'A Green New Deal : Joined up Policies to Solve the Triple Crunch

A new group of experts in finance, energy and the environment have come together to propose a 'Green New Deal' for the UK in order to address the 'triple crunch' currently facing the global economy; a combination of a credit-fuelled financial crisis, accelerating climate change and soaring energy prices underpinned by encroaching peak oil. The report sets out a number of proposals to tackle these challenges, including: executing a bold new vision for a low-carbon energy system; creating and training a 'carbon army' of workers to provide the human resources for a vast environmental reconstruction programme; establishing an Oil Legacy Fund, paid for by a windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies; ensuring more realistic fossil fuel prices that include the cost to the environment and that are high enough to tackle climate change by creating economic incentives to drive efficiency and bring alternative fuels to the market; minimising corporate tax evasion by clamping down on tax havens and corporate financial reporting; re- regulating the domestic financial system; and breaking up the discredited financial institutions that have needed so much public money to prop them up in the latest credit crunch.