The Green New Deal

The financial crisis has stoked widespread concern that momentum toward policies on climate change and sustainability is about to stall.
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.
Now, leading figures in environmentalism and conservation are fighting to make the case that saving the planet also will save the economic system.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.”