GREEN NEW DEAL
Toward A New Climate Culture?
With Ann Pettifor/ UK, Awande Buthelezi/ South Africa
Moderation: Juliane Shucmacher/ Berlin
Languages: English, German
The Green New Deal is one of the few political programs that offers a concrete vision for the post-fossil capitalist era: As a comprehensive governmental project, it ventures to tackle the climate crisis and social inequality at the same time.
But to actually initiate radical change, a Green New Deal must be more than a technocratic reform program that continues colonial extractivism "in green". And so, scholars, social activists, and artists around the world have embraced the idea, discussed it, and developed it further, making it a focal point for new visions of the future. But while the economic and social programs of the New Deal in the US of the 1920s included comprehensive cultural support measures, culture plays a subordinate role in the current Green New Deal proposals.
Which cultural dimensions does the Green New Deal need to incorporate to become the catalyst for a more equitable future? What might a different climate culture look like, and what does it take for it to arise and flourish?
Ann Pettifor discusses with South African activist Awande Buthelezi, who himself advocates for a Global South climate agenda by calling for a Just Transition.
On the Podium
Ann Pettifor is a political economist, author and longtime activist for a different economic policy. She was a leading figure in the 2000 Jubilee campaign for debt relief for the poorest countries and was one of the few economists to correctly predict the 2007 financial crisis. In 2008, with the “Green New Deal Group”, she published the first proposal for a Green New Deal in the U.K. that would simultaneously address the financial crisis and the climate crisis without increasing social injustice; she has been advocating for such an eco-social project ever since. She is director of the think tank Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME) and lives in London.
• 2019 The Case for the Green New Deal
• 2017 The Production of Money
• 2006 The Coming First World Debt Crisis
↗Ann Pettifor on twitter
Awande Buthelezi is a researcher and designer at the Co-Operative and Policy Alternative Centre (COPAC) in Johannesburg. He is the coordinator of the Climate Justice Charter Movement in South Africa, which has spent several years developing a charter for a socially equitable transition to a climate-friendly society and is now working to implement it.
• 2020 Climate Justice Charter
↗Climate Justice Charter Movement