Do We Need a "New Deal" for Green Technologies?

Submitted by mrissues on November 24, 2008 - 12:52pm

THE ISSUE

President-elect Barack Obama is proposing spending $15 billion a year to advance green technologies that are intended to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. He claims that this will create five million new jobs and ensure that 25 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2025. Is green technology really the panacea that it is made out to be, as a solution to our economic, environmental, and national security woes?

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Arguments For

The time has finally come

By pollo - Nov 26, 2008

It's not just Barack Obama and the Democrats anymore... Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently hosted an international conference on climate change. Independent Joe Lieberman and Republican John Warner introduced a climate bill before Congress this past summer. In fact, all the major Presidential candidates this election season talked about green technologies as a driver for economic growth.

As for Obama, many thought that the worsening economy would force him to abandon his promises once he was elected. However, he appears more resolute than ever. "My presidency will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs," he said recently.

Now is the time to act. America's return to economic prosperity will require bold moves and investment in the future.

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We Need a Big Green Jobs Machine

By drslice - Nov 26, 2008

"Put aside the familiar arguments - that the science is clear, that climate change represents an indisputable existential threat to the planet, and that every day we do not act the problem grows worse. Instead, let us make the case purely on bread-and-butter economics.

"At a time when the global economy is sputtering, we need growth. At a time when unemployment in many nations is rising, we need new jobs. At a time when poverty threatens to overtake hundreds of millions of people, especially in the least developed world, we need the promise of prosperity. This possibility is at our fingertips..."

Related link: From the San Francisco Chronicle

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The UN Agrees

By gmark - Nov 29, 2008

Top economists and United Nations leaders are working on a "Green New Deal" to create millions of jobs, revive the world economy, slash poverty and avert environmental disaster, as the financial markets plunge into their deepest crisis since the Great Depression.

The ambitious plan – the start of which will be formally launched in London next week - will call on world leaders, including the new US President, to promote a massive redirection of investment away from the speculation that has caused the bursting “financial and housing bubbles” and into job-creating programmes to restore the natural systems that underpin the world economy.

It aims to convince them that, far from restricting growth, healing the global environment will be a desperately -needed driving force behind it.

The Green Economy Initiative - which will be spearheaded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), headquartered here, and is already being backed by governments – draws its inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which ended the 1930s depression and helped set up the world economy for the unprecedented growth of the second half of the 20th century.

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Arguments Against

Green, Easy, and Wrong

By p_smitty - Nov 29, 2008

TWO pressing problems face the world: economic meltdown and global warming. Conveniently, a solution presents itself that apparently solves both: governments should invest heavily in green technology, thus boosting demand while transforming the energy business. Isn't that neat?

No. Mr Obama’s commitment to solving climate change is devoutly to be welcomed. There is also a case for giving the economy a boost through government spending. But combining the two by subsidising renewable energy is, like many easy answers, the wrong solution.

Governments can discourage companies and people from producing CO2 by making polluters pay or by reducing the costs of clean energy. Europe does both, through a cap-and-trade system (which caps CO2 emissions and requires companies to buy permits to pollute) and through subsidies. Mr Obama is, quite rightly, planning to introduce a cap-and-trade system, but he is also promising massive subsidies.

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Do We Need a "New Deal" for Green Technologies?

THE ISSUE

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Arguments Against

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