If I have been referring to a triple crisis for some time now, Thomas L Friedman from the New York Times noted recently that he believes we are in a quadruple crisis with America, Europe, China and the Arab world at the core.

Now, The Economist, in its October 1st edition is talking about ” spineless leaders “. The article is just incredibly frightening and an absolute must read and must share.

It is indeed describing with an acute preciseness the mess we are in, whether we are in America, in Europe or elsewhere. Here is an extract :

First, for all the breathless headlines from the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington, DC, Europe’s leaders are a long way from a deal on how to save the euro. The best that can be said is that they now have a plan to have a plan, probably by early November.

Second, even if a catastrophe in Europe is avoided, the prospects for the world economy are darkening, as the rich world’s fiscal austerity intensifies and slowing emerging economies provide less of a cushion for global growth.

Third, America’s politicians are, once again, threatening to wreck the recovery with irresponsible fiscal brinkmanship. Together, these developments point to a perilous period ahead.

With leaders (scratch that : representatives…) focusing on the short term – their elections and/or their own pockets… – we have little to no chance to solve our problems.

And what is true for the economy is even more true for our environmental and energies woes.

Indeed, we will one way or another, sooner or later, recover from the financial downturn. But if we fail to avert climate change AND fail to switch our energy consumption to renewables and sustainable low carbon solutions we will be in even deeper trouble. Think World War, think annihilation of life as we know it on the blue marvel…

The year I started to blog here I read my all-time favorite book on sustainability : Collapse, by Jared Diamond. By reading it, I learned that we are facing no less than twelve issues :

Deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per-capita impact of people, human-caused climate change, buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy shortages and full human utilization of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity. »

To Diamond, even if we solved eleven of those issues,
the twelfth could still consist failure and thus collapse.

Indeed, a few of them taken separately killed the top civilizations of their times. The twelve could kill ours…
—

Solving the financial and economic situation and those twelve problems will require a complete paradigm shift towards sustainability AND leaders that are finally ready to not only acknowledge the current situation but also ones that are willing to solve it.

I noted earlier this week that Climate change – and our energy problems – are not a technological issue, they are political and behavioral ones.

If we embrace a truly massive global Green New Deal, we can recover and truly embrace a brave new world. Failing to do so will simply lead us all to poverty, war and catastrophe. As Churchill vehemently declared before World War II :

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.

This couldn’t be even more true today…

Related posts:

1. Collapse, how societies choose to fail or succeed
2. Do our leaders care about the environment?
3. Thomas L Friedman : the Earth is full
4. $2.2 trillion : the huge costs of environmental damages
5. Worth an article – my August 2011 tweets

But each time I blog about social topics it seems I am watching Rom burn and collapse. My last post here was on youth unemployment. And the situation on this front haven’t changed for the good but for the worse.

One of the latest issues of Courrier International [Fr] (see the cover above) is on youth unemployment and the massive precarity.

I am by no mean a liberal, at least for French standards. But seeing how so many people – me included – are struggling just to find a job, makes me wish for a revolution, or at least a paradigm shift from our leaders.

An article from the Guardian, translated in Courrier International, made me particularly think. Here are some extracts :

For the first time, the mainstream left in Britain and Europe has no progressive agenda. It has forgotten a basic principle. Every progressive movement has been built on the anger, needs and aspirations of the emerging major class. Today that is the precariat.

The protests spreading across the world are manifestations of the precariat taking shape, the latest example being in Spain – where the indignados reject mainstream political parties, while demanding what appears as a discordant bag of changes.

(…) The global precariat is not yet a class in the Marxian sense, being internally divided and only united in fears and insecurities. But it is a class in the making, approaching a consciousness of common vulnerability. It consists not just of everybody in insecure jobs – though many are temps, part-timers, in call centres or in outsourced arrangements.

The precariat consists of those who feel their lives and identities are made up of disjointed bits, in which they cannot construct a desirable narrative or build a career, combining forms of work and labour, play and leisure in a sustainable way.

—

Another article, this time from the New York Times is particularly enlightening. It was written by Paul Krugman, who is calling for a new New Deal :

For example, we could have W.P.A.-type programs putting the unemployed to work doing useful things like repairing roads — which would also, by raising incomes, make it easier for households to pay down debt.

We could have a serious program of mortgage modification, reducing the debts of troubled homeowners. We could try to get inflation back up to the 4 percent rate that prevailed during Ronald Reagan’s second term, which would help to reduce the real burden of debt.

So there are policies we could be pursuing to bring unemployment down. These policies would be unorthodox — but so are the economic problems we face. And those who warn about the risks of action must explain why these risks should worry us more than the certainty of continued mass suffering if we do nothing.

–

I think he is right. I believe we should start a new New Deal NOW. But a GREEN one ! Each week, each month, each year we are not taking this decision is making the situation worse.

• Worse economically as unemployment doesn’t decrease,
• Worse as our oil importations are still crippling our balance of trade,
• Worse as greenhouse gases emissions are making our climate weirder and weirder….

