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the green New Deal was launched if you
like into the climate breakdown debate
because the greens on the whole tend to
talk about individual behavior change
and about community change about
recycling and reusing and so the
responsibility in a sense was being
passed on to individuals and on to
communities and it and they did not talk
enough about the need for structural
change and the green you deal is about
structural change not just a structural
change in the use of fossil fuels in
other words how we have to just stop
using fossil fuels and now because it's
almost too late already but secondly how
the financial and economic system is
tightly integrated in to the ecosystem
and to help you understand what I mean
by that we have a deregulated financial
system essentially of course if you
speak to bankers and finances they'll
complain about endless regulations but
in effect the system is deregulated it's
beyond the reach of you like of
sovereign governments the financial
system operates in what I like to call
the stratosphere but it's beyond the
boundaries the political and economic
boundaries of nation-states
which is why JPMorgan Chase for example
in the three years after the Paris
climate agreement lent a hundred and
ninety six billion dollars to coal gas
and oil companies around the world not
in just one country compare that to
Exxon that it invested only three
billion dollars a year for three years
after the Paris climate agreement and
you can see the bank's play a very big
part in providing the oxygen that fires
up global warming the banks are in a
position to create credit almost
effortlessly and almost without
government intervention without central
bank guidance as to where that credit is
aimed at and for what purposes is being
used and above all how it's going to be
repaid the finance sector both the
traditional finance sector but also the
shadow banking sector because we now
have a banking sector that operates in
the shadows are able to create credit if
you like ad infinitum and they have done
and if you don't believe me or you have
to look at all the IMF's numbers on the
level of global debt because debt is of
course just the other side of credit and
so they've spewed out enormous amounts
of credit and that credit in turn fuels
consumption and production and that in
turn fuels emissions and so what we
argued when we were drafting the green
new deals that unless you can think of
the system as a system and not as the
ecosystem is this bit of it which we
have to hug and look after but really as
something that's deeply integrated into
the financial system so in order to
address the question of emissions and
the ecosystem we have to first and
foremost address the financial system
and the economic system what is the
metaphor that I think most helpfully
guide us through this do you think what
sort of scaling we talked about and you
know count can we reach beyond our
current mindset to get there or were we
really a seeing ourselves or something
which is really too much for us to
handle have we unleashed forces that we
now can't control the scale of this
crisis unprecedented we're talking here
about the survival of our civilization
there is going to be a catastrophic
crisis and of course if it happens in
Bangladesh or in Mozambique nobody will
take any notice
but if New York City was to endure
something worse than hurricane sandy and
if Wall Street was to be flooded and and
disappear I can assure you that tomorrow
we'd do something right and and it's not
that improbable people forget that it
was only a year 18 months ago that Cape
Town which is a city on the sea ran out
of water and you know a post Cape Town
is a long way away and didn't affect us
but it ran out of water
James Meeks got a wonderful piece in
this week's London Review of Books about
some dopers st. Albans has drained its
its talk water
whatever what are they but the water
supplies basically is drying up you know
what do max and orbán's is now a sort of
suburban City it's now place from where
city workers commute to get into the
city of London what happens if they run
out of water what happens if london runs
out award what happens of london is
flooded you know it seems to me we could
have that kind of crisis which would bum
trigger us into action straight away
that's one possibility
another possibility I am afraid to say
is war you know we now have trade wars
happening which we haven't had for a
very long time and we all know trade
Wars alone lead to real Wars there are
very big political tensions out there we
have a very incompetent American
president with enormous power and was
access to nuclear weapons yeah I own I
don't want to be too alarmist about this
but I want us to be thinking that the
people in charge of the nuclear weapons
today are a bit bonkers some of them
reading and then thirdly there is the
very very very real chance of another
global financial crisis I mean the IMF
two days ago is kind of has press the
panic button and for the IMF to do that
is extraordinary really so it's not just
little old me saying this and these big
institutions are really scared the
global system is now massively
imbalanced huge amounts of debt not
enough income huge amounts of debt lots
of austerity Europe you know held down
held back if you like by austerity and
Keynes famously once said you can't
balance the nation's budget by cutting
the nation's income but for the last 11
years we've let the finance sector run
wild lip you know and create credit and
expand and and we've encouraged it with
QE and so on and so forth and we now
have more debt than we had before the
last crisis while at the same time
fiscal policies have repressed incomes
very deliberately and that's causing
massive imbalances when you have
imbalances like that you get crises just
as sure as night follows day
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