Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Europe & United Nations Try to Cram Down US Throat Socialist Financial and Environmental Global Governance; Will Bush & Successor Swallow?


[After reading the following entries, it is quite difficult to conclude other than that European leaders and governments have gone out of their way to influence the 2008 U.S. presidential election. As further substantiation for this claim, readers should review: ''Yes We Can' - 'Crises' Used as Pretense for EURO-Socialist Global Governance-based Wealth Redistribution - 'Change We Can Believe In', ITSSD Journal on Economic Freedom, at: http://itssdeconomicfreedom.blogspot.com/2008/10/yes-we-can-crises-used-as-pretense-for.html ;


Obama & Gore Make Carbon Regulations/Taxes a Key Partisan Issue In Uncertain Economic Times-Shouldn't Dems Suffer Same Fate as Canada's Liberal Party?, ITSSD Journal on Energy Security, at: http://itssdenergysecurity.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-gore-make-carbon-regulationstaxes.html ;
Eurocrats & US Liberal Progressives Declare End of Anglo-American Capitalism & US Superpower Status: Is Euro-Style Global Socialism Next?, ITSSD Journal on Economic Freedom, at: http://itssdeconomicfreedom.blogspot.com/2008/09/eurocrats-us-liberal-progressives.html ].

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Europeans signal clash with US over global capitalism

European heads of state are to demand leadership from the United States at a series of summits designed to reform the global financial system.
By Bruno Waterfield
Telegraph.co.uk
19 Oct 2008

World leaders will meet in the United Sates next month to find a 'fix' for the international financial crisis after President George W. Bush bowed to European calls for a global economic summit

Mr Bush bowed to demands from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency and José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, at his Camp David presidential retreat.













The emboldened Europeans signalled that the bloc was ready to ambush Mr Bush and his successor [??], who is expected to attend the meeting, to impose a European vision for new financial market regulation.

"The EU must take over the leadership of change because that is what it has long been calling for while the US was not favourable," said José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister. "There has to be regulation and limits to everything to do with incentives and rewards."

[AT LEAST THE SPANISH PRIME MINISTER SHOWS HIMSELF TO BE A SOCIALIST!!]

The French leader reiterated his attacks on the American-led sytem of capitalism."We cannot continue along the same lines because the same problems will trigger the same disasters," said Mr Sarkozy. "This is no longer acceptable. This is no longer possible. This sort of capitalism is a betrayal of the sort of capitalism we believe in."
[SARKOZY PRETENDS TO BE IN FAVOR OF 'FREE MARKETS', BUT OBVIOUSLY, 'FREE MARKETS' ARE TO BE DEFINED BY THE 'FRENCH', WHICH REALLY MEANS HEAVILY REGULATED MARKETS CREATED, OVERSEEN & ENFORCED BY GOVERNMENT. DEAR PRESIDENT SARKOZY, COULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW THE FRENCH VERSION OF CAPITALISM IS NOT WHAT CZECH PRESIDENT VACLAV KLAUS REFERS TO AS 'SOFT SOCIALISM', SI VOUS PLAIT????]

The summit, expected to take place just days or weeks after US presidential elections in November, will start a political tussle over The US President has backed the steps European nations have taken in recent weeks to stabilise financial markets but has signalled American uneasiness with some EU calls for a root and branch overhaul of capitalism.

But remarks after the Camp David meeting has already exposed deep trans-Atlanic differences. "

We will work to strengthen and modernise our nations' financial systems so we can help ensure that this crisis doesn't happen again," said Mr Bush.

"As we make the regulatory and institutional changes necessary to avoid a repeat of this crisis, it is essential that we preserve the foundations of democratic capitalism a commitment to free markets, free enterprise, and free trade," he said. "We must resist the dangerous temptation of economic isolationism and continue the policies of open markets that have lifted standards of living and helped millions of people escape poverty around the world."

In contrast, President Sarkozy and other EU leaders have floated radical ideas of reforming rating agencies, the creation of new international financial supervisors and tough regulation of hedge funds and tax havens.


Even the venue of the global economic conference could be a source of discord after President Sarkozy called for it to be held under the auspices of the United Nations in New York, near America's Wall Street financial district, the source, the EU claims, of the present economic crisis.


"Insofar as the crisis began in New York, then the global solution must be found to this crisis in New York," Mr Sarkozy said.