The thing is, I don’t see any good reason NOT to act. The only reasons that prevent us from acting on these issues are that we are making fat cats fatter…

The indignados movement in Spain, the Den plirono in Greece or the MondoMayday movement in Japan are right, precarity for such large portions of our societies have to stop, and stop now.

I believe acting on energy issues as the potential to truly solve all this. There are hundreds of millions housings to insulate, hundreds of coal-fired plants to replace by cleaner and more job-intensive sources, millions of vehicles with internal combustion engines to switch to electric ones…

Related posts:

1. The imperative of a Green New Deal
2. Financing the Global Green New Deal
3. A US green New Deal ?
4. A 38 billion USD green New Deal for South Korea
5. 430 billion dollars for a global green New Deal !

This assessment of our situation seems pessimistic but it couldn’t be more accurate as it is based on the +700 articles I published here over the past three years. But nothing is lost yet. We still can act massively and fast worldwide.

The decade that just started will either be remembered as a time where people stood up to collectively address the problems or just failed at grabbing the opportunities we are offered.

—

The socio-economic crisis

Currently, around ten percent of the total active population in rich nations is unemployed. This is even more worrying as young people are struck twice as hard as the average population.

Training a part of these populations in green jobs may be a solution. It is indeed high time to really start a green new Deal that would provide million of green jobs around the world.

First example of this is the dozens of million of housings that need to be weatherized and retrofitted around the world -20 millions in France alone. Even more buildings need to be heated by renewable and energy efficient solutions. All this has the potential to literally create millions of sustainable jobs that can’t be relocated.

Similarly, electricity still comes in too many countries from dirty hydrocarbon fossil fuels. This has to change as coal, oil and natural gas pollute the soil where we grow our food, the water we drink and the air we breathe. Investing in renewables like solar or wind and safe nuclear energy will create there as well millions of jobs.

A third kind of green jobs can be found in modernizing our societies as a whole. From a more energy efficient transportation system to a more sustainable agriculture and industry there are literally dozens of opportunities to be tapped into.

Of course, a green New Deal would mean billions of Dollars and Euros in investments. Our leaders should know by now that this money would be welt spent as fighting climate change makes financial sense and as investing in Nature provides huge returns. This is why very large investors are now demanding strong action.

—

The environmental crisis

Climate change and its devastating effects can’t be ignored. The IPCC specialists believe global greenhouse gases emissions have to be halved by 2050 ( even more if we want to stop global average temperature to increase by more than 1.5°C) .

This might even be not enough to save dozens of nations and avoid serious troubles for dozens more. Still to the IPCC, rich nations have to cut by 25 to 40 percent their own emissions (compared to 1990 levels) during this decade. This calls for drastic actions.

The European Union is willing to cut its emissions by 20 to 30 percent, Japan pledged for 25 percent cuts, the United Kingdom 34 percent and last but not least Norway and Germany for 40 percent…

However this is not all as besides climate change are multiple other environmental issues : pollutions of all kinds, water scarcity, deforestation, overfishing…

It is high time these topics are tackled seriously. Jared Diamond outlined in Collapse twelve issues, each one having the potential to wipe us out from the face of Earth.

—

The energy crisis

This is perhaps the less evident of the three. However, peak oil is to me even more scary than climate change as cheap oil (and thus energy) is the very basis of our lifestyle. It enabled our civilization to achieve so much social progress in the last century.

There are more and more concerns that either peak oil already occurred or that it will happen in this decade. Meanwhile, oil prices are due to reach soon $100 with the increasing energy demand as the economy recovers.

The second energy source – coal - could also peak much more sooner than we previously thought. This is a large issue as still many countries around the world rely on this solution to produce the majority of their electricity.

Energy efficiency is the ultimate solution, the panacea to solve this crisis, provided it is coupled with sustainable and low carbon solutions. The IEA believes it can account for half the climate change mitigation and energy scarcity efforts.

—

To infer this article I believe that either we address these three crises massively and fast either we will end up the 2010s in a much worst situation that we begun it. With the amazing technological and scientific progress witnessed in the last decade I can’t believe it could actually happen.

We shouldn’t forget that the last huge economic recession took a decade to spread and start a world war. Developing nations would suffer the most from climate change. This injustice has to me the potential to trigger even more tensions.

Green jobs can be found everywhere and can be considered as current jobs improved to become sustainable. They have a huge potential in developed and developing nations alike. The UNEP outlined the benefits of such a global green New Deal and its consequences on green jobs worldwide.

What do you think ? Are we tackling these issues or are we just failing to rise up and do what is necessary ? I look forward to reading your opinions.

Related posts:

1. Green economy: 90,000 new green jobs in France
2. UN report on worldwide green jobs
3. The Grenelle could create up to 600,000 jobs
4. 430 billion dollars for a global green New Deal !
5. Albeit economic crisis, the US care about climate change

This is a fantastic opportunity since as I noted earlier the Boston Consulting Group believes the Grenelle de l’Environnement could create up to 600,000 jobs in France by 2020.

Among the companies present at this forum are Alstom, Areva, EDF, Peugeot Citroen (PSA) and GDF Suez, all major French companies.

