What Might a Green New Deal Involve? A Few More Notes

Recently I presented two pieces offering some thoughts on what a Green New Deal might look like--the scale on which it might work, the speed with which it might attain its goals, the manner in which it might be resourced, and the principles to which it would adhere. They were not even the pretense of a complete plan, just notes.

Here are some additional notes, limited to mentioning four items that are not usually discussed as part of a Green New Deal, but which warrant some attention in any such planning process as objects for continued research, development, and ultimately deployment efforts alongside the more familiar matters of electrical transmission, energy efficiency, carbon offsets, etc..

1. Cellular Agriculture.
The massive, negative environmental impact of current methods of agriculture; the vulnerability of key croplands and grazing areas (generally along coasts and rivers) to inundation and salinization by encroaching seas, the disruption of key water resources, and extreme weather events endangering food production; the possible alternative uses of land in ways needed to stem the crisis, like reforestation for carbon capture; and the reality of a burgeoning world population--makes it highly desirable that we reduce our reliance on open-field agriculture, or even shift away from it altogether. A Green New Deal should accordingly invest in cellular agriculture, extending even beyond the replacement of livestock-raising through cultured meat (the current focus of such efforts), to the production of all needed foodstuffs.

2. Materials Science.
The most obvious example is carbon nanotube production, which is of particular interest because of the multiple ways in which it can contribute to the alleviation of the problem. The prospect of producing nanotubes from carbon captured from the air can tie in with broader direct air capture efforts, while helping resolve the problem of what we are to do with the recovered carbon. The production of carbon-based materials of this kind raises the possibility of substituting for other materials whose production entails high environmental costs (iron and steelmaking may account for almost a tenth of GHGs). And the production of vehicle bodies from those materials may enable weight reductions affording massive energy savings. (Picture cars more robust than those we have today weighing fifty pounds. How much more feasible would electric car production be then?)

3. Fourth-Generation Nuclear Energy.
In my view the ideal is the derivation of 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy sources, while the technology provides a basis for continued growth in production and consumption (especially if a higher premium is placed on easily realizable gains from energy efficiency). I also expect that this goal would be attainable with a properly backed, "moonshot"-type effort. Yet, it is far from proven that there will not be gaps, while in decarbonizing our energy production it will be impossible to ignore questions of speed and cost, with nuclear energy possibly offering at least a partial answer to those questions. Meanwhile, fourth-generation nuclear reactors hold out substantial promise of sharply reducing the problems and risks entailed in the use of the 1950s-era technology on which the nuclear power sector has continued to rely. While caution will be required, especially given the industry's unhealthy influence on the debate, appropriate consideration for the technology has its place in a Green New Deal.

4. Megastructure Construction.
It appears that in coping with climate change and its consequences, particularly the melting of polar ice, large-scale structures, including walls to prevent the run-off of water into the sea, or cooling tunnels to thicken ice and keep it from sliding into the ocean, will prove indispensable to avoiding some of the worst effects. A Green New Deal should study and develop the requisite, substantially automated, technologies, that will be needed to realize such plans.

In addition to these four items I would add that in facing the colossal challenge of climate change we have to be prepared for the possibility of resorting to still more radical action. Especially if the problem worsens even more rapidly than the current dire estimates anticipate they will, or the plan for remedial action proves belated or inadequate (none of which seems impossible), the world may have to consider such extreme recourses as solar dimming. No Green New Deal can be considered complete without preparation for the contingency.