Degrowth, Decoupling, (Greenish) Growth: Which Visions for the Green New Deals of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain?

Following the international financial crisis of 2007, a number of individuals, organizations, and movements have sought to restructure the ties between politics, the economy, and the environment. In 2008, a British think tank created the “Green New Deal,” a policy document proposing responses to what they described as the “triple crunch” of economic crisis, climate change and increasing energy prices.[1] The idea spread to the Republic of Ireland’s Comhar Sustainable Development Council, and a cross-sectoral group based in Northern Ireland, each of whom produced their own texts in 2009. In 2013, the British Green New Deal group published a fifth anniversary update to their original document. Taken from a comparative perspective, these four texts demonstrate the ways in which a political concept can be reinterpreted to reflect alternative conceptions of political economy and its relationship to the environment. They also illustrate elements of the tension between the need for sustainability and the economic growth imperative. This paper will first address the significance of economic growth to the debates concerning green political economy, and relate the issue to the Green New Deal concept. Next, it will use both quantitative and qualitative methods, including lexicometrical analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, to uncover the Irish, Northern Irish, and British Green New Deals' stances on the role of economic growth in resolving the “triple crunch.” It will argue that the texts approached the issue differently and addressed it at differing levels, with the Irish document directly calling for renewed economic growth through “decoupling,"[2] while the British and Northern Irish texts took more ambiguous, and at times, ambivalent positions. The paper will conclude with a discussion of the possible explanations for these variations among the texts. 1. The Green New Deal Group, A Green New Deal: Joined-Up Policies to Solve the Triple Crunch of the Credit Crisis, Climate Change and High Oil Prices The First Report (London: New Economics Foundation, 2008), 1, http://dnwssx4l7gl7s.cloudfront.net/nefoundation/default/page/-/files/A_Green_New_Deal_1.pdf. 2. Comhar SDC, Towards a Green New Deal for Ireland (Dublin: Comhar SDC, 2009), 13–14 and 35.