Related posts:

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2. The fifth World Water Forum
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4. The Grenelle: 440 billion euros of investments
5. Looking for a green job ? Read on

This puzzles me as I am sure the world’s largest democracy could with the proper government incentives become the biggest player in the cleantech sector as it already did in IT for the past 20 years.

I am currently reading Nandan Nilekani’s book Imagining India and the least I can write is that this book finishes to convince me that India could soon well become a major economic power.

We have seen many countries are banking on green growth and cleantech to spur sustainable economic growth and low carbon energy.

Indeed, China recently increased its climate change mitigation efforts by multiplying the efforts on renewables and nuclear energy. My guess is that it is only the beginning.

The United States of America are also stepping up to the competition with large plans on high speed trains and low carbon energy sources.

But these two countries aren’t alone as we have seen on numerous occasions here : Spain is banking heavily on solar energy and high speed rail, South Korea is putting billions on the table for a green New Deal… I could go on, but the competition is due to be so fierce as it looks like an arms race.

Does India want to miss THE economic competition that will be at the center of this part of the century ? Does it want to rely heavily on oil which is due to cost soon $100 again ? I don’t think so. The opportunities are too big to be ignored.

I can’t imagine what the Indian ingenuity could do if it gave some attention to cleantech. Here is a quote from Nilekani’s book I would like to share with you to conclude this article :

“In just a few years, we built the IT and operational infrastructure that had taken US companies decades to put in place, and by the late 1990s we were competing in operational  excellence and scale not just with one another but also with  Western firms.”

page 100
Imagining India
Nandan Nilekani

Go on India ! Do the same with clean tech !

Note: many thanks to my readers from India. You are each month more and more and your country is already the fourth country of origin of my readers. If you have any comment, please don’t hesitate as I would gladly start discussing with you.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Related posts:

1. India to build more nuclear plants
2. India goes deeper into climate change mitigation
3. India announces its first climate change mitigation plan
4. On July 31st, ten millions of trees were planted in India
5. Cleantech investments quadrupled since 2004

Les Echos [Fr],

The majority of the job creations are due to occur in the building sector as up to 20 million of apartments and houses need to be retrofitted in our country. The transportation and renewable energies would add  most of the other jobs.

But this study doesn’t stop there as it also notes that greenhouse emissions would decrease by 2020 by 27 % compared to 2005 levels, or 14 percent by 1990 levels.

50 percent of these cuts would occur by replacing thermal energy sources by renewables, another 25 percent of these cuts would be provided by the thermal insulation of buildings.

On the 450 billion euros ($620 billion) of financig required by 2020, 170 will be provided by the State at both national and local levels. 225 billion will be paid by the energy conservation measures and their savings.

As the study also explained the consumption of thermal energy sources (mainly oil and natural gas) would be decreased by a quarter. This is good news as energy prices are due to rise again soon.

All this occurs as French people are betting on green growth and green economy to get the country out of the current economic crises.

It is also worth mentioning that the eco-loans are a big success as 10,000 eco loans have been signed in the two first months. the French government would like to have 100,000 loans the first year and to stabilize to 400,000 afterwards. More at Enerzine [Fr]

Download the full report (2.0 Mo) via the official website of the French environment Ministry.

Related posts:

1. The Grenelle: 440 billion euros of investments
2. The Grenelle is still alive : some bright ideas
3. A zero-interest rate loan for housing renovation
4. Why the Grenelle is a disappointment
5. The Grenelle, a French green revolution

No less than $155 billion (110 billion €) have been invested last year in low carbon energy sources and efficiency. All this money added to the global grids 65 GW of solar, wind, hydro and other renewables.

This “arms race” will most likely continue for decades as many countries like India and China have plans to increase their reliance on these technologies.

According to the Executive summary of the report:

The year 2008 was another milestone for investment in sustainable energy, especially in view of the difficult overall investment climate. A total of $155 billion was invested in companies and projects globally, a more than four-fold increase on 2004.

As compared with 2007, however, investment growth was only 5%, in stark contrast to the growth rates of over 50% in previous years (see  Figure 1). This was mainly due to the global financial crisis, which had a significant impact on investment in the second half of the year : investment in the second half of the year was down 17% on the first half, and down 23% on the inal six months of 2007.

Investment in new energy generation projects (wind, solar, biofuels etc.) grew by 13% during 2008, to $117 billion, and new private investment in companies developing and scaling-up new technologies, including energy efficiency, increased by 37% from 2007 to $13.5 billion (see Figure 2).

Other types of finance decreased. Capital raised via the public stock markets for equipment manufacturing and project pipelines fell 51% to $11.4 billion, as clean energy share prices lost 61% of their value during 2008. Total transaction value in the sustainable energy sector during 2008 – including corporate acquisitions, asset re-financings and private equity buy-outs – was $223 billion (see  Figure 2), an increase of 7% over 2007 .

While the sustainable energy sector was showing signs of being negatively affected by the global financial crisis, it was not until the start of 2009 that the full impact was really evident.

