Degrowth versus Green New Deal: Response to Juliet Schor and Andrew Jorgenson

Juliet Schor and Andrew Jorgenson are correct that the global Green New Deal project that I advocate is focused around absolute decoupling. Under absolute decoupling, fossil fuel consumption falls dramatically while large-scale investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy enable people to continue consuming adequate amounts of energy resources. It is important that economic growth is able to proceed under the Green New Deal. But as I emphasized in my initial contribution to this debate, I certainly do not advocate economic growth for its own sake. Rather, the Green New Deal offers the only approach to climate stabilization that can deliver an expansion of good job opportunities and rising mass living standards. The Green New Deal is therefore the only viable climate stabilization framework that can also reverse the rise in inequality and defeat both global neoliberalism and ascendant neofascism. Since I drafted my initial contribution in July 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a new report emphasizing the importance of limiting the rise in the global mean temperature as of 2100 by 1.5°C only, as opposed to 2.0°C. The IPCC now concludes that limiting the global mean temperature increase to 1.5°C will require global net CO2 emissions to fall by about 45 percent as of 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050. Based on these latest IPCC findings, the global Green New Deal program that I summarized in my initial contribution needs to be somewhat accelerated. Specifically, global CO2 emissions will need to be eliminated altogether within thirty years as opposed to the 40–50 year period that I previously presented. This will require that the net increase in global clean energy investments will need to average 2–2.5 percent of global GDP per year between now and 2050, as opposed to the 1.5–2 percent range I stated in my initial contribution. In criticizing my Green New Deal framework, Schor and Jorgenson correctly emphasize that “almost no countries have achieved absolute decoupling.” Nevertheless, I contend that we have no alternative to absolute decoupling in advancing a viable climate stabilization path. I emphasize that absolute decoupling must proceed in the Global South as well as the advanced economies. Schor and Jorgenson do not present any evidence that contradicts this central conclusion. They argue for measures to reduce inequality and working hours and focus emissions reductions 833522 RRPXXX10.1177/0486613419833522Review of Radical Political EconomicsPollin research-article2019