Am 5.2.2010 sprach Renate Künast auf dem “Berlin International Economics Congress“, veranstaltet vom “Institute for cultural diplomacy” zum Thema “Green New Deal: For a New Concept of Development”:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be here with you today. One of the topics which you intend to discuss at this congress is "Moving Beyond Copenhagen: International Economics and the Future of International Cooperation on Climate Change".
Your congress is very output-orientated. One of the aims of the Congress which you list in the programme is "to produce clear policy recommendations to decision makers".

I shall therefore present to you a strategy with which we intend to bring together international economics and climate change. By "we", I mean Alliance 90/The Greens. Yet I believe, and that is backed up by my observations, that we have the support of a large proportion of people on this.

 
What strategy am I referring to? The world is currently experiencing many crises: the financial crisis, the economic crisis, the climate crisis and the food crisis. Tackling these diverse plagues will be challenging, and will require priorities to be set. In Germany, the banks are being stabilised; there is a fund to provide loans to businesses, whilst the solar industry and measures to improve the energy efficiency of buildings are currently not seen as a matter of priority. Indeed, the government would also like to make cuts to the development assistance budget. The sum of 400 million euros pledged by the German government in Copenhagen to help poorer countries seems modest compared with the new one-billion-euro tax break per year to be granted to hotels alone.

But are these priorities really sensible? Personally, I don't think so! The world is suffering from several crises at once. Yet this is not a mere coincidence: it is due to the fact that these crises have the same root cause: they are the result of a short-sighted, unregulated and globalised style of economics, dominated by the financial sector. And these crises reinforce each other.

The 2006 Stern Report is interesting in this context. The report makes clear that climate measures may cost money, but that the costs of doing nothing to protect the climate are far higher. Exacerbation of the climate crisis means exacerbation of the economic crisis.
That is why I am calling for a strategy of tackling the different global crises together, rather than playing them off against each other. This means dealing with the causes responsible for all the crises. Achieving this will require deeds rather than just words.

To this end, we are proposing a Green New Deal. The idea behind a Green New Deal is that it would put an end to styles of living, economics and budgeting which are at the expense of others and of the climate. We must take decisions for the long term, with an awareness of the future impacts of decisions taken today. Actions must be avoided which merely achieve short-term benefits for a few, yet in the long term mean disadvantages for everybody, or almost everybody. To this end, we need rules, instruments and effective monitoring.

What does this mean? It means that we must set completely different priorities. An end to economics at the expense of climate protection, an end to more growth whatever the cost; low-carbon economics and an end to the link between growth and the use of resources.

 
We can use market instruments like competition and regulation to accelerate progress towards a low-carbon economy. One of the examples frequently given in this context is emissions trading. Other examples include setting goals to be achieved within a certain timeframe – such as ceilings for average CO2 emissions from cars, or the top-runner approach, whereby the most energy-efficient appliance in a category is used as a binding benchmark. In the period from the end of the 1990s to 2005, Japan managed to reduce the electricity consumption of its computers by 90% using the top-runner approach.  

 
Rules of this kind drive competition for innovation. Both at national and at international level. In order to make possible these innovations, support is needed for research in this field. Even transitional and degressive support, such as the feed-in tariffs for renewable energies introduced by the Renewable Energy Sources Act can make sense.  

Measures to improve the energy-efficiency of buildings have a huge potential for reducing CO2. One third of overall energy and two-thirds of CO2 emissions in Germany result from the heating of buildings. Simply increasing the funding available to improve the energy-efficiency of buildings could allow the goal of cutting CO2 emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 to be met. Additionally, it would create jobs in small businesses and in the skilled trades. It is therefore sensible to invest in this area – and indeed to increase investments – rather than cutting financing as the German Federal Government is doing. 

 
We must dismantle subsidies which merely maintain the status quo and encourage stagnation. And, in particular, subsidies harmful to the climate must be abolished as soon as possible. These include subsidies for the construction of new coal-fired power stations, for example. The newer coal-fired power stations may be more efficient than the old ones, but they are still major CO2 polluters. In addition, they prevent further development and expansion of renewable energies, since they produce electricity over long periods of time which would otherwise be produced in more climate-friendly ways. The same applies to the nuclear power industry.

We know that the German economy has a strong industrial backbone focused on the traditional car, steel, engineering and chemical industry. Yet it is precisely these areas which have enormous potential. Blue collars must be replaced by green collars!
The car industry needs to restructure and to think outside the box, since the mobility of the future will be different to the mobility of today. Electric cars could be one element. Those who get involved in these technologies today will be at the forefront tomorrow, whilst those companies which miss the boat will sooner or later go bust.