In the first quarter of 2009, new financial investment fell by 53% to $13.3 billion compared to the same period in 2008, the lowest level of quarterly investment for three years. There were some ‘green shoots’ of recovery during the second quarter of 2009, but the sector has a long way to go this year to reach the investment levels of late 2007 and early 2008.

For more please check out the executive summary or the full report (subscription necessary apparently.

You may also read the excellent article from Live Science, which brings a lot of data.

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1. Investments in renewable energies are booming
2. Investments in renewables could hit $750bn by 2016
3. Economic turmoil and sustainable investments
4. Huge European investments in renewables
5. The Grenelle: 440 billion euros of investments

Several other countries including the United States, China and South Korea already did so and as much 430 billion dollars have been already allocated to green New Deals worldwide.

Well advanced in biotechnologies, the country is willing to work much more on energy efficiency and conservation, renewables and high speed trains.

Successes in renewable energies

I twitted it recently, no less than 3.1 Gigawatts of solar energy have been installed in 2008 alone. This huge figure pales to compare with wind energy as it is already able to answer 40 percent of the country’s electricity demand ! This is most impressive

Huge achievement in high speed trains.

This got my attention more recently as I was reading EcoGeek. But the article from Wall Street Journal blew my mind:

To sell his vision of a high-speed train network to the American public, President Barack Obama this week cited Spain, a country most people don’t associate with futuristic bullet trains.

Yet the country is on track to bypass France and Japan to have the world’s biggest network of ultrafast trains by the end of next year, figures from the International Union of Railways and the Spanish government show.

The growth of the Alta Velocidad Española, or AVE, high-speed rail network is having a profound effect on life in Spain. Many Spaniards are fiercely attached to their home regions and studies show they are unusually reluctant to live or even travel elsewhere.

But those centuries-old habits are starting to change as Spain stitches its disparate regions together with a €100 billion ($130 billion) system of bullet trains designed to traverse the countryside at up to 218 miles an hour.

(…) Spain opened its first high-speed line, between Madrid and Seville, in 1992. At the time, the decision to run the line to sleepy Seville, host to the World Expo that year, was deeply controversial. (…)

But the AVE-which means “bird” in Spanish- proved to be a popular and political success. (…) Under the latest blueprint, nine out of ten Spaniards will live within 31 miles of a high speed rail station by 2020.

By last year, the sprawling network of lines that stretches out from the capital, Madrid, reached Málaga in the south, Valladolid to the north and Barcelona in the country’s northeast. Now, residents of Barcelona can be in Madrid in just over two-and-a-half hours-a journey that takes around six hours by car.

In the year since the Madrid-Barcelona line opened in February 2008, the AVE, costing passengers roughly the same as what they would pay to fly, has snatched half the route’s air-passenger traffic.

(…) Critics say the AVE will never stop losing money. Even its backers say high-speed rail can only be economical if the state bears much of the construction costs. But they say the train’s benefits-lower greenhouse-gas emissions, less road congestion and, in Spain’s case, greater social cohesion and economic mobility-make it an investment worth making.

(…) The AVE was originally designed to compete with the airplane for commutes between major cities around 300 miles apart.

The interactive map on the article is really worth watching as it shows the current and projected extent of the network. Spain is putting a lot of money on this project but I can tell you high speed trains are really worth the investments.

Related posts:

1. Solutions to cut US dependance on foreign oil
2. Trains, a brilliant solution for the 21st century
3. 430 billion dollars for a global green New Deal !
4. The AGV, the new fast train by Alstom
5. Thanks to President Obama, America goes green

Indeed, both CleanTechnica and Earth2tech recently published articles on this very topic and their findings are interesting as they bring detailed analyzes of current and future trends.

Contrary to what many believe, green jobs aren’t reserved to engineers as many blue and white collars could become green.

The introduction from CleanTechnica explains quite well the topic at hand:

Looking for a green job and wondering where they are? Well, as job hunters flood the usual suspects — such as solar and wind companies — with mountains of applications, you might have better luck finding your dream job in a more unexpected sector.

That’s the advice from Amy Vernetti, a managing director at headhunting firm Taylor Winfield. She says many of the green jobs are coming from areas that probably don’t leap to mind when you think of cleantech, such as companies developing fuel additives and air-filtration technologies. “These are hidden gems in the market,” she says, adding that some of them are “hiring like crazy.”

The article from Earth2Tech is more detailed and interesting:

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2. My green dream job: Chief Sustainability Officer
3. A US green New Deal ?
4. The imperative of a Green New Deal
5. UN report on worldwide green jobs

But the topic was even more interesting as it is an important call for action to tackle both the economic downturn and the climate change crisis. It is nice to see that  renown economists advocates such practices.

A Green New Deal has begun, but as I stated previously, we need to significantly increase the amounts of money allocated to sustainability.

Here is the Financial Times’ article:

We face two crises: a deep global financial crisis, caused by inadequate management of risk in the financial sector; and an even deeper climate crisis, the effects of which may seem more distant but will be determined by the actions we take now.

The scale of risk from climate change is altogether of a different and greater magnitude, as are the consequences of mismanaging or ignoring it. The US, in particular, has a window of opportunity to act on the financial crisis and, at the same time, lay the foundations for a new wave of growth based on the technologies for a low-carbon economy.

