This week’s summit of the United Nations on cli- mate change helped many of us to understand better what a 16-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, is campaigning for. Her hard-hitting speech certainly drove her message home.
Comments like: “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us”; “The young people are starting to understand your betrayal”; “How dare you…Y ou have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words”; “And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line” were indicative of the message she was sending to the world’s political leaders.
For a number of years, the world’s leaders have been talking about the need to tackle climate change. Commitments have been made and not honoured. Some still deny that the changes in our climate are induced by the actions of people and see them as a freak of nature. Others make it a point to even reverse some of the decisions already made to reduce carbon emissions.
On the other hand, some governments are now seeking to adopt what they are calling a green new deal. In the EU there is the start of a discussion that investments made to tackle climate change should not be counted when calculating a country’s deficit to GDP ratio.
We should also be seeking to invest in the green economy
The term ‘green new deal’ is in effect borrowed from the policy of the New Deal adopted by Franklin Roosevelt, the US president, to get his country out of the Great Depression. It was a set of reforms and public sector projects aimed at stimulating the US economy following the Great Depression of the early 1930s.
Thus, governments are viewing the need to tackle climate change as a way of stimulating their economy, by adopting the approach of Roosevelt with the new requirement of investing in renewable energy and efficient use of natural resources. Unfortunately, there is still no global consensus on climate change and as such the green new deal is still viewed as a political policy of the environmentalists and left leaning political parties around the world. Therefore right leaning conservative parties are likely to view the green new deal with a great deal of scepticism, to say the least.
In many countries there is open opposition to it from the right leaning parties. There is not the recognition that the climate crisis is beyond party politics and needs to be viewed as a global crisis and a universal cause.
I strongly believe that as an economic approach, the green new deal could truly help countries around the world to stimulate investment and kick-start their economy.
It could provide jobs, scope for research and development, new channels for investment. It can really be a solution to the fragile global economy of today. However, as long as climate change remains a political partisan issue, we will just continue to have nice words and no action.
What about Malta? I have already stated that as a country we cannot afford to overlook the risks of climate change on our economy, and even our society. We should also be seeking to invest in the green economy. Maybe our immediate environment problems have less to do with the climate and more with building development and the erosion of open spaces, the little countryside that we have and even our cultural heritage.
Our young people should also be telling us older generations that we should not be failing them and that we should stop doing irreversible and irreparable harm to the environment. That would be Malta’s green new deal.