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As a whole, the Green New Deal (GND) is discussed as one of the most promising political projects to address social justice targets together with climate goals. Yet, as most individual GNDs focus on the national level, concerns about global justice have largely remained absent from early debates, leading some to conclude that the GND reproduces neocolonial and extractivist schemes. To analyse programs for a GND in relation to issues of global justice requires an analytical framework able to evaluate justice claims in extended geographies. Drawing on the later work of political theorist Iris Marion Young, we develop a framework that foregrounds three principles: shared responsibilities for environmental harm of global reach, self-determination for those effected by these harms, and a forward-looking political responsibility to address the structures producing and sustaining injustice. We employ this framework to conduct a qualitative content analysis of four selected GND proposals from the UK, the EU and the US. This analysis indicates that all selected GNDs acknowledge in principle the global reach of responsibilities and formulate (limited) proposals to address these in different fields. However, they do not think of global justice in terms of a forward-looking notion of political responsibility that acknowledges the need of structural reforms and the self-determination of those experiencing harm. Instead, when addressing justice beyond the level of the nation state, these GNDs fall back on a notion of distributive justice. Based on the work of Young, we conclude with a set of propositions for global democratic structures that would support the outlined principles of global justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a detailed review of the basis and prospects for United Kingdom (UK) proposals for the most ambitious mainstream social, economic, and environmental policy program of the 21st century: the Green New Deal (GND), providing critical reflection for its implementation at a local or regional level. Through a review of academic, policy and book publications we examine the key proposed features of a UK GND, identifying five core elements: financial reforms; green infrastructure investment; financing the GND; ownership structures; and economic, social and climate justice. We subsequently review these policy areas through the lens of multi-level governance (MLG) to understand what scales of policy action are required for these aims to be achieved. We find that, whilst core elements of a UK GND, such as reforms to the financial system, and expansionary fiscal and monetary policy require policy change at national and supra-national level, the majority of GND investments require implementation at the local level. We suggest that, in the context of contemporary UK MLG, there are challenges for fully funding and delivering a GND without a national programme, while highlighting emerging options for coordinating and implementing a GND by local government actors, in the absence of national support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, the Mayor of Los Angeles announced the Los Angeles Green New Deal (LAGND), an ambitious plan to shift the city's power system to 100% renewables by 2045. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP)—the electricity provider for the city and the largest municipally-owned utility in the United States—began a consultation process with local stakeholders and energy system modelers to determine possible scenarios to accomplish this goal. While the LAGND was lauded by environmentalists and progressives both within Los Angeles and beyond, it has been heavily opposed by the IBEW 18, the union that represents nearly all employees at LADWP. IBEW 18 has staged protests, created political advocacy organizations, and funded anti -decarbonization political candidates. This paper draws on 20 semi-structured interviews and other secondary materials to understand the union's oppositionand to demonstrate some of the unique challenges that municipal-scale Green New Deal (GND) plans face. We argue that the tensions between the mayor's office and unionized utility workers can be explained, at least in part, by three instances of scalar misalignment—or mismatch—that arise from trying to undertake a GND plan at the city level. These include mismatch between: (1) the scales of political activism and engagement between the mayor and the union, (2) the aims of the GND narrative and the limits imposed by the jurisdiction of the City of Los Angeles, and (3) the current and future geographies of the electric power system and related infrastructure and its path dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the attention Green New Deal proposals have received there has been very little concern to assess its technical feasibility. It involves two major technical claims, firstly that renewable energy can sustain present societies at a relatively low cost, and secondly that economy can be decoupled from resource consumption and environmental impact. The validity of these assumptions is often taken for granted. Robert Pollin is unusual in providing arguments for them. This article puts reasons for rejecting both claims and then considers the implications for the design of sustainable and just systems. It is concluded that GND goals cannot be achieved unless there is large scale degrowth to radically different economic, social and political systems. A novel perspective on the transition, contradicting GND thinking, is indicated. • The basic GND claims are outlined. • The first major claims is that 100% renewable energy supply is possible. • The second claim is that GDP can be decoupled from resource demand. • Arguments against these claims are detailed. • Unconventional Implications for a sustainable and just society are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-carbon development is one of the main goals of the European Green New Deal, but the European Union relies on many raw materials to realize it. This study quantifies the environmental impact of projected abiotic resource demands for the low-carbon development of the EU in 2050 based on lifecycle assessment coupled with environmental costs. We account for damages caused by greenhouse gasses, land use, non-renewable resource depletion, and freshwater consumption. The total environmental costs of the materials needed for low-carbon development in 2050 range from €13.1 billion to €74.8 billion, with €38.9 billion as the medium estimate. These costs seem substantial, but represent only 3.7% of the costs that the EU generates due to its current territorial carbon emission level. Based on our findings, materials for EV batteries cause 45.8% of the costs. The analysis showed that the damages are dominated by associated carbon emissions in mining and processing (47.5%) and abiotic resource depletion (45.1%), mainly induced by increased demand for nickel, iron, copper, and aluminum. Additionally, we were able to trace the geographical distribution of the impacts. Our model assigns the highest absolute environmental costs of the EU's low-carbon development to China, the U.S.A., India, and Saudi Arabia. The highest relative costs compared to GDP are paid by Guinea and Gabon. We conclude that responsible consumption strategies for the assessed materials should be established to enable low-carbon development with minimum environmental costs. This will be facilitated by the approach developed here. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that othering is central to the government of climate change. Critically engaging with Foucault's ideas on biopolitics and racism, we elaborate a conceptual perspective for analysing how such a "technology of government" operates. We review diverse literatures from geography, political ecology, critical adaptation studies and the environmental humanities dealing with discursive constructions of the other in three exemplary areas of intervention—mitigation (particularly "green" mineral extraction for renewable energy production); constructions of "vulnerability" in adaptation policies; and the governing of "climate migrants". We contend that these interventions largely work through the extension of capitalist relations, underpinned by racist and colonial ways of seeing populations and territories as "in need of improvement". And that, by legitimising and depoliticizing such interventions, and by suspending responsibility for their unwanted or even deadly impacts, othering helps to preserve existing relations of racial, patriarchal and class domination in the face of climate-induced social upheavals. Othering, we conclude, is not only a feature of fossil fuelled development, but a way of functioning of capitalist governmentality more broadly—which has important implications for thinking about emancipatory and climate-just transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Progressive Business Model is not a consciously designed business model. Instead, it is the result of the evolutionary encroachment of regulatory and legislative dictates dealing with climate change that severely limits business independence. The Progressive Business model is expansive, expensive, and environmentally questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]