President Barack Obama, in his speech to Congress and budget last week, explained that we need to address both of these challenges, and outlined a broad approach. US leadership could generate a powerful response from across the world, making possible an agreement at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December on a scale necessary to manage the risks involved.

We will eventually emerge from the financial crisis, although mistakes in management can affect its depth and duration. However, mistakes in managing the risks of the climate crisis may be irreversible. As noted in Making Globalization Work*, if we had a thousand planets we might continue with the reckless experiment on which we are embarked, and if the likely disaster occurred we could move on to another. Unfortunately we do not have that luxury: we have only one planet.

The financial crisis originated from the housing market bubble and was preceded by the dotcom boom. We cannot replace these with yet another bubble. The investments necessary to convert our society to a low-carbon economy – investments that can change the way we live and work – would drive growth over the next two or three decades. They would ensure that growth, with accompanying improvements in standards of living, was sustainable. The path that we have been on is not.

The economic crisis will leave the US and other economies greatly weakened and it will be imperative to increase efficiency. One area in which there is ample room for improvement is in the energy efficiency of businesses, consumers and the government.

According to a recent paper by the Peterson Institute, spending $10bn (€7.9bn, £7.1bn) to insulate US homes and federal buildings could create and sustain up to 100,000 jobs between 2009 and 2011, while saving the economy from $1.4bn to $3.1bn a year between 2012 and 2020.

This type of investment and those in green technology and infrastructure would not only provide a short-term stimulus but also improve the US competitive position. As the world moves to a low-carbon economy, there will be a competitive advantage for those who embrace these technologies.

Private investments are driven by market signals. These signals are distorted because we have been pricing one of the world’s scarcest resources – a “good” atmosphere; or the societal costs of emissions, which lead to a “bad” atmosphere – at zero. Not surprisingly, this has led to inefficient outcomes, with emissions levels too high and too little effort devoted to energy conservation and research.

Providing a strong, stable carbon price is the single policy action that is likely to have the biggest effect in improving economic efficiency and tackling the climate crisis. Clarity on policy and prices is all the more important now, with companies facing such uncertainty because of the financial crisis: the two risks compound each other, damping investment. We may not be able fully to resolve the risks of the financial crisis quickly; but we can take actions now that will markedly reduce uncertainties about future carbon policies and prices.

As creative entrepreneurs turn their minds to the challenges posed by a low-carbon economy, the excitement and drive of innovation is evident. This can be the spur to real growth that has so long been missing. The problems of global warming cannot be attacked without the participation of all countries. The world has been waiting for the US: there is now reason to believe that it is ready to lead.

Related posts:

1. A 38 billion USD green New Deal for South Korea
2. Financing the Global Green New Deal
3. A global green New Deal : UNEP iniative
4. A US green New Deal ?
5. 430 billion dollars for a global green New Deal !

To their experts: around 430 billion dollars are currently being invested in 15 countries in sustainability projects like clean tech or energy efficiency. These are excellent news!

There is no doubt this marks the beginning of a new era. More large projects will arise as more countries will launch green New Deals.

The Huffington Post published a great article providing an excellent primer to the energy issues in America. Meanwhile, TreeHugger listed the major areas of investments of the US plan of action:

• $6 billion for clean and safe water, creating more than 200,000 jobs
• $4.5 billion for greening federal buildings
• $2.5 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy Research and Development
• $5 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program, creating approximately 90,000 jobs
• A multi-year extension of the renewable production tax credit
• A more effective tax credit for home efficiency upgrades
• $6 billion in loan guarantees for renewables, transmission and leading edge biofuels
• $9.3 billion for intercity rail, including high-speed rail
• $1.5 billion in competitive grants for transportation investments (which could be used for public transportation)

The United Nations Environment Program is delighted and consider that ” The ‘green budget’ signals a significant US push to slow down climate change. “ (more)

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To HSBC  – quoted by the French environmental blog Green Univers – the investments in green New Deals accounts for more than 430 billion dollars globally.

Indeed China plans to invest 200 billion dollars, South Korea 38 billion (cf there for more). European countries like Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy or France are also investing massively.

Here is the table:

However, this won’t be enough for the Copenhagen talks due to take place in December. As the bank notes:

The fast-deteriorating economic backdrop means the odds against an agreement at COP-15 in Copenhagen have worsened considerably. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the new Obama administration will have passed the necessary legislation through Congress to enable the US to make international commitments by December. Following Poznan, the mood is sour and the time is short.

We believe a face-saving package will be agreed in Copenhagen. But it will be more a framework for a final agreement, with the details to be fleshed out in 2010 for implementation in 2013.

To read out more on this most interesting news, please check out the full report. (15 pages, 0.2 Mo)

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1. A 38 billion USD green New Deal for South Korea
2. Financing the Global Green New Deal
3. A US green New Deal ?
4. A global green New Deal : UNEP iniative
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Dedicating one tiny single percent of the global GDP to combating water scarcity, climate change and biodiversity loss would enable us to avoid a lot of troubles in the near future.

