Page 15 - Environmental_Green Technologies

15

How it works: Governments tax the companies for pollution (CO2 emissions) and this cost of the taxes is
added to the sale price of a product or service, so the tax is passed on to the customer. Therefore, those
companies with lower emissions will be able tooffer their products or services at lower prices, and the
customer have at its disposal a cheaper and low-polluting product or service. It becomes a financial
incentive for the competitive companies to reduce emissions, and a portion of the tax is invested in
research/green development or for socially needed households (Carbon Tax Center, 2019).

As in the case of the Cap and Trade, the EU controls the carbon tax through the EU ETS. More information
can be found in this link (European Commission).

Examples of Social Movements

De-growth

De-growth is the literal translation from the French word meaning reduction, ‘décroissance’. It is a social
movement that coverage critical ideas and political actions, as the transition and downscaling of
production and consumption to increase social and human well-being and enhance ecological
sustainability. ‘De-growth’ is a movement that aims to re-politicise on the socio-ecological transformation,
criticizing the current development (Degrowth, 2019).

De-growth, an economic and social movement and critique of the paradigm of economic growth, is based
on the need of reducing global consumption and production, advocating for a social-ecological sustainable
society, and replacing GDP with the Wellbeing indicator as indicator of prosperity. Therefore, De-growth
promotes a society within resources and localized economies distributed in a more equal way by
democratic institutions, based on ecological responsible decisions and actions. It proposes a transition and
transformation to a society with lower but sustainable level of production and consumption, transforming
efficiency into sufficiency and innovation not focuses merely on technology, but on new social and
technical manner to be developed in order to live in a cooperative and frugal manner.

However, there emerge a conflict because the primary policy of many governments is the economic
growth and it leads to a conflict between the economic growth and environmental protection (Degrowth,
2019).

Green New Deal

The Green New Deal is a Keynesian green model. It consists in investing to transform the economy into
a more sustainable economy based on renewable energies with a sustainable growth. The idea is to
generate a green growth strategy and impulse international economy throughout an investment in
sustainability that will also generate new green jobs. The main objective of the Green New Deal is achieve
a socio-economic change with zero emission by 2050, creation of quality high-wage jobs, clean and
sustainable environment, changes in the industries and infrastructure, and improve justice and promote
equity. The investment should be done on those policies and measures that promote balanced economic
growth in a long term. In addition, it is needed to invest even more on policies such as development of the
circular economy, renewable energy and energy efficiency (European Commission, 2019).