What Might a Green New Deal Involve? Additional Notes

Previously I raised the issue of what a Green New Deal might look like--the scale on which it might work, the speed with which it might attain its goals, and the manner in which it might be resourced. Today I am writing about the principles to which such a plan might adhere. I would argue that there are four.

1. Scale.
As previously discussed here, climate change is a colossal challenge that, in light of its severity, profundity and pace, demands a colossal response. Such challenges quite naturally lead Americans to historical analogy with World War II. A look at the production effort seen in World War II (what it suggests about how rapidly the U.S. could rebuild its infrastructure, industrial plant, and other systems) suggests that it is a logical starting point for such consideration. The reality is that the circumstances in which a Green New Deal would be carried out would be far more congenial, not least because of the greatly increased productivity of modern industry, and one can well imagine that as a result even a total, short-order rebuild needed to, for example,w reduce emissions by 2030 to a small fraction of present levels, and perhaps establish a negative-emissions program, might actually be considerably cheaper than waging and winning that conflict (in relative terms). Still, any Green New Deal worthy of the name would be massive in scale, enough so that I would expect a commitment of at least a double-digit percentage of GDP for a period.

2. Global Thinking.
Massive as the program would be relative to the budget and the economy the U.S. is only one country, one economy, accounting for only a fraction of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. An American Green New Deal cannot be expected to save the world by itself. Other countries will have to do their part. A U.S. Green New Deal should encourage others to do the same, and where possible, help them to do so, while at the same time benefiting from the benefits of other countries' own efforts--like such technologies as they develop. The result is that while an American Green New Deal cannot be made contingent on other countries' conduct, it should be backed by a diplomatic effort aimed at bringing about, if not a Global Green New Deal, then many other Green New Deals (Chinese and European and the rest), while being attentive to others' progress in the same area, and providing such foreign aid as is affordable to the developing nations accounting for a rising proportion of global emissions.

3. Pragmatism.
Carrying out such an unprecedented program will necessarily mean doing "what the job takes," even where this may seem unpalatable. Previously I noted the World War II effort's massive remaking of America's plant, power grid and other physical capital. It is worth remembering that of the massive construction of plant during World War II, close to two-thirds was government-built and government-owned, because that seemed in the circumstances the only way to get so much built so quickly, with the achievements of the "arsenal of democracy" ultimately validating this logic (not least, when compared with the more market-oriented, slower mobilization of World War I).

In short, the power of government to solve problems was utilized to a very great degree in these years, because nothing else would serve. So does it appear to be the case again when we consider climate change--with the idea of major government action in regard to the energy base in particular less unprecedented than it may seem. The Federal government has in the past owned a significant share of America's electrical generation and distribution, with the Tennessee Valley Authority only the most famous instance, and it has proven competent to run it--along with a good deal of other energy-related infrastructure (whether nuclear fuel production, the armed forces' massive utility infrastructure, oil production at Naval Petroleum reserves, and everything else), the partial privatization of which was a matter of ideology, not necessity. The decisions were questionable at the time, but what matters most now is that neoliberal pieties such as the superiority of the private to the public in all things, or the worship of balanced budgets as an idol besides which one shall have no others (which, alas, neoliberal Republicans have been the most contemptuous of in practice), have not only been shown up as wrong time and time again, but have no place in a serious effort to resolve the problem at hand.

4. Equity.
One of the greatest weaknesses of the modern environmental movement, emergent as it was in a neoliberal era, has been its lack of concern for power, social class, equity. As the situation stands, after half a century of neoliberalism the poor have done all the sacrificing--while the rich have pocketed what was taken from them, as the growth in the size of their yachts shows.* Attempting to redress climate change in this manner, as the government of Emmannuel Macron so stupidly did, is not only morally repugnant, but bad politics at a moment when long-battered working people are beginning to assert themselves. Concern for equity--for protecting society's poorest and weakest, and to the extent possible in the circumstances, actually uplifting them--must be part of the plan. Indeed, it is promised in the very name of a proposal recalling what, for all its failures and limitations, was far and away the single greatest attempt of government in the United States to act on behalf of the people in the wake of capitalism's most dramatic failure--the Green New Deal.

So there you have it. A Green New Deal must be of a scale appropriate to the problem, which ultimately means that it must not only be a massive initiative by U.S. standards, but also part of a global solution. It must be pragmatic, with this pragmatism demonstrated by a readiness to do what the situation demands, rather than what neoliberal shills and their owners think pleasant. And it must be equitable, not only for the sake of that principle, but the aforementioned need to be pragmatic as well. Any plan that fails to meet even of these criteria is sorely incomplete. Any plan that fails to meet all of them is unworthy of being called a plan at all. As always, be watchful, be skeptical, and DO NOT be impressed by compromised mediocrities who will lecture you on the "art of the possible" or bully you with sanctimonious, contemptuous, let-them-eat cake drivel about your "wanting a pony" while unapologetically heading off to Goldman Sachs to take more money for one speech than the median American household will see in a decade.

*In the '80s the Trump Princess was the world's biggest, and thought so extravagant the makers of the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again thought it worthy of being the base for a SPECTRE villain. The last time I checked there were seventy-five boats bigger than that, with the largest making it look a rowboat.