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 ===== Green New Deal Dossier: Older Items ===== ===== Green New Deal Dossier: Older Items =====
 +
 +==== AOC's Original 2018 Proposal ====
 +
 +The [[https://​ocasio2018.com/​green-new-deal|Plan for a Green New Deal]] (and the draft legislation) shall be developed in order to achieve the following goals, in each case in no longer than 10 years from the start of execution of the Plan:\\
 +  -100% of national power generation from renewable sources;
 +  -building a national, energy-efficient,​ “smart” grid;
 +  -upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety;
 +  -decarbonizing the manufacturing,​ agricultural and other industries;
 +  -decarbonizing,​ repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure;​
 +  -funding massive investment in the drawdown and capture of greenhouse gases;
 +  -making “green” technology, industry, expertise, products and services a major export of the United States, with the aim of becoming the undisputed international leader in helping other countries transition to completely carbon neutral economies and bringing about a global Green New Deal.
 +  -The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall recognize that a national, industrial, economic mobilization of this scope and scale is a historic opportunity to virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation.
 +
 +In furtherance of the foregoing, the Plan (and the draft legislation) shall:​\\ ​
 +  -provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities,​ the opportunity,​ training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one;
 +  -take into account and be responsive to the historical and present-day experiences of low-income communities,​ communities of color, indigenous communities,​ rural and urban communities and the front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution and other environmental harm;
 +  -mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth (including, without limitation, ensuring that federal and other investment will be equitably distributed to historically impoverished,​ low income, deindustrialized or other marginalized communities);​
 +  -include additional measures such as basic income programs, universal health care programs and any others as the select committee may deem appropriate to promote economic security, labor market flexibility and entrepreneurism;​ and>
 +  -deeply involve national and local labor unions to take a leadership role in the process of job training and worker deployment.
 +
 +The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall recognize that innovative public and other financing structures are a crucial component in achieving and furthering the goals and guidelines relating to social, economic, racial, regional and gender-based justice and equality and cooperative and public ownership set forth in paragraphs (2)(A)(i) and (6)(B). The Plan (and the draft legislation) shall, accordingly,​ ensure that the majority of financing of the Plan shall be accomplished by the federal government, using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures that the select committee deems appropriate,​ in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.”
 +
 +
  
 ==== Data for Progress (2017) ==== ==== Data for Progress (2017) ====
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     * 25 percent to the clean water and healthy forests account for investments related to water and forests     * 25 percent to the clean water and healthy forests account for investments related to water and forests
     * 5 percent to the healthy communities account for investments related to communities     * 5 percent to the healthy communities account for investments related to communities
 +
 +==== A Climate Sociologist Explains the Green New Deal ====
 +
 +Interview with Daniel Aldana-Cohen //The Real News// 3/​1/​19\\ ​
 +https://​therealnews.com/​stories/​a-climate-sociologist-explains-the-green-new-deal-pt-1-2
 +
 +Explains why the Green New Deal must harness and expand the power of the public sector, and why its proponents cannot cut deals with the fossil fuel industry.
 +
 +
 +==== SCnCC and East Bay DSA's Green New Deal Study Guide ====
 +
 +By Ted Franklin - East Bay DSA\\
 +https://​systemchangenotclimatechange.org/​article/​green-new-deal-ecosocialist-study-guide
 +
 +Ted prepared this study guide for the Ecosocialist Reading Group of East Bay Democratic Socialists of America. ​ These are some of the key readings for anyone who wants to understand the ecoleft'​s take on the Green New Deal.
 +
 +
 +==== A Green New Deal for American Labor? ====
 +
 +By Saurav Sarkar //Labor Notes// March 2019\\ ​
 +https://​www.labornotes.org/​2019/​02/​green-new-deal-american-labor
 +
 +==== A Green New Deal for Housing ====
 +
 +By Daniel Aldana Cohen //Jacobin// 2/​8/​19\\ ​
 +https://​jacobinmag.com/​2019/​02/​green-new-deal-housing-ocasio-cortez-climate
 +
 +Median incomes have stagnated since 2000. But in that same period, a foreclosure boom has shredded millions of families’ savings, and average urban rental costs have increased by 50 percent. ​ A Green New Deal can’t deliver economic justice or solidify mass support without tackling housing head-on.
 +
 +The best way for a Green New Deal to expand, decarbonize,​ and guarantee housing is to build ten million new, public, no-carbon homes in ten years. And again. And again. And again.
