Reworking our economy for a post-coronavirus society | Letters

Caroline Lucas MP and Prof Richard Murphy on the need for all political parties to support green initiatives, Christopher Tanner on reimagining the idea of economic growth and Dave Young on the importance of building social infrastructure

Your editorial (9 June) rightly calls for the post-coronavirus economy to be rebuilt in a fairer, labour-intensive and environmentally sustainable way. What wasn't addressed, however, was the crucial question of how such an enormous transition could be paid for.

In the short term, the government's sensible response to the crisis has been to turn on the spending taps, maybe to the tune of 300bn. Expanding this to tackle the climate emergency is made easier by the government's ability to borrow money at negative interest rates. Green quantitative easing could also help, while members of the Green New Deal group have also proposed that private savers' money be used to help fund the green transition by changing the rules on Isas and pensions, so that some of the 170bn saved annually in such accounts and pensions might be invested in government-backed green bonds.