It is several months now since the Green Party elected its first Green Leader, Caroline Lucas MEP. Caroline has spent much of this time explaining the importance of the Green New Deal a strategy for taking us out of recession, addressing long term structural problems with our banking system and ensuring the nation remains working. Along with other renowned Green thinkers and activists, "the Green New Deal Group", a set of policies have been put together and in my view are crucial to our recovery.
The Green New Deal takes us back to the Roosevelt years when the US struggled to get out of the recession which saw millions lose their jobs and people flee their homes often as a result of repossession by banks and head West looking for work. This time the "Green New Deal" seeks to address a set of problems: climate change, the credit crunch and impending recession.
Job creation would be promoted and climate change combatted through investment in the green energy sector: energy efficiency and renewables. By raising the standards of insulation in our homes not only will we have higher levels of comfort and lower fuel bills but we will also reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions. Combined with seeking to make every building a source of energy through solar panels, ground source heat pumps etc even more can be done to combat climate change.
The tools would be, not only awareness raising and a small fund for subsidies, but a large £50bn fund combined crucially with skills training. An Oil Legacy Fund is proposed, paid for by a windfall tax on energy companies, which would pay for this.
And for longer term structural security banking reform is proposed which will involve separating investment banks from retail banks and tightening regulation all round.
What does this mean to me as a councillor working at a local level? It means pushing for an integrated approach by Camden which involves investing in insulation and renewables levering in money from energy companies to pay for this but also investing in and ensuring we have appropriate skills training. We have a vast deficiency in people who are able to insulated your floors or put in good quality double-glazing. Camden could be and should be doing more to use what will be a fallow period to train people up to take on these jobs. Our Green MEP Jean Lambert has also been working to have the training agenda included Europe wide (see Jean's new report "Green Work: Employment and Skills - the Climate Change Challenge" http://www.jeanlambertmep.org.uk/reports_publication.php) . This is what the Greens are asking for within Camden. We have yet to see a commitment by the Lib-Dem/Conservative administration to adopt this forward-looking integrated approach.
