Caroline Lucas, Sussex MEP and Brighton parliamentary candidate, has joined together with a group of experts in finance, energy and the environment.

The experts are calling for a 'rescue plan' to deal with looming recession, oil shortages and climate change.

Seventy-five years since President Roosevelt launched a New Deal to rescue the US from financial crisis, the 'Green New Deal Group' has called on all the UK's main political leaders to take similar radical action to prevent looming economic and environmental collapse here in the UK.

"We are facing economic as well as environmental collapse in the UK - and we are already seeing the effects of rising food, fuel and housing prices here in Brighton and Hove and Sussex," said Dr Lucas.

"The credit crunch has already widened into an energy and food crisis but we just aren't seeing any comprehensive, joined-up action from traditional politicians.

"In short, we need a massive investment in renewable energy, creating thousands of new 'green collar' jobs while reining in the most reckless aspects of the finance sector.

"To make this work, we need to build a new alliance between environmentalists, industry, agriculture, and unions to put the interests of the real economy ahead of those of footloose finance."

The 'Green New Deal Group', which publishes its first report today, is calling on Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg to put aside party differences and adopt a radical set of proposals to head of both UK recession and irreversible global climate change.

Such a new deal would include:

• A bold new vision for a low-carbon energy system that will include making ‘every building a power station’.
• Creating and training a ‘carbon army’ of workers to provide the human resources for a vast environmental reconstruction programme.
• Establishing an Oil Legacy Fund, paid for by a windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies to help deal with the effects of climate change and smooth the transition to a low-carbon economy.
• Re-regulating the domestic financial system. Reduction of the Bank of England’s interest rate to help those borrowing to build a new energy and transport infrastructure, alongside, to prevent inflation, much tighter controls on lending and on the generation of credit.
• Setting a formal international target for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations that keeps future temperature rises as far below 2°C as possible.

Dr Lucas is joined in the Green New Deal Group by Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of the Guardian, former Friends of the Earth directors Tony Juniper and Charles Secrett, Jeremy Leggett, founder and Chairman of Solarcentury and SolarAid, Andrew Simms, Policy Director of nef (the new economics foundation), Ann Pettifor, former head of the Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaign, and Finance for the Future co-directors Colin Hines and Richard Murphy.

ENDS

Press for more information: please contact Lizzie Deane Brighton and Hove Green Party External Communications Coordinator on 07931 231390.