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At September’s Labour Party Conference, shaky iPhone footage shot from the viewing balcony captured the final tally for a motion on the Green New Deal (GND) explicitly calling for a 2030 net-zero carbon emissions target. As the final count was read out, the conference hall erupted into cheers. Delegates had voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, which calls for decarbonization by way of a “radical policy package to increase social and economic justice.” As a result, the party’s forthcoming manifesto will include some version of the deal, though in what form is still unclear. If adopted in half measures, the GND could be co-opted to become the foundation of a tepid attempt to support businesses with incentives and tax breaks for minimal emissions targets. If adopted in full, it could have a bold future that not only targets carbon emissions but is also capable of broad economic and social transformation. On doorsteps and at campaign rallies, the democratic ownership agenda has become a crucial way of confronting the paralysis and disempowerment that voters feel when faced with a looming climate crisis — and it promises much more than a pro-business incentive package. Rather than just a tax-and-spend initiative to create green jobs, the Green New Deal must be a radical program that matches the urgency of climate disaster.

An Economy of Stewardship The Green New Deal called for by the Labour Party membership is more than a set of discrete interventions to decarbonize the economy. It’s instead a program for a collective effort to build a society that is democratic and sustainable by design. At present, the UK economy is deeply rooted in extractivism. Resources are plundered; soaring profits enrich a web of executive management, elite shareholders, and institutional investors; and communities are drained of the wealth they build collectively. This model cannot be the foundation on which a Green New Deal is built. It’s a model that has been established — and sustained — through processes of primitive accumulation: neocolonial violence and relationships of control that enact themselves on the environment. We need to imagine a future beyond extractivism. Building a Green New Deal on the foundation of collective ownership means shifting our economy from one built on extraction to one centered on stewardship. Anchoring our economy in more democratic forms of ownership gives people a stake and a say in how economic decisions are made. In the short term, this will mean democratizing the ownership of energy generation and distribution, so as to drive a transition to clean energy, with a new network of decentralized green energy production and use. It will mean shifting land ownership and use in the pursuit of large-scale rewilding and land restoration, and pursuing a program to deliver good, low-carbon housing for all. As Nick Estes outlines in his article on the prospects of “a Red Deal,” by focusing our economy on caretaking and stewardship, we can realize an economic program founded on global justice and decolonial politics. He stresses that a Green New Deal must, above all, center the voices of those most affected by climate crisis, learning from social movements and indigenous resistance groups like Canada’s Unist’ot’en camp. The radical GND we are seeking must be rooted in the development of a new commons, where value created collectively is managed and sustained collectively, and where care work can become the foundation of a progressive vision for the future. Democratic public ownership is how we can forge a new economic common sense, one rooted in the custodianship of our resources and the restoration of our natural systems. A Green New Deal will require a transformative increase in public investment. This can partly be funded by the issuing of long-term debt, though we will also need a public Green Investment Bank to drive a rapid and just transition. We will need to repurpose central banking, harnessing its directive power to drive decarbonization. In addition, as John McDonnell has recently called for, we’ll need to reshape the architecture of international finance, including institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank. This will also require subordinating private finance to the common interest. Just as the original Green New Deal, authored in the wake of the 2008 crash, called for an overhaul of the banking sector, today we need to radically green financial regulation, from capital requirements to collateral frameworks.