![]() This is where the left must focus, with a relentless demand for better jobs, higher wages, lower consumer prices and maximum fairness. They don’t demand, say, that new green jobs are unionised, or mandate a reasonable ratio between the pay of workers and bosses. But too often they refuse to leverage this. Around the world, governments have taken on the financial risk of the transition and are often funding it as well. Because, while conservatives like Zac Goldsmith often claim that the market is facilitating this transition, it’s really the state that’s doing the heavy lifting. So we’re going green, but we’re not getting a new deal. And these inequalities are both a reason that green finance is potentially lucrative and why it’s expanding so rapidly. ![]() The EU’s clean energy deal is ambitious but shifts some of the costs to poorer households. ![]() China’s solar energy miracle is bound up with economic growth and a political system that are both brutally unequal. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act’s extension of tax credits, US taxpayers are effectively subsidising the dividends of clean energy’s wealthy investors. The idea that capitalism can’t stop the climate crisis no longer looks certain.īut now we face a new problem: the climate action that’s happening is unmistakably inequitable. The energy transition is accelerating, with one influential report this month arguing that the Cop28 goal to triple renewables capacity by 2030 is within reach. That’s the green new deal.īut the widespread fear that political leaders will do nothing to stop global heating isn’t proving true. Both insist that if we are going to avoid climate catastrophe, we need an enormous transfer of wealth from the richest in society to everyone else, as well as a transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. ![]() The response from the left is often dismissive: social democrats warn that citizens won’t let governments push through climate policy unless it’s redistributive – a so-called just transition – while socialists have a long list of reasons why, despite some concessions, capital ultimately won’t give up its carbon addiction. ![]()
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