Sci&Tech History

On December 2008, United National Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon calls for a “Green New Deal” to tackle the twin challenges of climate change and the financial crisis. Ki-Moon speech in the opening of the UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan stressed the need to act now and avoid any backsliding on commitments to tackle these threats.[1] The elected US President, Barack Obama during his campaign answered Ki-Moon calls. He pledged to cap carbon dioxide emissions and reduce them 80% by 2050 and to have 25 percent of US energy come from renewable sources by 2025 by investing $150 billion in clean energy in the next decade.[2] In UK, pressure to set up ‘Green New Deal’ came out from non-government organisations such as Greenpeace, New Economics Foundation and Friends of the Earth.

Supported by world leaders and international organizations, Green New Deal became a buzzword resonating among many bureaucrats, scientist, policy maker, environment activist, businessmen, economist, and politicians. Drawing inspiration from President Roosevelt comprehensive response to the Great Depression, Green New Deal tends to renewable revolution, create thousands of green-collar jobs and rein in the distorting power of the finance sector while making more low-cost capital available for pressing priorities.

Before Green New Deal, shifting to put nature into account has also emerged among the environmentalists.[3] James Scott (1998) argues that engineers, planners, and other professionals, who are committed to applying science and mastering nature tend to reduce a complex, multi-variable problem to an abstract, quantifiable simplification (Hughes, 2004). Scott argument rise a question on nature spokesmen: if engineers, planners, and other professionals accused to simplify nature, how can the nature be represented? Who are the nature spokesmen? Are scientists and engineers the villains?

[1] http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29264&Cr=Climate&Cr1=

 [2] http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/11/24/obama_urged_to_create_green_new_deal/

 [3] In Kissimmee River case, the Corps of Engineer simply replacing the meandering Kissimmee river with a straight canal and in constructing dikes and levees to control water flow, they ignored the complexity and variety of the environment-sustaining ecological system (Hughes, 2004: 166)

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