The chemical industry still has a great deal of unexploited potential for making its production processes more energy-efficient and less resource-intensive. And it has the chance to usher in a transition from the oil-based synthetic chemicals industry to production based on renewable resources.
In other words, we not only want to promote renewable energies and the environmental sector; we want to place the whole economy on an ecological footing. This sounds like a huge project, but we will never achieve the two-degree goal if we approach things in a half-hearted fashion. And the longer we hesitate before taking action, the more it will cost – as explained in the Stern Report. And, after all, Germany has a kind of pioneering role in climate protection. Although, admittedly, it is about to abandon this under Merkel's leadership. We should return to this role and move forward with ambitious goals and ideas. For one thing, this will give us a head start in the "climate-protection industry".

Yet it will take more than just ecological restructuring of the economy to shape lifestyles, economics and budgeting in a more humane and climate-friendly fashion. We also need to think differently and learn to live differently. Indeed, this is vital if we really want to make changes, rather than simply presenting another growth motor which has been given a hasty coat of green paint.

We need to think again about what prosperity means for us, or should mean for us. Prosperity cannot just be about what is measured in calculating per-capita GDP. Because GDP does not measure quality. Accidents, illnesses, natural disasters, depletion of resources – all of these factors are fed into the calculations of prosperity and GDP. Yet, a clean environment, good health or social cohesion also boost prosperity. These are values which we have in some instances already abandoned.

Today, prosperity and GDP are generally seen as one and the same thing – the higher GDP is, the higher prosperity is. And the assumption is that prosperity can only be maintained through growth. People say, for example, that the only way to finance the ageing society is on the basis of strong GDP growth. They say that unemployment can only be reduced through strong GDP growth. Indeed, the German Federal Government has based its overall crisis-management strategy exclusively on hopes for growth: incurring greater debt in order to bring about a rise in GDP. Should this fail, the prospects are bleak. The government has no Plan B. Our society is already very prosperous and very highly developed in economic terms; we will not in the future be able to achieve high growth rates in the long term. We therefore need a different strategy.

A first step would be to redefine prosperity and growth and to measure them differently. This idea is not new and we are not alone with it. The EU and OECD, for example, are working on alternative ways of measuring growth and prosperity. Sarkozy has even established a high-level commission to this end. It is not a question of abolishing GDP. But GDP should no longer be seen as the one all-important indicator to guide all economic thinking worldwide. Ecological factors such as CO2 emissions, consumption of resources, use of land etc., together with social factors such as wealth distribution, health, education, etc., must also be part of a new system of calculation. This might, for example, mean that boosting efforts in the education sector would be reflected in the improvement of an alternative indicator, even if GDP was stagnating. At the same time, an alternative indicator could show the costs of rising GDP, such as increased use of resources and land and increased CO2 emissions resulting from the construction of a new coal-fired power station. 

The existence of this new indicator is not sufficient; it needs to actually be applied and to be published together with GDP. At the beginning of 2009, the Green parliamentary group in the Bundestag tabled a motion on the subject of "including environmental reporting in the report by the leading German economic research institutes and the report by the German Council of Economic Experts". Of course, this motion was rejected. But we will not give up.

 
We want to develop a new definition of growth. The unthinking, unsophisticated, purely quantitative definition of growth must be replaced by a qualitative definition of growth. This new growth must not be at the expense of the population and the climate. It must not lead to increased consumption of resources.

The new growth will be concentrated in other fields. Priority will no longer be given to rapidly boosting GDP. Instead, priority will be given to factors guaranteeing qualitative growth. In the financial and economic crisis this would have meant investing the money paid for the scrappage of cars in electromobility instead. This would have set in motion a process with a long-term impact on the climate and the labour market – whilst the scrappage premium simply delayed the rapid decline of GDP a little longer.

We know that a New Green Deal, together with qualitative growth, will change various things in our lives. We know that we cannot simply replace the traditional German industries with new green sectors. We know that our social-security systems are geared towards traditional growth. Yet we also know that neither our social-security systems nor our economy have any chance in the long term without a change of course. The current crises have demonstrated this dramatically. In any case, we will have to live differently in the future. But we want to shape this different life.

We want it to be a good life.
We know what direction we must take. Now we need to know how to put into practice our ideas. What would an ecologically acceptable economic system look like? How do we want to deal with our traditional industries? How do we ensure social security and social cohesion in an ageing, shrinking society? How can we achieve the transition to a knowledge society?

That is why we are calling for a Study Commission on "Qualitative Growth" at the Bundestag. This Study Commission will examine these questions in detail with academic support.

Yet making sure that this debate takes place within society is of equal importance to us. People should know what is at stake, that it is about their life and their future. They should have the opportunity to shape their own future. I know that lots of people have an aversion to blind and unthinking belief in growth and could certainly imagine living a good life in another way.
Thank you.

