and damn the consequences.

The 2024 Budget saw a swathe of cuts to climate related policies and no further investment in any new climate-related policy. Meanwhile, the Minister of Mining, Shane Jones, has declared that the fight against climate change is 'woke'  and merely 'shallow, emerald, mannikin thinking.'  Jones has revealed that, at heart, if he isn't a climate change denier, then he views any climate policies as a distant secondary consideration to encouraging the expansion of the extractive fossil-fuel industry. Jones will continue to deny or belittle the risk of climate change, no doubt sharing a joke or two about 'lefties and 'greenies' with the mining industry executives he meets on a regular basis.

Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick has attacked the Government's relegation of climate change policies to the status of an 'optional extra: 'It has made the choice to put cynical politics ahead of people and planet, serving the short-term interests of wealthy donors over the well-being of all of us.'

And Richard Capie of Forest and Bird has observed: 'The government’s biggest new investment in the environment is to implement reforms that are going to cause untold environmental harm through the fast track...In the middle of a climate emergency, you don’t walk away from investing in climate action – this isn’t business as usual, and to call it such is head-in-the-sand stuff.'

While the priority is to strenuously oppose what Forest and Bird have called the Government's 'war on nature', a real alternative must also be proposed. That alternative must draw the connections between our present economic system and the continuing damage it is inflicting on the environment. It's not enough to continue peddling James Shaw's vision of a low carbon capitalist economy.

Simply blaming capitalism isn't enough. There must be also be an alternative vision, and that is provided by the Green New Deal. Largely popularised by US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and now adopted by many political parties around the world, the GND rejects the neoliberal centrism of the Labour Party with its tepid 'market-based solutions' to the ecological crisis as well as the coalition government's  war on nature.
 

James Shaw would consistently blame  'people' for climate change but, refreshingly, his successor is clearly not interested in scapegoating the mass of humanity for the greed and corruption of a tiny elite. Since becoming co-leader, Chloe Swarbrick has emphasised the urgent need for fundamental system change. She wrote in the NZ Herald in 2022:

'Do we want to keep tinkering, or do we want a brand new deal? Are we willing to reset the rules?... It's not going to happen overnight, and it's not going to be easily handed over, but history tells us we can, and the demands of the future require we must.'

We have to propose and campaign for a new economic order, one that does not place the quest for growth and profit at all costs at its centre. The alternative to a GND is to allow barbarians like Shane Jones to run amok.

In her article 'What Would a Green New Deal look like in Aotearoa?', published shortly before the 2020 general election, Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw observed:

'So far no Green New Deal has emerged in New Zealand despite growing calls for this more substantive approach to addressing our current crises. This election we see at best a group of individual policies from the main parties on climate change or conservation that don’t go anywhere near creating a vision of a country that has responded to climate change effectively in the timeframe that is required. There is no clear pathway laid out that articulates the upstream issues or solutions that a Green New Deal covers.'

It's well past time that this situation was rectified, and the parliamentary party that is positioned to do that is the Green Party. But will it?