This comes from Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's plan for a Green New Deal, which will be tabled next year:
The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall recognize that innovative public and other financing structures are a crucial component in achieving and furthering the goals and guidelines relating to social, economic, racial, regional and gender-based justice and equality and cooperative and public ownership set forth in paragraphs (2)(A)(i) and (6)(B). The Plan (and the draft legislation) shall, accordingly, ensure that the majority of financing of the Plan shall be accomplished by the federal government, using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures that the select committee deems appropriate, in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.
The part in italics (which I added) is, of course, pure Green Infrastructure Quantitative Easing.
I first explained this (including the multiplier effect) here, in 2010.
I explained it in more depth in 2015.
And now, I think, it's time is coming.
In a world where the biggest existential threat is global heating (warming is now in the past: heating is now what's happening) then Green QE is not radical. It's just plain common sense, whatever the opponents (who can always find money for wars and tax cuts) might say.
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Also, climate extreming is a better term than climate change.
Steve says:
“Also, climate extreming is a better term than climate change….”
Hmmmm… when sea levels rise it will be seen and understood that they rose by any name. 🙂
Is it possible, I wonder that this ‘lone voice’ can swing public opinion behind her with sufficient weight to create a change of policy direction ?
She’s is, of course not alone, but is one of the few voices on the subject being attended to by mainstream media sources. This makes her contribution vital at this time. She stands on the shoulders of many small giants and is thus visible. I pray none of the smaller giants will see fit to knock her off her precarious pedestal for reasons of jealousy.
Ronald Reagan is an unlikely sage to quote in this context, but he was spot on when he said that ‘There is no limit to what a person can achieve if s/he doesn’t mind who gets the credit’.
Go, gal. Go!!
I may have to get out my yellow hi-vis tabard…… and wear it. Maybe I’ll write her name on it……
She is fast becoming a major voice for progressives, and anyone who wants their children to have a decent future, so I hope she’ll be heard in Congress.
It’ll be her and her supporters against all the oil and gas lobbies though…
So far, she hasn’t put a foot wrong, and she’d better not, being 1) a woman 2) a Latino 3) a working class girl.
What she and her team are proposing must be enacted, and the sooner the better. Once the US show the way, others might follow.
@ Steve
“Also, climate extreming is a better term than climate change.”
Thanks for that I like it. I struggle to understand why climate change denialists can never accept that human beings can be be climate or biosphere exacerbators.
Are you saying QE would not fall foul of EU rules on state aid?
Does it affect the so-called deficit?
I am quite sure it does not
Any more than QE does
Or support for housebuilders does
Sorry Richard, I’m slightly confused by “Any more than QE does”.
I’m just trying to be clear in own mind when debating with Lexiters who are concerned about state aid rules and the 3% deficit.
It can be argued QE is not legal
Several trillion on it has been more than tolerated
Likewise, so can Green QE as I describe it
I did so with care for that reason
I’d like to be in the courtroom when some learned counsel tries to argue that microwaving the planet is OK but doing something about it is illegal!
🙂
Thanks Richard.
You requested sources for my post on Support for a Green New Deal grows:
Climate dangers: The 24th United Nations climate summit comes amid growing warnings about the catastrophic danger climate change poses to the world. In October, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that humanity has only a dozen years to mitigate climate change or face global catastrophe–with severe droughts, floods, sea level rise and extreme heat set to cause mass displacement and poverty. … New studies show global carbon emissions may have risen as much 3.7 percent in 2018, marking the second annual increase in a row
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/15/scientist_kevin_anderson_our_socio_economic
Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Rebecca Lindsey US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
Stabilisation targets — pages 3 & 4
http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/StabilizationTargetsFinal.pdf
10% produce 50% of emissions and 20% produce 70%: Democracy Now!‏ @democracynow “We need to focus on the people who are actually emitting,” says scientist @KevinClimate. “That 20% of the global population are responsible for 70% of all global emissions tells us that we need to be tailoring our policies towards that small group.” And
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/12/11/scientist_kevin_anderson_worlds_biggest_emitters
http://bright-green.org/2017/07/22/as-the-climate-clock-is-strikes-midnight-its-time-to-look-to-the-morning/ and
https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/extreme-carbon-inequality-why-the-paris-climate-deal-must-put-the-poorest-lowes-582545
extra runways: Professor Kevin Anderson: “ [If] we carry on [flying], that means we’re sending a signal to the airports to expand–almost every airport in the world is expanding–to buy more planes. We are buying more and more planes. So we are locking in a high-carbon infrastructure.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/15/scientist_kevin_anderson_our_socio_economic And
[Flying is] probably–emblematically, it’s the most important activity that we pursue. The emissions are important. They’re 2 to 3 percent of world emissions, about the same as U.K., Germany or California, so a significant amount of emissions. But, actually, when we fly, we are locking in an industry that is very high-carbon, that there are no technical alternatives in the near to medium term to overcome that, so we remain high-carbon. And also, those of us who fly, generally, we also live very wealthy lives. We often use taxis. We live in big homes. We have quite large cars. We drive a lot. We consume a lot of goods. So, almost it’s emblematic. It captures the worst excesses in terms of our climate change impacts and also, indeed, border sustainability. And so, I think it’s important for people who work on climate change, who think it’s a really major issue, that we demonstrate that we believe in our own research by making some significant changes to how we operate our own lives.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/12/11/scientist_kevin_anderson_worlds_biggest_emitters
The need of rationing Imagine in the 1940s if the elite binged on a huge food extravaganza whilst folk around them managed on a tight ration. That’s what Boeing are doing here whilst they & their morally bereft business passengers stick two fingers up to the rest of us. Kevin Anderson‏ @KevinClimate
Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) https://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/teqs/
Housing: My housing figures come from: Letter to The Observer, 16 September 2012
The solution to the housing crisis is not unbridled planning … the root of the housing crisis is inequality. There are 750,000 empty homes in Britain and about the same number of second homes. The top 250,000 households have eight or more rooms per person, while the average figure is 2.22 rooms per person and the median is 1.88. Officially 100,000 people in the UK are homeless (charities place the figure much higher).