A weakened President Bush, who will be seeing out his last months in office after US presidential elections on Nov 4. The US leader is expected to try and wrest back control by holding the summit in Washington.


[WE HOPE THAT BUSH DOES NOT 'GIVE AWAY THE AMERICAN FARM' IN ORDER TO CREATE SOME PERCEPTION OF A 'POSITIVE' LEGACY FOR HIMSELF. THAT WOULD BE SELF-DELUSIONAL.]

European diplomats are hoping that a new US President-elect might be more receptive to European style "social market" reforms, especially if the elections sweep Democrat candidate Barack Obama into power.

['YES WE CAN' - 'CHANGE WE COULD BELIEVE IN']

As Mr Bush nears the end of his second term and prepares to hand over the White House in January next year, any future American financial reforms will fall to his successor.
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UN announces green 'New Deal' plan to rescue world economies

By Paul Eccleston

Telegraph.co.uk

22/10/2008

A global green 'New Deal' is needed to transform the world's economies, according to a new UN report.

It would be similar to Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal which helped the US recover from the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But it would be aimed at a fundamental restructuring of economies weaning away dependence on oil and towards cleaner and more sustainable sources of energy.

The Green Economy Initiative from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) calls for global economies which invest in better care and management of the Earth's natural resources such as rainforests and oceans.

[THIS IS OTHERWISE KNOWN AS 'ENLIGHTENED' ENVIRONMENTALISM WHICH HAS BEEN PERFECTED BY THE GREEN & SOCIALIST PARTIES OF EUROPE.]

Rather than more boom and bust cycles and the continued asset stripping of dwindling resources, the new green system would nurture and re-invest in them.

It would refocus the global economy, create growth, trigger a 21st century employment boom and at the same time combat climate change, it is claimed.

[THIS REFOCUS WILL BROADEN GOVERNMENTS' ROLE SO THAT THEY INTRUDE INTO EVERY FACET OF INDIVIDUALS' ECONOMIC LIVES! IN OTHER WORDS, THIS IS 'SOFT' SOCIALISM]

Launching the report in London Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director, said the worldwide financial crisis had created an historic opportunity to replace a system which had seen the world's GDP double between 1981-2005 but which had resulted in 60 per cent of the Earth's ecosystem being degraded while 2.6bn people were still living on less than $2 per day.

[WHAT MR. STEINER SUCCINCTLY DESCRIBES IS THE MALTHUSIAN 'NEGATIVE' PARADIGM OF ENVIRONMENT-CENTRIC SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT THE OBJECTIVE OF WHICH IS TO IDENTIFY 'MARKET FAILURES'!]

He said the financial, food and fuel crises of 2008 had been caused by speculation and a failure by governments to regulate markets but they were also part of a wider market failure which was eating away the world's natural resources.

[ACTUALLY, THE SPIKING OF FOOD, FINANCIAL AND FUEL PRICES HAS BEEN LARGELY ATTRIBUTABLE NOT TO 'MARKET FAILURES', BUT TO 'GOVERNMENT FAILURES' - NAMELY BUREAUCRATIC INEPTITUDE AND LACK OF JUDGMENT (i.e., 'picking the wrong 'winners' and 'losers'), WASTE, CORRUPTION AND LACK OF TRANSPARENCY. MR. STEINER SHOULD BE QUITE FAMILIAR WITH THESE PROBLEMS, BECAUSE THEY HAVE PLAGUED THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE NATIONS OF EUROPE FOR DECADES.]
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The Green New Deal


By James Kanter

New York Times

Achim Steiner, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Environment Program, proposed a “Green New Deal” on Wednesday.

The financial crisis has stoked widespread concern that momentum toward policies on climate change and sustainability is about to stall.

[THAT WOULD BE A GOOD BET].

European governments are among those that are using the crisis as an excuse to ease back on the pace at which they had promised to tackle climate change.

[DO WE SEE EURO-HYPOCRISY??]

Now, leading figures in environmentalism and conservation are fighting to make the case that saving the planet also will save the economic system.

[THANK YOU FOR TRYING TO 'SAVE US'].

Earlier this week, Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told me governments should consider requiring bankers and financiers to check whether their investments faced climate-related liabilities like pending lawsuits or legislation related to global warming.

