Resource tax? Green new deal? Or new social contract?

... it has to mean a lot more than jobs in renewables and a lot more than jobs with an enviro link ... We need to be talking about how work is structured, democracy in the workplace, and global wealth redistribution ... the poverty-environmental degradation link and the reasons for it being buried in the present debate ...

While many Australian trade union and conservation leaders have come to believe that capitalism can be made sustainable, it is worth contrasting their Joint Statement with the Climate Justice Movement agenda:

• leaving fossil fuels in the ground;
• reasserting people's and community control over production;
• relocalising food production and reducing over-consumption in the North;
• honouring Indigenous and forest people's rights; and
• recognising ecological and climate debt with reparations to the South.

Unlike regressive beggar-my-neighbour policies based on a national competitiveness policy, initiatives like these are long term and win-win, coming to grips with the crisis of capitalism as an ongoing systemic problem. This kind of green new deal is embedded in a new social contract; builds strong international relations between citizens across continents; respects people's differences globally; and their right to control local economies in an ecologically rational way.

A resource tax? A green new deal? A new social contract? Are our pollies shaping up for a just transition?