Green New Deals: What Shapes Green and Deal?. Issue 3 (3rd July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Levidow, Les
• Is Part Of: Capitalism, nature, socialism. Volume 33:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 76
• Page End: 97
• Publication Date: 2022-07-03
• Subjects: Green New Deal -- Green Keynesianism -- decarbonisation technofixes -- economic-sociotechnical imaginaries -- eco-localisation; Economic development -- Environmental aspects -- Periodicals; Environmental policy -- Periodicals; Socialism -- Periodicals; Capitalism -- Periodicals; 304.205
• DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2022.2062675
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1045-5752

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In the US and UK, Green New Deal (GND) agendas have gained significant support as means to reconcile environmental sustainability with a socially fairer economy. Their transformative vision has stimulated proposals such as more public goods, workers' cooperatives, eco-localisation and caring activities. When seeking support from major political parties, however, GND agendas have undergone pressure to accept decarbonisation technofixes, as promoted by carbon-intensive industries in alliance with their trade unions. Such promises have provided an investment imperative for dubious low-carbon remedies, or an alibi to await their feasibility, or both at once. These agendas imagine the nation as a unitary economic space needing technoscientific advance for a global competitive advantage. Divergences within the labour movement express rival sociotechnical imaginaries of a low-carbon future. This conflictual process has shaped what counts as Green and Deal for a GND. Similar tensions will arise around any low-carbon transition, given the wider capitalist frameworks of Green Keynesianism and Green Growth. To go beyond them will depend on political struggles to disrupt the hegemonic cross-class alliance, to create different alliances and to gain state support for their agendas.