This would represent the equivalent of a third of the global stimulus packages – worth no less than $2.5 trillion (2 trillion euros) – but would represent really sustainable investments.

As the UNEP notes:

One third of the around $2.5 trillion-worth of planned stimulus packages should be invested on ‘greening’ the world economy.

This would assist in powering the global economy out of recession and onto a Green, 21st century path a new report released today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says.

The estimated $750 billion of green investment, equal to about one per cent of current global GDP, could trigger significant, multiple and potentially transformational returns.

Allied to innovative market mechanisms and fiscal policies, these include:

• Stimulating clean tech innovation, stabilizing and boosting employment in decent jobs and protecting vulnerable groups
• Cutting carbon dependency and greenhouse gas emissions, reducing degradation of multi-trillion dollar ecosystems and their goods and services and tackling water scarcity
• Furthering the opportunity to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of ending extreme poverty by 2015

The G20, comprising of the 20 largest developed and developing economies, who next meet in London in April, is the first opportunity to begin shaping a Global Green New Deal.

Such a Deal can also set the stage for a successful outcome to the crucial UN climate change meeting later in the year in Copenhagen, Denmark.

These are among the findings of the Global Green New Deal report, written in consultation with experts from over 25 UN bodies and external organizations including the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

(…) Its findings, alongside those of the UNEP Year Book 2009, are being presented today to over 100 environment ministers attending UNEP’s Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum.

Among the highlighted topics are:

• Combating waste of all kinds ;
• Construction and buildings ;
• Transport ;
• Climate change ;
• Ecosystems ;

To learn out more, please download the press release or the full report.

Related posts:

1. A 38 billion USD green New Deal for South Korea
2. UN report on worldwide green jobs
3. Financing the Global Green New Deal
4. The three topics of the UNEP meeting in Monaco
5. A global green New Deal : UNEP iniative

This was the Grenelle de l’Environnement. But after months, only one conclusion comes to mind: the Grenelle is a disappointment, and this even with the billions of investments expected by 2020.

Indeed, the energy and environment Minister, Mr. Jean-Louis Borloo(above) is nowhere to be seen and there have been no major announcements that would look like a green New Deal.

For the past few weeks many countries pledged to create jobs while becoming more sustainable. Here is a non exhaustive list:

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First and foremost, the United States‘ new President launched a series of measures that are due to bring major changes to the country.

The new Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu will have nearly $100 billion at his disposal  to increase energy efficiency and the importance of renewables as well as other measures.

—

Similarly, South Korea plans to invest 38 billion USD (28 billion €) over the next four years.

These investments are due to create a million jobs (to be compared with a total population of 50 million) in renewable energies, efficiency and other environmentally friendly solutions. Learn out more.

—

Japan is also willing to create a million jobs (source) with environmentally friendly solutions.

The United Kingdom and Australia (alongside with the United States) will insulate millions of housings in order to create jobs and cut greenhouse gases emissions. This was the subject of yesterday’s article.

—

It is high time for France to stop haggling about 1,000 projects to relaunch the economy with only 26 billion euros.

A lot of them are not congruent with the tenets of sustainable development: France doesn’t need new roads or highways.

Such sums would be better allocated to home insulation (twenty millions housings have to be insulated) or to renewable energy.

At the beginning of the Grenelle, Mr. Sarkozy wanted to become a world leader on climate change mitigation. Al Gore noted on that occasion that he wanted a Grenelle mondial.

Now, things have changed a lot and France can only become a follower. What a pity !

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After South Korea and Japan,  it seems that the United Nations’ advices are being heard by the world’s largest economy as no less than $100 billion could be dedicated in the very next years to energy and environmental issues.

The US House indeed just passed a huge stimulus package with a lot of money dedicated to making the country more energy independant.

Here is what the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) wrote :

“The House is getting on board with moving America to a clean energy economy. President Obama and Congress are investing in solutions that will help solve our economic and energy challenges together.

By repowering our nation with clean energy, we will create millions of jobs that can’t be sent overseas. By harnessing the energy of the sun and wind, we can refuel our nation and end our addiction to oil.

“The economic recovery package funds vital programs to improve the efficiency of our homes, buildings and federal offices. It also includes urgently needed grants for companies to invest in renewable energy technologies. The funding to repair our nation’s crumbling water and transportation systems will immediately create jobs and strengthen our nation’s roads, bridges, and pipes.

“As the bill moves to the Senate, we will support positive changes to improve funding that will set us on a course to a clean energy future.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides:

• $3.4 billion for states for clean energy projects ;

• A grants program for renewable energy technologies covered by the renewable energy tax incentives ;

• $6.2 billion for weatherization of low income homes ;

• $3.5 billion for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program (supports clean energy projects primarily at the city and county levels) ;

• $2 billion for clean energy research & development ;

• $6 billion for increasing energy efficiency in federal buildings ;

• $12 billion for transit (an amendment by Rep. Nadler (D-NY) increased transit funding from $9 to $12 billion) ;

• $2 billion for ready-to-go drinking water infrastructure projects ;

• $6 billion for ready-to-go sanitation infrastructure projects

This may not get the approval of the Senate – even if according to the Daily Green it could be bigger and include 50 billion for nuclear energy – but it still represents good news.

Off course more money may be needed over time to solve  the overwhelming issues at hand in such a large country and even more at a global level but this is to me a brilliant start.

And you, what do you think ?

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It seems that there is at least one country so far that listened to their voices and started to implement such a bold move. Indeed South Korea plans to invest 38 billion USD (28 billion €) over the next four years.

These investments are due to create a million jobs (to be compared with a total population of 50 million) in renewable energies, efficiency and other environmentally friendly solutions.

According to the Huffington Post quoting Associated Press:

South Korea said Tuesday it will invest 50 trillion won ($38.1 billion) over the next four years on environmental projects in a “Green New Deal” to spur slumping economic growth and create nearly a million jobs.

“We are in an unprecedented global economic crisis,” Prime Minister Han Seung-soo said in a statement. “We must respond to the situation in an urgent manner.”

Energy conservation, recycling, carbon reduction, flood prevention, development around the country’s four main rivers and maintaining forest resources are among projects to be pursued under the plan, approved at a Cabinet meeting.

Han said the government’s “Green New Deal Job Creation Plan” will create 960,000 new jobs, with 140,000 of those realized this year.

Trade-dependent South Korea is looking for ways to boost its slowing economy as global demand wanes for traditional mainstay goods such as automobiles and technological products.

Exports fell 17.4 percent in December from the same month the year before, following a drop of 18.3 percent in November, according to government figures. Unemployment, though still at a relatively low 3.1 percent, is expected to rise.

Amid deteriorating conditions, some private economists say Asia’s fourth-largest economy is facing the possibility in 2009 of suffering its first contraction on an annual basis since 1997, when it was in the throes of the Asian economic crisis.

South Korea’s central bank is more optimistic, saying last month that the economy will grow 2 percent in 2009, compared with a revised estimate of 3.7 percent growth or 2008. The economy expanded 5 percent in 2007.

President Lee Myung-bak said last month that South Korea’s economy may shrink in the first half of next year due to fallout from the global financial crisis but may still attain a positive figure for the year.

Now that’s bold leadership. I hope the governments of the largest economies in Americas, Europe and Asia will do likewise and embrace solutions that work.

Am I day-dreaming or do you think it is possible ?

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The WorldWatch Institute indeed published last week a very long argumentation with seven points that will finish to persuade the most skeptical.

The money to create a more sustainable civilization can be found. I hope that our leaders which will meet in two weeks will hear these voices.

Here is an extract of this article:

(…) Can capital for a global green rescue effort be mobilized? Despite the global economic contraction, the answer may well be yes.

The $700 billion committed to the U.S. financial bailout, plus additional large sums marshaled by other countries, suggests that governments can raise sizable sums of capital in emergency situations.

Any number of large pools of capital might be tapped to fund a Green New Deal, if the right incentives were set in place. Here are a few ideas:

• Military spending – The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that world military spending in 2007 ran to a record $1.3 trillion – 45 percent higher in real terms than a decade earlier. The United States alone is spending about $700 billion per year on maintaining the Pentagon and conducting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a world with no major power conflicts, a substantial portion of these budgets would be better dedicated to a Global Green Deal.

• Sovereign wealth funds - Oil rich nations and governments with large trade surpluses held $2-3 trillion dollars in wealth in 2008. Why not design incentives for government holders of such capital to invest in a Global Green Deal?

• Tobin Tax - Trade in the world’s currencies amounted to $3.7 trillion daily in 2007. Why not institute a Tobin tax – a levy named for its earliest proponent, economist James Tobin – as a way to raise Green Deal revenue? Even a minimal tax on foreign exchange transactions could bring in many billions of dollars, as well as dampen destabilizing currency speculation.

• Fossil fuel subsidies - These are estimated at $150-$250 billion each year. Oil companies are highly profitable, and their product is toxic to climate stability. Why not remove government supports and pledge those funds to a Global Green Deal? And a tax on “windfall” oil profits, carbon taxes, or proceeds from the auction of carbon allowances could all serve the same dual purposes.

• Insurance industry – The cost of weather-related natural disasters is on the rise, and is considered a “strategic threat” to the insurance industry. Between 1980 and 2004, the cost of such events totaled $1.4 trillion, of which $340 billion were insured. The industry may have a strong incentive to contribute to the climate stabilization piece of a Global Green Deal.

• Treasury bonds - Bonds are commonly used for a variety of purposes, and could be dedicated to green investments. For instance, China’s government has supported hundreds of energy conservation projects since 2006 in part by issuing treasury bonds.

• Private Capital Flows - The energy industries alone invest several hundred billion dollars each year in fossil fuel-related projects; a share of that capital could be redirected to energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives.

Moving a Global Green Deal agenda is not the work of a single leader or even a small group of governments.

Instead, it will require an overhaul of global governance at least as great as the one that occurred after World War II, when the United Nations and the Bretton Woods financial and economic institutions were founded to establish a new era of global stability.