Mr. de Boer said that loans that aren’t vetted for climate liabilities are just as vulnerable as the poorly vetted real estate loans for new houses responsible for triggering the current crisis. He said governments could implement the new rules when they sold many of the banks they have taken into public ownership back into private hands.

[ON THE SUBJECT OF REGULATORY, CORPORATE GOVERNANCE & REPUTATION & ACCOUNTING RISK MANAGEMENT, ESPECIALLY CONCERNING CONTINGENT ENVIRONMENTAL LIABILITIES, See: Lawrence A. Kogan, Precautionary Preference: How Europe's Regulatory Protectionism Threatens American Free Enterprise, ITSSD White Paper (August 2005), published as - Precautionary Preference: How Europe Employs Disguised Regulatory Protectionism to Weaken American Free Enterprise,
International Journal of Economic Development Volume Seven, Numbers 2-3, pp. 65-411 (Dec. 2005), at: http://www.itssd.org/White%20Papers/ijed-7-2-3-kogan.pdf ; See also, EU Commission Response to ITSSD Precautionary Preference Study, at: http://www.itssd.org/References/Government/EUCommission-ResearchDirectorate-G%5B1%5D...pdf ].

On Wednesday Achim Steiner, the executive secretary of the United Nations Environment Program, launched an initiative in London called the Global Green New Deal in a deliberate echo of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s plan to tackle the Great Depression.


[THESE PERSONS HAVE CREATED THE PERCEPTION OF SIMILAR 'CRISES' FOR THE PURPOSE OF JUSTIFYING THEIR 'SOFT' SOCIALIST REVOLUTION FOR 'CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN'].

The New Deal “set the stage for the biggest economic growth the world has seen,” said Mr. Steiner. “Today we need similar vision, urgent action and strong political engagement to direct financial flows and manage markets to deal with the even greater global challenges of our time,” he said.

Mr. Steiner’s message is that massive government investment into industries creating jobs to tackle climate change is the same medicine that could help prevent a prolonged descent into economic misery and reduce bills for imported energy.

[NO. THIS ISN'T SOCIALISM, IS IT??]

Other business opportunities include clean-tech ventures, sustainable agriculture, conservation, and the intelligent management of the planet’s ecosystems.

Mr. Steiner’s organization is proposing to spend $4 million on a study of these ideas, led by Pavan Sukhdev, the head of the global markets business in India for Deutsche Bank, with most contributions toward the cost of the study coming from Norway, Germany and the European Commission.

[ANOTHER BUREAUCRATIC STUDY? OBVIOUSLY, THIS IDEA IS HALF-COOKED AND NOT 'READY FOR PRIME TIME'!]

The research should be completed in two years, but it is a fair bet the final report will make the case that governments should invest more money in creating green jobs, as well as protecting forest lands and other parts of the so-called “ecosystem infrastructure.”

[OF COURSE IT IS. AFTER ALL, ISN'T A POLITICAL DECISION THAT ONLY THE ELITES CAN MAKE??? SO MUCH FOR DEMOCRACY!]
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The Return of FDR, Part III: The Green New Deal [REAL CHANGE - CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN']

By Justice Litle, Editorial Director

Taipan Publishing Group

For 25 years, the “motor of the world economy” has been the American consumer. With that motor finally threatening to sputter out, the time for a “Green New Deal” is at hand...

The euphoria didn’t last...

On Monday, October 13, the Dow racked up its largest one-day point gain in history. In percentage terms, it was the largest single-day gain since 1933.

The rally was a pent-up sigh of relief as governments around the world responded to the credit crisis. The emergency backstop measures put in place by country after country -- see “The Return of FDR, Part II” -- gave investors a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. For one day at least, fear was put aside.

But then the economic data began to roll in, and the fear returned. Even if the credit crisis comes to an end, the market realized, the pain of global economic downturn could just be getting started.

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Martin Wolf, one of the sharpest minds at the Financial Times, sees consumer outlook -- “particularly in the English speaking world, and above all the United States” -- as the most important question now.


“Are [consumers] going to be optimistic and spend,” Wolf muses, “or are they going to say, ‘We spent too much. We borrowed too much. Our wealth is falling. Houses are falling, equities are falling, we’ve got to save a lot.”

The answer to that question, Wolf believes, will tell us what we need to know about how long the downturn will last.

