Greening the Economy

The multiple crises – the financial crash, hunger, climate change and resource scarcity – demonstrate emphatically that neoliberal market globalization cannot fulfill its promises: namely to bring about the optimal allocation of resources on the entire planet and thus be a win-win game for all.

  Today, prospects for sustainable development remain a serious challenge as our global economy, our natural environment, our social well-being, and our political structures are in crisis. From the economy to climate change to food and agriculture, systems of governance are in disarray. Everyone is struggling more intensely in today’s world – particularly women and girls.

In this paper, Mats Abrahamsson takes a closer look at a region that could be a pioneer for regional cooperation in the EU: the Baltic Sea Region. As the first region with an EU regional cooperation initiative and with a long-lasting tradition of cooperation, this region could play an essential role in showing the EU the way forward by sharing their large potential of diverse renewable energy sources.

The story of climate change is not merely the story of changing components in the atmosphere, nor is it the story of drowning polar bears and melting icebergs. Climate change is also a mirror of the erroneous household management by humanity.

The German Green Party suggests turning climate change cooperation into a strategic priority in the transatlantic relationships. This is the core demand of the motion 17/7356 passed by the Greens in the parliament, the Deutscher Bundestag. Though Congress is so far not acting on climate change, there are other pillars in the US society to connect to and foster collaboration and mutual learning across the Atlantic. One of the vehicles for this is the Transatlantic Climate Bridge of the German government that should be strengthened, according to the resolution of the Greens.

The global economic crisis has not been overcome; its character has merely changed. Similar to the crisis in the banking sector, the European government debt crisis is typical of a large-scale financial crisis, the “Second Great Depression,” and managing it has to be addressed in this context.

In this latest report of the Climate Network, policy-makers, civil society actors and local stakeholders in both the US and Europe address how to enhance renewable energy policies in rural and industrial regions despite current economic and political barriers.

The links between climate change and industrial agriculture create a nexus of crises—food insecurity, natural resource depletion and degradation, as well as human rights violations and inequities. This report unravels the interrelated causes of and effects on these issues.

This report is in the final product of the Midwest Renewable Energy Tour. It shares the German success of using policy to develop rural renewable energy projects and how farms in the US states of South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin can increase their renewable energy capacity.

  On the road to ecological modernity, prosperity is possible without having to destroy the basis of our livelihood.