“, veranstaltet vom “Institute for cultural diplomacy” zum Thema “Green New Deal: For a New Concept of Development”:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be here with you today. One of the topics which you intend to discuss at this congress is "Moving Beyond Copenhagen: International Economics and the Future of International Cooperation on Climate Change".
Your congress is very output-orientated. One of the aims of the Congress which you list in the programme is "to produce clear policy recommendations to decision makers".

I shall therefore present to you a strategy with which we intend to bring together international economics and climate change. By "we", I mean Alliance 90/The Greens. Yet I believe, and that is backed up by my observations, that we have the support of a large proportion of people on this.
What strategy am I referring to? The world is currently experiencing many crises: the financial crisis, the economic crisis, the climate crisis and the food crisis. Tackling these diverse plagues will be challenging, and will require priorities to be set. In Germany, the banks are being stabilised; there is a fund to provide loans to businesses, whilst the solar industry and measures to improve the energy efficiency of buildings are currently not seen as a matter of priority. Indeed, the government would also like to make cuts to the development assistance budget. The sum of 400 million euros pledged by the German government in Copenhagen to help poorer countries seems modest compared with the new one-billion-euro tax break per year to be granted to hotels alone.

But are these priorities really sensible? Personally, I don't think so! The world is suffering from several crises at once. Yet this is not a mere coincidence: it is due to the fact that these crises have the same root cause: they are the result of a short-sighted, unregulated and globalised style of economics, dominated by the financial sector. And these crises reinforce each other.

The 2006 Stern Report is interesting in this context. The report makes clear that climate measures may cost money, but that the costs of doing nothing to protect the climate are far higher. Exacerbation of the climate crisis means exacerbation of the economic crisis.
That is why I am calling for a strategy of tackling the different global crises together, rather than playing them off against each other. This means dealing with the causes responsible for all the crises. Achieving this will require deeds rather than just words.

To this end, we are proposing a Green New Deal. The idea behind a Green New Deal is that it would put an end to styles of living, economics and budgeting which are at the expense of others and of the climate. We must take decisions for the long term, with an awareness of the future impacts of decisions taken today. Actions must be avoided which merely achieve short-term benefits for a few, yet in the long term mean disadvantages for everybody, or almost everybody. To this end, we need rules, instruments and effective monitoring.

What does this mean? It means that we must set completely different priorities. An end to economics at the expense of climate protection, an end to more growth whatever the cost; low-carbon economics and an end to the link between growth and the use of resources.
We can use market instruments like competition and regulation to accelerate progress towards a low-carbon economy. One of the examples frequently given in this context is emissions trading. Other examples include setting goals to be achieved within a certain timeframe – such as ceilings for average CO2 emissions from cars, or the top-runner approach, whereby the most energy-efficient appliance in a category is used as a binding benchmark. In the period from the end of the 1990s to 2005, Japan managed to reduce the electricity consumption of its computers by 90% using the top-runner approach.  
Rules of this kind drive competition for innovation. Both at national and at international level. In order to make possible these innovations, support is needed for research in this field. Even transitional and degressive support, such as the feed-in tariffs for renewable energies introduced by the Renewable Energy Sources Act can make sense.  

Measures to improve the energy-efficiency of buildings have a huge potential for reducing CO2. One third of overall energy and two-thirds of CO2 emissions in Germany result from the heating of buildings. Simply increasing the funding available to improve the energy-efficiency of buildings could allow the goal of cutting CO2 emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 to be met. Additionally, it would create jobs in small businesses and in the skilled trades. It is therefore sensible to invest in this area – and indeed to increase investments – rather than cutting financing as the German Federal Government is doing. 
We must dismantle subsidies which merely maintain the status quo and encourage stagnation. And, in particular, subsidies harmful to the climate must be abolished as soon as possible. These include subsidies for the construction of new coal-fired power stations, for example. The newer coal-fired power stations may be more efficient than the old ones, but they are still major CO2 polluters. In addition, they prevent further development and expansion of renewable energies, since they produce electricity over long periods of time which would otherwise be produced in more climate-friendly ways. The same applies to the nuclear power industry.

We know that the German economy has a strong industrial backbone focused on the traditional car, steel, engineering and chemical industry. Yet it is precisely these areas which have enormous potential. Blue collars must be replaced by green collars!
The car industry needs to restructure and to think outside the box, since the mobility of the future will be different to the mobility of today. Electric cars could be one element. Those who get involved in these technologies today will be at the forefront tomorrow, whilst those companies which miss the boat will sooner or later go bust.