Time for a New Motor?

George Soros [CAPITALIST-TURNED SOCIALIST EXTRAORDINAIRE] thinks the conclusion is foregone.

For the last 25 years, Soros observes, the “motor of the world economy” has been the American consumer. And not only has the American consumer been aggressively consuming, he “has been spending more than he has been saving.”


“So that motor is now switched off,” says Soros. “It’s finished. It’s run out of -- can’t continue.

You need a new motor.”

The declines of that truly awful week when the Dow lost 18% were tied to the credit crisis. Before governments across the globe stepped up, there was a fear that nothing would be done.


The declines that followed Monday’s rally, however, were tied to a separate issue... rooted in fears that the U.S. consumer may, after many years and countless false alarms, be well and truly tapped out. If so, we don’t know what the new “motor of the world economy” is going to be.
Soros has a notion of what that new motor could be. Moral aspects aside, I think he is right. It’s an idea some readers will like and others will hate...

“We have [another] big problem,” Soros says. “Global warming. It requires big investment. And that could be the motor of the world economy for years to come... instead of consuming, building an electricity grid, saving on energy, rewiring the houses, adjusting your lifestyle where energy has got to cost more until you introduce those new things. So it will be painful. But at least we will survive and not cook.”

The Green New Deal


Concerns over global warming and the high cost of fossil fuels are closely aligned. Whether or not you embrace the concept of global warming -- and there is still real debate on the subject -- you no doubt remember the sky-high fuel prices the world had to deal with earlier this year.
Energy prices are falling now, mainly due to deflation fears and the phenomenon of “demand destruction.” But when global growth resumes, energy prices will go right back up again. And then there are the indirect costs, like the rampant pollution and quality-of-life issues that plague China and India.

Many top thinkers thus agree with Soros. There is a very strong feeling that the world needs a “Green New Deal”... an alternative-energy-focused motor that can get the global economy humming again.
2008 versus 1932

Let’s take a quick look at the similarities between now and the 1930s.


When FDR took office in 1932, a devastating financial crisis was in full swing. (Sound familiar?) The country was desperate for leadership. Partisan lines were blurred as the whole of America demanded change.

FDR wasted no time laying into the bankers. His harsh words were right in synch with today’s times: “Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men....The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.”

Fled from their high seats, indeed. After declaring a bank holiday, FDR wasted no time in drafting new legislation, overhauling the system, and generally trying to get America back to work.

American farmers were a major focus of FDR’s New Deal. The general belief was that farming held the key to getting the economy back on its feet. In the end, many controversial programs and measures were put in place... more than a few that live to this day. While farming served as the linchpin back then, green energy can serve as the linchpin now.

So was the original New Deal effective? Was it a good thing? That’s a can of worms your humble editor would rather not open.

Some feel FDR did little more than dig holes so he could order men to fill them up again. The skeptics further argue it was really only World War II that brought the United States out of its epic slump. FDR’s defenders, on the other hand, feel that the programs implemented and leadership provided were absolutely necessary for the times. Your humble editor shrugs.

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Pragmatic Thoughts (Not Moral Pronouncements)

We are more interested here in sussing out what’s likely to happen, rather than debating the right or wrong of whether it should. And in that regard, it looks like the pieces are in place for the new FDR (i.e., America’s next president) to implement a Green New Deal.

Consider the backdrop of current events:

• We are in a time of unprecedented financial crisis (not unlike 1932), with little or no dissent toward the assertion that free-market capitalism has imperiled its very existence (and must be reined in).

• The American public -- and the world at large -- is desperate for leadership, to a degree that is only possible in a time of true crisis. (When things are better, people focus on their day-to-day lives.)

• Political leaders have the added impetus of avoiding at all costs a repeat of the mid-to-late 1930s. Their desire to sidestep the full “Great Depression experience” creates an added sense of urgency.

• In terms of economic thought, John Maynard Keynes rules the day. When all the “guarantees” are added up, trillions have already been committed on both sides of the Atlantic. Trillions more could well follow.

• U.S. consumers account for 20% of world GDP in spending terms (Martin Wolf). Global leaders everywhere are deeply aware of the danger of John Q. Public sputtering out, and thus deeply keen to get a new “motor” up and running.

