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Climate Crisis Mitigation: Implementing a Green New Deal and More

Paper Session

Friday, Jan. 3, 2020 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PDT)

Manchester Grand Hyatt, La Jolla B
Hosted By: Union for Radical Political Economics
  • Chair: Ron Baiman, Benedictine University

Financial Bailout Spending Would Have Paid for Thirty Years of Global Green New Deal: Triage, Regeneration, and Mitigation

Ron Baiman
,
Benedictine University

Abstract

This paper will demonstrate that the money created by the Fed for the three Year 2008-2011 financial bailout would have paid for almost thirty years 2020-2050 of global climate crisis mitigation through a Global Green New Deal (GGND). It will point out that Modern Monetary Theory thinking is useful for differentiating the easy to solve financial spending problem from the more difficult problems of economic resource reallocation and social equity, and that the amount of spending, taxing and rationing, necessary for each of these goals will likely be different. The paper will also argue that the GGND will require at least three overlapping components: triage emergency measures that may include solar radiation management to immediately prevent catastrophic climate tipping points, regeneration to naturally restore soil and water cycle planetary cooling, and mitigation to rapidly draw-down Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.

Green New Deal: Interdisciplinary Heterodox Approaches

Mathew Forstater
,
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Fadhel Kaboub
,
Denison University
Michael Murray
,
Bemidji State University

Abstract

The transition to a sustainable economy and just society requires a transformation in the technological structure of production away from fossil fuel-based and toward renewable energy-based technologies, as well as changes in social and organizational relations away from hierarchical, authoritarian structures and toward democratic and participatory institutions that are fair and egalitarian. What policies would be involved in a Green New Deal? What role might a Green Job Guarantee play in the program? This paper focuses on how interdisciplinary heterodox approaches can contribute to the GND’s formulation and implementation.

The Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal: The Issue Is the Issue, After All

Peter Dorman
,
Evergreen State College

Abstract

In the face of resistance to policies directly targeting fossil fuel use, climate activists have pivoted to other measures centered on promotion of renewable energy and energy efficiency—a Green New Deal (GND). These also have the advantage of combining environmental with progressive social and economic goals. Unfortunately, while GND or similar initiatives are necessary to a carbon transition, they are not sufficient, especially in a world that will continue to rapidly expand energy production. This paper demonstrates why a GND package alone would be unlikely to lead to atmospheric stabilization below 450 ppm (consistent with a favorable chance of limiting global warming to 2º C), but it also identifies the crucial tasks a well-designed GND could perform to minimize the effects of the transition on living standards, especially for those at greatest risk.

Community Currency Powered Job Guarantee (JG): A Way to Full Employment, Sustainability and Gender Equity

Josefina Li
,
Bemidji State University

Abstract

Theorized and designed based on the literature and experience of many local community currencies as well as the Modern Money Theory (MMT), a community currency powered JG scheme, can be a powerful tool that help the economy achieves full employment, sustainability and gender equity. MMT literature focuses on sovereign currency of a nation, neo-chartalism also teaches us money as an institution is not neutral nor fixed. Money represents power relations, which also have gender hierarchy, but at the same time, it is part a social technology that could be designed, produced and controlled in a way to work for a particular set of social and environmental objectives. While ecological economics has demonstrated the conflict between the capitalist mode production and resource limitation in the ecosystem, ecofeminism demonstrates that the exploitation of women’s work and exploitation of natural resources are both necessary prerequisites for capitalism. This paper echoes what has been laid out by the Green JG literatures on JG’s ability to simultaneously promote full employment and sustainability, but in addition, it also points out that by taking back control of money, and using it to support alternative livelihood and provisioning, and to provide paid job training in the green technology sector in a gender conscious way could also help promote gender equity as well. Women has a much heavier presentation in the care economy, funding their work with the community currency is to provide them an alternative livelihood and to stop the exploitation of women’s labor; and providing women green jobs, and not just the labor intensive recycling jobs, but training women in the green technology sector, which is traditionally dominated by men, will stop perpetuating gendered work patterns.
JEL Classifications
  • E6 - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
  • E5 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit