31 March 2020

Natasha Heenan and Anna Sturman identify five orientations to the Green New Deal: “We characterise pro-market orientations to the GND as opportunistic attempts to reinvigorate capitalist accumulation using ‘green’ rhetoric. … Right-wing, nationalist approaches invoke the GND as a popular front for nation-building and the concentration rather than diffusion of power… predicated on binary framings that consistently position the citizen against an external threat, including but not limited to climate change. … Keynesian approaches incorporate a wide variety of elements, but are typically unified in centering policy development by experts (i.e. technocratic managerialism), and emphasising top-down implementation of state-led action on climate with the aim of restoring economic growth. … Critiques of the GND from the Left include the anarchist and degrowth objections that … place the GND within centuries-old debates about reformism versus revolution and emphasise the need to build power outside of the state and abandon economic growth and increased material throughput.  … An ecosocialist orientation to the GND emphasises the class antagonisms baked into the climate crisis, and therefore the need for a strategy based in class struggle to win a just transition. It is a rejection of pro-market, right-wing and nationalistic orientations to the GND in favour of collective and democratic ownership, climate justice and internationalism.”