• Alternative energy is the “motor” candidate for which all the right boxes are checked. There is moral authority (via global warming concerns); global buy-in (via the energy issues all non oil-exporting countries face); massive scale and scope (projects too vast for the private sector to handle, i.e. retrofitting tens of thousands of gas stations across the U.S.); and, last but not least, a genuine need for massive spending (many trillions for new and upgraded infrastructure).

From Pelosi to Eisenhower

We are likely to see more crisis spending in the days ahead. Like the war in Iraq, the final tally for government involvement in the global financial system will only rise and rise. (Unlike Iraq, however, there is at least the possibility that taxpayers will profit... but that’s a speculative notion, and a very long-term one at that.)

On October 8, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave a foretaste of this with her call for a $150 billion stimulus package aimed at Main Street rather than Wall Street. Assuming an Obama win, the Democrats are planning to hit the ground running on November 5. That means breaking out the checkbooks for Round Two (and Three, and Four, and so on).

If McCain wins, the spending outlook doesn’t change that much. He, too, has plans to bail out U.S. homeowners. A Republican White House paired up with a Democratic Congress might even touch off a “top this” contest to see who can be more generous.

Whoever wins, the U.S. budget is going to be busted like never before.... and it will not be long before the “Green New Deal” starts taking shape. As it does, do not be surprised to hear a buildup of references to good old Dwight Eisenhower.


Roughly one half century ago, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. As a result, there are just under 47,000 miles of interstate highway crisscrossing the United States today. The longest stretch, route I-90, runs a full 3,000 miles across the continent.
Ike’s highway system was not at all cheap to build, and still costs upwards of $80 billion a year to maintain. But given all we’ve gotten these past 50 years, who will dispute it was worth it? The open road is an indelible part of American life and culture -- not to mention the incalculable value of transport, or the millions of truck stops, burger joints and bedroom communities that sprang up on the new interstate.

From Roof to Shining Roof

When you start with Ike’s highways, it’s not hard to imagine the same type of grand vision applied to green energy solutions.

The soaring speeches practically write themselves. Just imagine it: Millions of proud, hard-working Americans climbing up on the roofs of their eco-friendly homes, installing the solar panels that will set them free from the burden of high energy costs, while leading an industry boom that restores and renews the nation.
Or picture fresh-faced toddlers waving from the back seats of biodegradable electric cars -- cars built by American hands in freshly capitalized Ford and GM plants, designed to travel up to 300 miles per day on near-zero emissions, plugging into the natural gas and nuclear-powered grid at night to refuel. My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Li-ber-ty...

OK, that was a little cynical. But you get the idea. If the U.S. consumer is tapped out, then America -- and the world -- will need a new deal. So why not make it a green one? And on top of that... whisper it now... who wouldn’t mind another investment bubble (this time in alternative energy shares)?

Mind or not, we’re going to get one of those, too... a new bubble, that is. When the next mania comes, alternative energy is almost certainly where it will take root. Financial panics will come and go, just as they’ve been doing for thousands of years -- did you know Wikipedia has an entry for “The Business Panic of 33 AD”? -- but human nature never changes.

Who Pays for All This?

By now you might be wondering: Who’s gonna pay for all this stuff? Where will the money come from?

It’ll mainly be taxpayers, of course... the same people who always pay. But a mass investment wave in global green infrastructure will at least have some nice follow-on benefits. Like Eisenhower’s highways, we’ll get something solid in return for our investment -- unlike the trillions that simply vanished into the maw of the great Wall Street housing bubble ponzi scheme.

Over-eager investors will also voluntarily pay a big chunk of the “green” bill, too. I speak here of those who will wind up plowing their money into the green tech bubble (once it inflates) at the very height of the boom, paying for excess capacity that plummets in price to become a cheap consumer good later.

In other words, excess capacity in the short run will lead to wonderfully cheap green energy in the long run. It will happen with “green tech” the same way things are playing out now with bandwidth. A few years back, bubble-hyped telecom investors fudged the profit calculations on thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable. In result, they were forced to sell their stakes at a blowout loss, leaving the cable in the ground for you and me to enjoy at low cost.

It’s an old historical pattern. We saw it even earlier with the railroad boom and bust. After the great railroad investment debacle, the trains and tracks were still there for the country to use.

On the heels of the Green New Deal will be the Green Mega-Investment Bubble -- and then, when that bursts, a wonderful glut of energy saving technologies on the other side.

