The Green Economy also Needs a Plan B

This blog first appeared on The Fifth Estate and is published here with the kind permission of the author.

Global economies move in strange ways. From an environmental sustainability perspective, more and more observers are saying;Paul-Keating-like, that the current savage global economic downturn after a long boom is a recession we had to have.

So what is the green lining to this dark economic cloud? Three crucial things have happened in the past 12 months.

The recession sucked unsustainable momentum out of indiscriminate, environmentally-damaging global growth; at least for a while.

The building of a green economy with new jobs, investment, innovation, technologies and even consumer behaviours emerged as a fundamental component of today’s prescriptions for economic stimulus and the longed-for recovery.

Taxing the bad to pay for the good

Amidst the financial and economic carnage of current times, Australia has actually been presented with an unprecedented opportunity.