The chemical industry still has a great deal of unexploited potential for making its production processes more energy-efficient and less resource-intensive. And it has the chance to usher in a transition from the oil-based synthetic chemicals industry to production based on renewable resources.
In other words, we not only want to promote renewable energies and the environmental sector; we want to place the whole economy on an ecological footing. This sounds like a huge project, but we will never achieve the two-degree goal if we approach things in a half-hearted fashion. And the longer we hesitate before taking action, the more it will cost – as explained in the Stern Report. And, after all, Germany has a kind of pioneering role in climate protection. Although, admittedly, it is about to abandon this under Merkel's leadership. We should return to this role and move forward with ambitious goals and ideas. For one thing, this will give us a head start in the "climate-protection industry".

Yet it will take more than just ecological restructuring of the economy to shape lifestyles, economics and budgeting in a more humane and climate-friendly fashion. We also need to think differently and learn to live differently. Indeed, this is vital if we really want to make changes, rather than simply presenting another growth motor which has been given a hasty coat of green paint.

We need to think again about what prosperity means for us, or should mean for us. Prosperity cannot just be about what is measured in calculating per-capita GDP. Because GDP does not measure quality. Accidents, illnesses, natural disasters, depletion of resources – all of these factors are fed into the calculations of prosperity and GDP. Yet, a clean environment, good health or social cohesion also boost prosperity. These are values which we have in some instances already abandoned.

Today, prosperity and GDP are generally seen as one and the same thing – the higher GDP is, the higher prosperity is. And the assumption is that prosperity can only be maintained through growth. People say, for example, that the only way to finance the ageing society is on the basis of strong GDP growth. They say that unemployment can only be reduced through strong GDP growth. Indeed, the German Federal Government has based its overall crisis-management strategy exclusively on hopes for growth: incurring greater debt in order to bring about a rise in GDP. Should this fail, the prospects are bleak. The government has no Plan B. Our society is already very prosperous and very highly developed in economic terms; we will not in the future be able to achieve high growth rates in the long term. We therefore need a different strategy.

A first step would be to redefine prosperity and growth and to measure them differently. This idea is not new and we are not alone with it. The EU and OECD, for example, are working on alternative ways of measuring growth and prosperity. Sarkozy has even established a high-level commission to this end. It is not a question of abolishing GDP. But GDP should no longer be seen as the one all-important indicator to guide all economic thinking worldwide. Ecological factors such as CO2 emissions, consumption of resources, use of land etc., together with social factors such as wealth distribution, health, education, etc., must also be part of a new system of calculation. This might, for example, mean that boosting efforts in the education sector would be reflected in the improvement of an alternative indicator, even if GDP was stagnating. At the same time, an alternative indicator could show the costs of rising GDP, such as increased use of resources and land and increased CO2 emissions resulting from the construction of a new coal-fired power station. 

The existence of this new indicator is not sufficient; it needs to actually be applied and to be published together with GDP. At the beginning of 2009, the Green parliamentary group in the Bundestag tabled a motion on the subject of "including environmental reporting in the report by the leading German economic research institutes and the report by the German Council of Economic Experts". Of course, this motion was rejected. But we will not give up.
We want to develop a new definition of growth. The unthinking, unsophisticated, purely quantitative definition of growth must be replaced by a qualitative definition of growth. This new growth must not be at the expense of the population and the climate. It must not lead to increased consumption of resources.

The new growth will be concentrated in other fields. Priority will no longer be given to rapidly boosting GDP. Instead, priority will be given to factors guaranteeing qualitative growth. In the financial and economic crisis this would have meant investing the money paid for the scrappage of cars in electromobility instead. This would have set in motion a process with a long-term impact on the climate and the labour market – whilst the scrappage premium simply delayed the rapid decline of GDP a little longer.

We know that a New Green Deal, together with qualitative growth, will change various things in our lives. We know that we cannot simply replace the traditional German industries with new green sectors. We know that our social-security systems are geared towards traditional growth. Yet we also know that neither our social-security systems nor our economy have any chance in the long term without a change of course. The current crises have demonstrated this dramatically. In any case, we will have to live differently in the future. But we want to shape this different life.

We want it to be a good life.
We know what direction we must take. Now we need to know how to put into practice our ideas. What would an ecologically acceptable economic system look like? How do we want to deal with our traditional industries? How do we ensure social security and social cohesion in an ageing, shrinking society? How can we achieve the transition to a knowledge society?

That is why we are calling for a Study Commission on "Qualitative Growth" at the Bundestag. This Study Commission will examine these questions in detail with academic support.

Yet making sure that this debate takes place within society is of equal importance to us. People should know what is at stake, that it is about their life and their future. They should have the opportunity to shape their own future. I know that lots of people have an aversion to blind and unthinking belief in growth and could certainly imagine living a good life in another way.
Thank you.