Today, a new international policy architecture is needed that includes issues such as climate change and other environmental issues that are central to the health of the global economy.

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This is fine, but what about the rest of the job ? A study from the United Nations provides us figures and data on how up to 20 million jobs could be created worldwide.

Green Jobs: Towards Decent work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World is a 376 page report and I propose you an overview of the main findings.As the summary notes :

(…) Changing patterns of employment and investment resulting from efforts to reduce climate change and its effects are already generating new jobs in many sectors and economies, and could create millions more in both developed and developing countries.

However, the report also finds that the process of climate change, already underway, will continue to have negative effects on workers and their families, especially those whose livelihoods depend on agriculture and tourism. Action to tackle climate change as well as to cope with its effects is therefore urgent and should be designed to generate decent jobs.

Though the report is generally optimistic about the creation of new jobs to address climate change, it also warns that many of these new jobs can be “dirty, dangerous and difficult”. Sectors of concern, especially but not exclusively in developing economies, include agriculture and recycling where all too often low pay, insecure employment contracts and exposure to health hazardous materials needs to change fast.

(…) Green jobs reduce the environmental impact of enterprises and economic sectors, ultimately to levels that are sustainable. The report focuses on “green jobs” in agriculture, industry, services and administration that contribute to preserving or restoring the quality of the environment. It also calls for measures to ensure that they constitute “decent work” that helps reduce poverty while protecting the environment.

The report says that climate change itself, adaptation to it and efforts to arrest it by reducing emissions have far-reaching implications for economic and social development, for production and consumption patterns and thus for employment, incomes and poverty reduction. These implications harbour both major risks and opportunities for working people in all countries, but particularly for the most vulnerable in the least developed countries and in small island States.

(…) Among other key findings in the report:

- The global market for environmental products and services is projected to double from US$1,370 billion (1.37 trillion) per year at present to US$2,740 billion (2.74 trillion) by 2020, according to a study cited in the report.

- Half of this market is in energy efficiency and the balance in sustainable transport, water supply, sanitation and waste management. (…)

- Sectors that will be particularly important in terms of their environmental, economic and employment impact are energy supply, in particular renewable energy, buildings and construction, transportation,basic industries, agriculture and forestry.

- Clean technologies are already the third largest sector for venture capital after information and biotechnology in the United States, while green venture capital in China more than doubled to 19 per cent of total investment in recent years.

- 2.3 million people have in recent years found new jobs in the renewable energy sector alone, (…) Employment in alternative energies may rise to 2.1 million in wind and 6.3 million in solar power by 2030.

- Renewable energy generates more jobs than employment in fossil fuels. Projected investments of US$630 billion by 2030 would translate into at least 20 million additional jobs in the renewable energy sector. (…)

- A worldwide transition to energy-efficient buildings would create millions of jobs, as well as “greening” existing employment for many of the estimated 111 million people already working in the construction sector.

- Investments in improved energy efficiency in buildings could generate an additional 2-3.5 million green jobs in Europe and the United States alone, with the potential much higher in developing countries.

- Recycling and waste management employs an estimated 10 million in China and 500,000 in Brazil today. This sector is expected to grow rapidly in many countries in the face of escalating commodity prices.

For more on this most interesting report, please download the pdf document (4.48 Mb) straight from the United Nations’ website.

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What if building a greener and more sustainable world actually brought economic growth, millions of jobs and most important of all, hope of a brighter low carbon future ?

A report assessing this possibility was published and the results are most encouraging. The only question I have is : what are we waiting for to carry this plan out ?

According to Treehugger’s article :

Green Recovery. After this week’s financial free fall, don’t those two words sound great together? The University of Massachusetts’ Political Economy Research Institute economists – funded by the Center for American Progress – have a plan!

They insist it will cost only $100 billion in investment over the next two years in six areas – building retrofits, mass transit, smart grids, wind and solar and ‘advanced’ biofuels.

That’s not exactly spare change, but the last ‘non-green’ economic stimulus package of April 2008 cost the government $168 billion. Those tax refund checks were nice, of course, but they didn’t exactly work. So what do we have to do?

Two million new jobs and a lot of building retrofits
PERI’s document suggests that $50 billion in tax credits, $46 billion in direct government spending and $4 billion in loan guarantees aimed at those areas over two years will be the basis of a green recovery. PERI’s report also said the investments it recommends could create as many as two million green jobs.

Political will lacking
The problem with the PERI report, as with most reports, is that it doesn’t include a section on how to turn the heads of our government leaders. You know, the old ‘political will’ question.

But PERI admits “national, visionary leadership” is needed – right now the best initiatives in these areas are at the state level. Where’s that national, visionary leadership when you really need it? But John Podesta at Center for American Progress said real action is already happening at the state levels.

Of course, this report is American and thus focuses on the United States of America. But I think most conclusions of this report could be transfered to the European Union and many countries around the world.

An example of this is retrofitting buildings. I have been for now two years an advocate of this solution. Here is why…

If you want to read out more, please  :

• Check the website of the PERI ;
• Download the complete report.

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