 +
 +And no, ten million isn’t a crazy number. The United States is already building well over one million housing units a year. And still the system is broken. A housing guarantee belongs at the core of a Green New Deal for three simple reasons. First, exploding costs have made the housing crisis as big a threat to basic well-being as low wages and under- and unemployment. Second, millions and millions of people will need new homes as extreme weather makes swathes of the country unlivable. And third, building a ton of new housing to low-carbon standards can be a massive lever for decarbonizing the building sector, which is responsible for 39 percent of US energy consumption.
 +==== Interview with Thea Riofrancos on the GND ====
 +
 +Audio podcast with Doug Henwood 2/​14/​19\\ ​
 +Thea is co-chair of Providence, RI DSA and teaches at Providence College\\ ​
 +http://​www.leftbusinessobserver.com/​Radio.html#​S190214
 +
 +
 +==== Kate Aronoff: What the World Could Look Like... ====
 +
 +By Kate Aronoff //The Intercept// 2/11/19\\
 +https://​theintercept.com/​2018/​12/​05/​green-new-deal-proposal-impacts/​
 +
 +It’s the spring of 2043, and Gina is graduating college with the rest of her class. She had a relatively stable childhood. Her parents availed themselves of some of the year of paid family leave they were entitled to, and after that she was dropped off at a free child care program....
 +
 +Now that she’s graduated, it’s time to think about what to do with her life. Without student debt, the options are broad. She also won’t have to worry about health insurance costs, since everyone is now eligible for Medicare. Like most people, she isn’t extraordinarily wealthy, so she can live in public, rent-controlled housing — not in the underfunded,​ neglected units we’re accustomed to seeing in the United States, but in one of any number of buildings that the country’s top architects have competed for the privilege to design, featuring lush green spaces, child care centers, and even bars and restaurants. Utilities won’t be an issue, either. Broadband and clean water are both free and publicly provisioned,​ and the solar array that is spread atop the roofs of her housing complex generates all the power it needs and more.
 +
 +
 +==== Labor Network for Sustainability:​ What Labor Should Ask of a GND ====
 +
 +By Jeremy Brecher and Joe Uehlein //Labor Network for Sustainability//​ 1/31/19\\ https://​www.labor4sustainability.org/​articles/​what-labor-should-ask-of-a-green-new-deal/​
 +
 +Labor should demand that any Green New Deal:
 +
 +  * Restore the right to organize, bargain collectively and engage in concerted action on the job...
 +  * Guarantee the Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly in the workplace...
 +  * Restore the right to strike...
 +  * Guarantee the right to a safe and healthy work environment...
 +  * Provide a fair and just transition for workers whose jobs may be threatened...
 +  * Establish fair labor standards...
 +  * Establish strong state and local prevailing wage laws...
 +  * Encourage industry-wide bargaining...
 +  * Establish a “buy fair” and “buy local” procurement policy...
 +
 +
 +==== Indigenous Struggle Is Key to a Green New Deal ====
 +
 +By Brian Ward //Socialist Worker// 1/​30/​19\\ ​
 +https://​socialistworker.org/​2019/​01/​30/​indigenous-struggle-is-key-to-a-green-new-deal
 +
 +Native struggles against pipelines that invoke Indigenous land rights are a lynchpin in fighting the extractive industry. Pipelines and extraction are the new faces of the same problem of settler-colonialism and capitalist expansion. Building a multiracial solidarity-based grassroots movement with the social power of Indigenous peoples and workers will be the only way we can win a Green New Deal.
 +
 +
 +==== Climate Justice Alliance: GND Must Be Rooted in a Just Transition ====
 +
 +By Climate Justice Alliance 12/​10/​19\\ ​
 +https://​climatejusticealliance.org/​green-new-deal-must-rooted-just-transition-workers-communities-impacted-climate-change/​
 +
 +The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) ... believes that in order to effectively confront the climate crisis, we must transition our priorities from global systems of production and consumption that are energy intensive and fossil fuel dependent to more localized systems that are sustainable,​ resilient, and regenerative.
 +
 +The transition itself, however, must be just....
 +
 +The Green New Deal is the first time in many years that a proposal of this type has been presented by a number of members of a major U.S. political party. It proposes to tackle climate change and inequality simultaneously,​ while revolutionizing conditions for workers. ​ It is a much needed aggressive national pivot away from climate denialism to climate action with large scale federal legislative and budgetary implications....
