Green New Deal

Gonzalo Gallardo Blanco

The Green New Deal is a political proposal and legislative package presented at the beginning of 2019 by the Democratic Party of the United States (driven by its left-wing sector, the “Democratic Socialists of America”), whose main stated objective is to confront climate change and reduce social inequality. 

The name of the proposal refers to the famous New Deal approved by the President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. A political program with which it tried to confront the financial crisis unleashed by the Great Depression of 1929 and that extended during the following years, through greater intervention by the State to reform the financial markets, restructure the economy and provide social coverage to the sectors of the population hardest hit by the economic crisis. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives on the Democratic side, introduced the proposal in March 2019 in Congress, which ultimately rejected it. However, the proposal became one of the fundamental issues of the Democratic Party primaries for the 2020 presidential elections and the consequent agenda of President Joe Biden, the winning candidate in the presidential elections (Arancón, 2019). The idea also quickly acquired a strong echo within European left-wing and ecologist organisations, opening a debate on its viability and depth among sectors such as the Social Democrats, the Greens or the New Left, with discussions that crystallised in the European Parliament, but which also had their own translation in the different state contexts (especially the British,  French and Spanish). 

The political and economic project of the Green New Deal has a fundamental impact on two levels, despite the great diversity of orientations with which it can be presented. Regarding the fight against climate change, the proposal stands out for its objective of decarbonising the economy in a short period of time (specifically 10 years, in the initial plan presented by the US Democrats). The project considers it necessary to reduce net emissions to zero, which would mean a profound conversion to renewable energies and an adaptation of transport, consumption and industry to clean and much less polluting models, a conversion that would imply an enormous economic investment by the State. With regard to the fight against social inequality, the Green New Deal considers it necessary to make a major effort by the State to guarantee full employment and access to health, housing, education and basic resources for all citizens, along the lines of the welfare states that were established in a few European countries during the second half of the twentieth century (Rifkin,  2021). 

Outside the United States, this proposal became a reality within the framework of the European Union on January 15, 2020, when the European Parliament voted to support the “European Green Deal”, clearly inspired by the Green New Deal, which the European Commission had approved a month earlier. This agreement assumed the explicit objective of overcoming the threat that climate change and environmental degradation were generating and would generate in the future to Europe, calling for the transformation of the EU into a modern, resource-efficient and more competitive economy, and trying to overcome the most serious elements of crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Its guidance was also incorporated into the “Next Generation” recovery plan, approved a few months later. As an example of some of the concrete measures that the Green New Deal can incorporate, the EU sought to ensure with the agreement:

• The reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and by 100% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. 
• The development and uptake of cleaner energy sources, such as marine energy and hydrogen, fostering the integration of energy systems across the EU and consolidating an energy efficiency model. 
• The expansion of marine and terrestrial protected areas in Europe, recovering degraded ecosystems and reducing the use and harmfulness of pesticides.
• The stabilisation of all these objectives for the sake of social equality, with no person or territory left behind (Consejo Europeo, 2023).  

The limited effects that the implementation of this pact had in the short term meant that, over the next few years, the debates between environmental and left-wing sectors around the Green New Deal intensified. In this sense, two major positions in contention with respect to this debate began to be structured more clearly. 

On the one hand, we find those who, from the beginning, claimed that this was nothing more than a proposal for superficial change, which was not really directed against the root causes of the climate crisis, since it de facto implied an adaptation to a green capitalism and a new type of Keynesianism for the European economy, making use of an imperialist and privileged position in the international system of states (Hickel & Kallis, 2019). This criticism stressed that the transition to renewable energies, which has become a fundamental pillar of the green deal, could not replace the superabundance in terms of consumption levels provided by fossil fuels, necessary for economic growth. On the other hand, it was criticized that the implementation of the program would be so extremely costly in terms of resources that it could be counterproductive, all of which would make the proposal incapable of addressing the ecological crisis, both in its energy and climate aspects (Barnes, 2019; Fernández Durán and González Reyes, 2018; Riechmann 2019). Finally, as the years progressed, especially since the start of the war in Ukraine, when the European Union shifted its strategy, placing more and more weight on the issue of security, defence and migration, focusing on new strategic plans such as “Rearm Europe” and finally introducing this orientation in the new “Strategic Agenda 2024-2029”,  the criticism stressed the superficial, instrumental and ornamental nature that the Green New Deal had had from the beginning for the European elites (Zubizarreta & Ramiro, 2024). These criticisms were mainly developed by certain degrowthist currents, radical environmentalism and more left-wing positions. 

On the other hand, the defenders of the Green New Deal challenged most of these criticisms as an exercise in empty radicalism, which they accused of giving rise to a catastrophic or collapsist view  of the situation, thus failing to provide a viable and realistic stabilization framework as far as the fight against climate change is concerned (Pollin,  2019). In this sense, for the defenders of the Green New Deal, these criticisms would not account for the profound political, social and anthropological transformation that has taken place in Western societies, and especially exacerbated in the neoliberal era, which would have greatly reduced the limits of what is possible (Tejero & Santiago Muiño, 2019). According to these same theses, the green agreement could begin to progressively expand these limits, articulating the different positions in which the various companies, sectors and fractions of the oligarchy move, in such a way that its critics would not be able to appreciate the potentialities that this proposal would incorporate to open a new transformation process (Riofrancos, 2019). For the defenders of the project, located between socio-liberalism and positions somewhat closer to the new left, despite its limits, this proposal represented a clear political advance, and the alleged radicalism of the critical positions could spoil these limited advances. 

Bibliography:

Arancón, F. (18 de marzo de 2019). Las primarias demócratas buscan candidato a presidente de Estados Unidos. El Orden Mundial. https://elordenmundial.com/primarias-democratas-elecciones-2020/ 

Barnes, J. (25 de abril de 2019). Between the Devil and the Green New Deal.  Commune. https://communemag.com/between-the-devil-and-the-green-new-deal/ 

Fernández Durán, R. & González Reyes, L. (2018). En la espiral de la energía (Vol. II). Colapso del capitalismo global y civilizatorio. Libros en Acción. 

Hickel, J. & Kallis, G. (2020). Is Green Growth Possible? New Political Economy, 25(4), 469-486. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964

Ocasio-Cortez, A. (19 de febrero de 2019). Resolution recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal, 116ºTH Congress, 1ºST Session, The House of Representatives.  https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/5729033/Green-New-Deal-FINAL.pdf 

Consejo Europeo (21 de febrero de 2025). Pacto Verde Europeo. Consejo Europeo/Consejo de la Unión Europea. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/es/policies/european-green-deal/ 

Pollin, R. (2019). Decrecimiento vs Nuevo New Deal verde. New Left Review, Traficantes de Sueños. 

Riechamnn, J. (2019). Otro fin del mundo es posible, decían los compañeros. mra ediciones.

Rifkin, J. (2021). El Green New Deal Global. Paneta.

Riofrancos, T. (16 de mayo, 2019) Plan, Mood, Battlefield – Reflections on the Green New Deal. Viewpoint Magazine. https://viewpointmag.com/2019/05/16/plan-mood-battlefield-reflections-on-the-green-new-deal/ 

Tejero, H. y Santiago Muiño, E. (2019). ¿Qué hacer en caso de incendio? Manifiesto por el Green New Deal. Capitán Swing.  

Zubizarreta, J. H. y Ramiro, P. R. (2024). La Unión Europea y el capitalismo verde militar: materias primas y acuerdos comerciales para el extractivismo neocolonial. Ecologistas en Acción y Observatorio de Multinacionales en América Latina (OMAL) – Paz con Dignidad.