Dr Helen Mercer, Business School, University of Greenwich
The need for degrowth:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-11-21/the-limits-of-renewable-energy-and-the-case-for-degrowth/
Now a blog in its own right
Thanks Joe
This well respected business and investment economist has been saying for some time that the only option will soon be QE or debt monetization and debt Jubiliee. No he’s never admitted that we need a paradigm shift in routine monetary policy like perhaps MMT … https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/weekly-with-andrew-mccreath/weekly-with-andrew-mccreath-for-friday-december-14-2018~1557513
Green QE is a long way from the household budget economics the political sloganeers still cling to. I can spot no flaws in Richard’s concise expositions though we need more on how to confront ignorance in such as ‘hookers and blow GDP’ reckonings. Up here in t’North we have a lot of Thwaites – and not just the excellent beer. Thwaite is a Viking word for clearing. It’s tough enough doing this when you can dynamite tree stumps. These massive efforts to produce farm land were not funded by money, but collective effort. Though we need to plant trees now and take better care of our land, the analogy of clearing makes sense to me against green infrastructure as what we need to allow our lives to flourish. It’s as important as the introduction of porridge (by Germans) to Scotland around 3000 BCE and other agricultural revolutions. This time we can’t allow population explosions, more groaf or for our lives to be exposed to the next colonisers. “Green” needs some answers on these counts.
I am working on it
I expect the porridge by morning. We need the green deal at work by the weekend.
I can’t live without porridge in the morning
George, nobody will know for sure which policies will be declared illegal until they are enacted and reviewed by the ECJ. People should be able to get nationalisation of infrastructure or government investments in green technology by electing a parliament that enacts those policies. They should NOT have to cross their fingers and hope that ECJ judges will write a permission slip for the policies they voted for.
The ECJ will not declare such acts illegal
@Nicholas
Any worry about the ECJ is many steps down the road of radical action on climate change.
The first thing that needs to happen is for politicians in the UK to lead on this subject. We should elect people of quality who will address the issues that face the nation/planet. Many people’s horizons when it comes to issues like climate change are (due to “life getting in the way”) relatively small/immediate. People wouldn’t really vote in large numbers for action on climate change as a stand-alone issue until water stopped coming out of the taps/their town started vanishing under the rising ocean!
So if UK politicians lead and emply QE to radically address climate change then we will see what the EU/ECJ does. My feeling is that they would not stand in the way of this – if they tried to (and we were still in the EU) we could apply pressure to change their policy or simply ignore them and dare them to do something about it.
My comment does have a slight fantasy element to it, as I mentioned “quality people” and MPs in the same paragraph! As I have been paying closer attention to the debates in the HoC recently I have been astounded at how many MPs are simply moronic (is this an acceptable word still?) lobby fodder!
Does this post relate at all to your second submission ? And have you provided us a link to it?
I am not sure what you mean
oe Polito says:
December 14 2018 at 2:06 am
Richard to your comment about not knowing to what I was referring – it was one of your posts on your IMF submission. I said “I have worked with a few scholars over the years, and I am always amazed at how rapidly they think and produce quality material. You sir, fit the mold!
I look forward to studying your paper.”
You replied: Richard Murphy says:
December 14 2018 at 8:36 am
There is more coming….. Another report goes in today
The new report is on another, related, issue – out in January….
FYI. Just received this in my ‘in-box’ which only confirms what’s already been said; but it’s all grist to the communications mill, isn’t it – https://www.laprogressive.com/green-new-deal.