It’s estimated governments have collectively found about $5 trillion to rescue banks and galvanize economies. Now the Head of the United Nations Environment Program and the leaders of some European countries are saying the time is right for the world to invest substantially in renewable energy. They’re calling for a “Green New Deal” to tackle our climate, oil and credit crisis together.

Audio:
Listen to our interview with Senator Christine Milne on the Green New Deal.

Leaders of the G20 countries recently met to discuss what can be done about the global financial crisis. Spending our way out of the crisis seems to be a big part of the solution. Already we’ve seen the Australian government promise to spend more than $10 billion to stimulate its economy.

But exactly how will such vast sums of money be spent?

The “Green New Deal” calls for a massive injection of funds to radically change our economies – to make them more sustainable. It’s an idea which draws inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” 75 years ago. A plan which helped pull the U.S. out of the Great Depression.

Video:
Van Jones is the author of the bestseller “Green Collar Jobs”. Watch Van Jones spruik the Green New Deal.

Related articles:
Here’s some interesting articles on the Green New Deal:
‘How green technology can spark economic growth’ from Newsweek magazine.
‘A Green New Deal can save the world’s economy’ from The Independent.
‘Climate crisis: Roosevelt revisited’ from the BBC.
‘7 ways to fund a Green New Deal’ from Treehugger.
‘Green New Deal makes sense but unlikely’ – opinion piece from Reuters.

Useful links:
The New Economics Foundation is a leading economic think-tank in the UK and one of the pioneers of the Green New Deal idea. Their page’‘A Green New Deal will tackle the triple crunch of credit, oil and climate’ describes the idea further.
Here also is a link to the Greens website.

More audio:
Thomas Friedman is author of the book ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded: why we need a green revolution and how it can renew America’. Listen to the ‘Living on Earth’ interview with Thomas Friedman.

Hear Bob Brown on developing a new green economy. And there’s a good discussion on the ABC’s ‘Late Night Live’ program on the Green New Deal – which includes Ann Pettifor from the New Economics Foundation and Nick Nuttall, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program.

Photo:
Sparktography, Creative Commons, Flickr

Watch the FuelWatch commercial.

Bruce says governments should be informing people and preparing our economies now for peak oil, the inevitable declining rate of oil production.
Listen to the podcast interview with Bruce Robinson (from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil.)

So what is happening with oil?

There’s no doubt the world’s demand for oil is increasing in a big way. What is in contention is the world’s supply.

A growing number of experts are saying we won’t be able to keep up with the world’s insatiable demand. And in fact, we’ve reached a tipping point. The term they’re using is ‘peak oil’.

In this interview, Michael Lardelli from the University of Adelaide sounds the alarm bells. Listen to the interview with Michael Lardelli on peak oil.

It combines traditional farming techniques and thinking about nature with modern technology to enable people to live differently to how most of us live. To live in a truly sustainable way.

In this interview, I tracked down David Holmgren, the co-originator of permaculture, at the conference.

Interestingly, having originally developed the idea in response to the oil crisis of the 70’s, David reckons permaculture is the answer to our looming energy crisis. With peak oil, permaculture is more relevant than ever.

More on permaculture on David’s site.