But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves... There will be huge profits to be made on the run-up in all things green, likely sustainable for many years, before we circle back round to bust again. And so it goes.

My apologies... I thought we’d be able to close with a discussion of the dollar and gold as it relates to all this. But I don’t want to give such an important topic short shrift, so we’ll return to that next week.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear from you. What do you think of Martin Wolf’s question? Is your own household optimistic or pessimistic heading into the future? Do you like the thought of a new FDR taking the reins, or does it turn your stomach? What’d you think of the old FDR? Hero? Villain? Overrated meddler? What are your thoughts on the Green New Deal? Is it a good direction for our country (and the world)?

Let me know:

Warm regards,

JL

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New deal offers an alternative to global fatalism

By Caroline Lucas

The Guardian

October 8 2008


There's a received wisdom that Greens don't do well in a recession. As the threat of unemployment pushes the environment out of voters' minds, green issues take a back seat. So it has proved in every recession. Except this one.
I became leader of the Green party just two days after one of the most far-right administrations in US history was forced to nationalise nearly half of the country's mortgage market. The financial crisis we are entering has variously been described as the worst since 1978, '47, '33 and '29. And yet the Greens are continuing to climb in the opinion polls.

People are coming to the realisation that the system of globalised markets - unregulated, unpoliced and unguided - is fatally flawed. Everyone agrees that we need to confront the failed corporate control of our economy, and restore it to democratic control. Everyone, that is, except the establishment parties in Westminster.

[GREEN/ECO-SOCIALISM IS THE ANSWER!!]

Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have, bizarrely, chosen this moment to converge in support of the kind of neoliberalism that has caused this crisis in the first place. In doing so, they have abandoned not only common sense but also the majority of voters.

Conversely, the Green party has seriously got to grips with the economic situation and is delivering practical solutions. [??] We are more confident than ever in destroying the myth that we are a single-issue party. We are stepping into the gap left by parties that are now opposition in name only, exposing the economic and social failings of the establishment.

The alternative we are providing is practical. Gordon Brown spent days haggling with energy barons to deliver a half-hearted, excessively means-tested response to fuel poverty. In Kirklees, Yorkshire, Green councillors delivered a universal free insulation scheme that will slash the bills of 40,000 households, while also creating jobs, providing training, and cutting carbon emissions.

[WHO WILL PAY FOR THAT??]

At national level too, Greens are helping to set an agenda for change. ['CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN'] With a group of eight others, including the Guardian's Larry Elliot, I have co-authored a proposal for a Green New Deal to tackle what is, in reality, a 'triple crunch': economic recession, accelerating climate change, and rising oil prices underpinned by an encroaching peak in oil production.

Like Roosevelt, who launched his New Deal during the Great Depression of the 1930s, we need to end the fairytale that the economy can look after itself, and all of us, through trickle-down and the invisible hand. The Green New Deal calls for the re-regulation of finance and taxation, cracking down on tax evasion, and de-merging the mega-banks into more containable entities, closer to the real economy, with retail banking separated from high finance.

It also means investment in the infrastructure of tomorrow's economy. For 1930s America, that meant bridges and agricultural colleges. With climate change and peaking oil production, what we need today are home insulation, public transport and renewable energy. A 21st-century project to make the nation's buildings truly energy efficient, together with a revolution in renewable energies, would secure our energy supplies into the future, protect us against oil price fluctuations, re-invigorate our manufacturing sector and seriously address climate change.

In addition to government funding, inducements for private investments from pensions and other savings would be introduced, to generate thousands of high-quality, green-collar jobs, revitalise money flows, loosen ties to unreliable oil markets and cut carbon emissions.

The Green party is poised to send MPs to Westminster for the first time. In Brighton Pavilion, where I am standing, the most recent election results show we are now ahead of all the other parties. The same is true in Norwich South, where Adrian Ramsay, is on course to unseat Charles Clarke. And in Lewisham-Deptford, the deputy chair of the London Assembly, Darren Johnson, has turned one of the safest Labour seats in the country into a key battleground. It's my priority as leader to make sure we communicate to people that there is an alternative to a drab, fatalistic, neoliberal establishment.

