What will deliver a Green New Deal?

Posted on April 21 2020

My thoughts on the conditions that will deliver a Green New Deal, based on a discussion I had in an online seminar yesterday:

Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:

You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.

And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:

10

10 Responses

  1. Robin Le Mare says:
    April 21 2020 at 2:47 pm

    Thank you Richard.

    Thursdays have now become associated with expressing appreciation for health, safety, social care sectors of our society. That’s fine & good.

    With lockdown now extended for longer, XR demonstrations are less easy – except on every other day of the week when pots could be clattered, whistles blown, klaxons sounded & loud ‘Booos!’ shouted from everyone’s home to express the rejection of ‘back to normal’.

    TINA has a DNR label on its sickbed. We could wave TINA goodbye with jolly sounds.

  2. Rod White says:
    April 21 2020 at 5:11 pm

    I can’t see any way that a GND is going to happen. What I can see is this rabid government hastening the full privatisation of the NHS because in its present form it let the country down in a crisis. The MSM will cheer them on. Taxes will rise to pay for all the largest they’ve dished out to the banks and austerity will be intensified. Anything else is just fantasy. The new Labour Party and it’s new leader have let another crisis go to waste. Good heavens it’s depressing.

  3. John D says:
    April 21 2020 at 7:19 pm

    Thanks for the video – good initiative, maybe to be repeated occasionally when you feel the topic justifies it. Re the route to getting a GND, I agree totally. Well organised, co-ordinated and sustained grass roots protests are highly effective tactics for raising mass awareness and fuelling radical change – as Margaret Mead famously reminded us; and vociferously advocated by both Noam Chomsky & Chris Hedges over the years. The essential catalyst for igniting the spark is the infectious energy of youth, as we’ve seen with Greta Thunberg. Now is the time for dedicated activists in different countries to come together. Do you have an idea as to what and where could be the coordinating and control hub, so to speak? It seems logical that the European Green Party might be a feasible umbrella organisation. It needs a nucleus of representatives from across the board who would devise, plan and initiate street protests to be actioned at the strategically right moment – once the COVID-19 threat has been tamed and no longer scaring the shxt out of everyone.

    I’m simply reacting on the hoof to your video, without any knowledge of what might already be in the pipe-line. In fact I’d be surprised if discussions have not already begun. Any feed-back from Caroline?

    PS : Having written the above I’m now wondering if the Green Party umbrella is actually the right one, especially for here in the UK. Perhaps it needs a totally new structure behind it. But if so, then what or which? Greta kicked off a global movement from simply standing outside the Riksdag with her now famous placard ‘Skolstrejk för klimatet’. The rest is history. Is that all it takes? I think the GND is probably a more complex issue for the general public to get its head around, albeit encompassing her climate change initiative.

    Now I’m just wittering on. But, yes, you’re right. I do hope someone, somewhere will pick up the gauntlet. Wish I was many decades younger! 🙂

  4. Robin Stafford says:
    April 21 2020 at 8:39 pm

    I’d disagree re the NHS. The staff in hospitals – all of them – have done a staggering job in the circumstances. The underlying ethos is still there
    The support they have had is a different matter. A decade of slow suffocation from a succession of Tory governments, followed by chaos and incompetence from the Department and the various organisations supposedly supporting the NHS. The legacy of Lansley and Hunt.

  5. David Lowry says:
    April 22 2020 at 7:36 am

    Brilliant video explanation, and necessary call for populist insurrection, delivered I think, without a single full stop
    I have shared it directly with several television journalists and presenters I know, suggesting they maker use of it with your permission. You remain my daily inspiration

  6. Zachariah says:
    April 22 2020 at 11:21 am

    A piece in the MSM of $100trillion worth of green investment
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/20/green-energy-could-drive-covid-19-recovery-international-renewable-energy-agency?