Green New Deal Round-Up

Naomi Klein - author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo - kicked things off last month, when she encouraged activists to take to the streets and demand for a New Deal. Meanwhile, there are some encouraging signs that the Green New Deal Group's calls for 'creating and training a carbon army of workers' in green collar jobs are being heard in government. The Guardian reports that

An army of loft insulators and draught-proofers is to be released on to the streets of Britain as Gordon Brown combines his fight against climate change with the need to provide jobs in an economic downturn. In an echo of the New Deal, launched by the US president Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the prime minister said that a new employment scheme would train thousands of loft insulators.

Larry Elliot - economics editor at the Guardian, and Green New Deal co-author - gave a hat-tip to nef last Friday, when he said that GND principles should undergird any potential reforms of the economic system. And finally, the United Nations announced last week that its economists are working on a plan to revive the economy while averting environmental catastophe: a 'Green New Deal'.