By offering universal free insulation to communities, we'll cut bills, create jobs, and start the work of creating a housing stock fit for a zero-carbon economy. By attacking poverty and pay, we'll address the inequality that blights lives - and stimulate the economy at the same time.

[WHAT YOU MEAN TO SAY, IS THAT YOU WISH TO 'SPREAD THE WEALTH AROUND' - 'YES WE CAN'!]

• Caroline Lucas is leader of the Green party and a Green MEP.
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A 'Green New Deal' can save the world's economy, says UN

By Geoffrey Lean

The Independent.co.uk

12 October 2008

Top economists and United Nations leaders are working on 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.

[THEY ARE TRYING TO 'SAVE THE WORLD' FROM EVIL MARKET CAPITALISM AND ITS ENVIRONMENTAL & SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES]

The ambitious plan – the start of which will be formally launched in London next week - will call on world leaders, including the new US President, 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.

[IN OTHER WORDS, MASSIVE WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION FROM THE UNITED STATES TO ALL OTHER NATIONS!]

It aims to convince them that, far from restricting growth, healing the global environment will be a desperately -needed driving force behind it.


The Green Economy Initiative - which will be spearheaded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), headquartered here, and is already being backed by governments – draws its inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which ended the 1930s depression and helped set up the world economy for the unprecedented growth of the second half of the 20th century.


[EUROPEAN DESIGNED, UN-ENFORCED ENVIRONMENTAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL GLOBAL GOVERNANCE].

It, too, envisages basing recovery on providing work for the poor, as well as reform of financial practices, after a crash brought on by unregulated excesses of the free market and the banking system.

The new multimillion dollar initiative – which is being already funded by the German and Norwegian Governments and the European Commission – arises out of a study commissioned by world leaders at the 2006 G8 summit into the economic value of ecosystems. 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.

[THE USE OF 'CRISES' AS A PRETENSE TO JUSTIFY MASSIVE EURO-SOCIALIST ENVIRONMENTAL & FINANCIAL REGULATION AND TAXATION, PROMOTED THROUGH THE UNITED NATIONS].

Soaring prices of grain and oil, it stresses, have stemmed from outdated economic priorities that have concentrated on short term exploitation of the world's resources, without considering how they can be used to sustain prosperity in the long term. Over the last quarter of a century, says UNEP, world growth has doubled, but 60 per cent of the natural resources that provide food, water, energy and clean air have been seriously degraded.

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.

“We are pushing, if not pushing past, the limits of what the planet can sustain,” he says. “If we go on as we are today’s crisis will seem mild indeed compared to the crises of tomorrow”.

[THE U.N.'s STEINER IS WARNING US ALL ABOUT THE 'MOTHER OF ALL CRISES' - EARTHLY ARMAGEDDON!]


Switching direction and concentrating on 'green growth', he says, will not only prevent such catastrophes, but rescue the world's finances. “The new, green economy would provide a new engine of growth, putting the world on the road to prosperity again. This is about growing the world economy in a more intelligent, sustainable way.

“The 20th century economy, now in such crisis, was driven by financial capital. The 21st century one is going to have to be based on developing the world's natural capital to provide the lasting jobs and wealth that are needed, particularly for the poorest people on the planet”

He says for example, that it makes more sense to invest in preserving forests, peatlands and soils, which naturally absorb carbon dioxide, than destroying them and then developing expensive technology to do the job.

He points out that the world market for environmental goods and service already stands at $1.3 trillion and is expected to double over the next 12 years even on present trends, and adds.

“There is an enormous opportunity to ride on this increasing global demand for environmental improvement and turn it into the driver of economic growth, job creation and poverty reduction that is now so desperately needed. And in some places it is already beginning to happen.”

Mr Steiner will launch the initiative in London a week on Wednesday, October 22nd, with the announcement of three projects, concentrating on how investing in the world's natural systems, in renewable energy and in other green technologies would stimulate growth and provide jobs, and giving examples of where it is already taking place.

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



[HOW IS THAT BEING PAID FOR? AND WHO IS PAYING FOR IT? VIA ENVIRONMENTAL TAXES & USER FEES, NO DOUBT?]
Pavan Sukhdev, the chair of Deutschbank's Global Market Centre, who is leading the initiative, says: “. Hundreds of millions of jobs can be created, there is no question that traditional industries like steel and cars cannot provide them. But this is a really huge business opportunity.”
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