 +
 +The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) has been organizing a Just Transition toward a regenerative economy for years and therefore presently supports the call for a new economic plan for the U.S. which could come from a Green New Deal. This GND must be innovative, bold, audacious and still be just—for example, creating meaningful, family and community supporting work for the 6.4 million workers currently employed in the energy sector, alongside workers in related fields such as construction and housing, food and farming, waste management, transportation,​ water and ecosystem stewardship.(2) ​ Simultaneously,​ this transition must be just for communities that live on the frontlines of extractive and toxic, polluting industries, and who have been putting forth local solutions that can be scaled for the benefit of a new economy for all.
 +
 +Support for the initiative is growing among members of the U.S. House of Representatives. However, signing on to the project will require elected representatives to think outside of the normally accepted economic, social, industrial, and commercial parameters. If the midterm election has demonstrated anything, it is that grassroots organizing is at the root of successful policy initiatives and there is still much to learn from local and municipal power-building strategies. For Indigenous-Native grassroots members of CJA, it is the strengthening of community-based and tribal leadership, and Indigenous, place-based strategies, that are critical for the foundations of such a large-scale initiative. CJA welcomes the GND as an opportunity to work creatively with many sectors and communities within CJA that have been transitioning to a regenerative economy using community-led strategies such as zero-waste, sustainable agriculture,​ energy democracy, land and water stewardship,​ affordable housing, and localized clean energy. All of which work to center the creation of local jobs and support for the families of workers and communities most impacted....
 +
 +
 +==== Make Detroit the Engine of a Green New Deal ====
 +
 +Detroit DSA //Medium// 1/​5/​18\\ ​
 +[[https://​medium.com/​dsa-detroit-newspaper/​make-detroit-the-engine-of-a-green-new-deal-294575e6ace8]]
 +
 +Statement of Metro Detroit DSA on GM’s announced closure ​
 +of the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly (Poletown) plant
 +
 +As democratic socialists, we believe that the Poletown plant rightfully belongs not to GM but to the workers who labored within it for generations and the taxpayers who bailed it out. Indeed, the workers who staged the successful sit-down strike at GM’s factories in 1936 also believed that the plants belonged to them and their families. They harnessed that conviction to achieve successes for labor — at the height of the Great Depression — that would be almost unthinkable today. In resisting GM’s latest assault on workers, the UAW should aspire to this same level of militancy, staging walkouts, slowdowns, and plant occupations to galvanize the rank and file, and draw public attention to their struggle....
 +
 +The last thing Detroiters need is another rotting hulk in the middle of our city. We must convert the Poletown plant into a publicly-owned green energy hub, and put our citizens to work making the products and infrastructure we need to survive as a species. Wind turbines; solar panels; electric cars, buses, and batteries; high-speed rail cars are all possibilities. During World War II, car factories were retooled in a matter of months to support the war effort. This is the scale of ambition we need today if we are going to avert climate catastrophe and rehabilitate the economies of the Rust Belt. Let’s start that green revolution here in Detroit. That would be a real comeback for the city.
 +
 +
 +==== Radical Democracy and the Green New Deal ====
 +
 +By Gabriel Pierre Antoine //Red Compass// 1/​8/​19\\ ​
 +[[http://​redcompass.us/​2019/​01/​08/​radical-democracy-and-the-green-new-deal/​]]
 +
 +Our rulers have proven themselves completely unable to lessen, let alone confront, the climate crisis. We march seemingly inexorably toward a future of runaway warming and all its attendant consequences. The Green New Deal’s reforms – state-driven employment, economic renewal in marginalized and deindustrialized communities,​ and involving the labor movement in worker training and deployment – would all raise the working class’s self-confidence and living standards while challenging the ruling class’s control over the transition. Extractive capital and its representatives know this, and power concedes nothing without a fight.
 +
 +But parliamentary maneuvers to bury a committee don’t make the climate crisis less urgent, nor do they mean this kind of large scale reform can’t be won. However, it forces us to deepen the struggle for extending democracy as the means to win the nationally and globally coordinated action that is needed. We can only push past the limits imposed in the ‘world’s greatest democracy’ to the extent that we recognize what they are.
 +
 +This includes moving past the ‘pressure politics’ outlook of groups like Justice Democrats, who Ocasio-Cortez works closely with. Supporters of Justice Democrats, whose “mission is to elect a new kind of Democratic majority in Congress,​” were rightfully clear in their condemnation of the House Democrats’ betrayal. But you can’t primary every Democrat, on a terrain where ruling class donors, the privately-owned mass media, and leveraging the party machine guarantee positive results overall for the ‘corporate wing.’ Whether in Congress or in state governments,​ left-leaning or left-wing Democrats must eventually choose between being either co-opted or sidelined. (In any case, we need more control over our elected officials than the threat of a primary challenge once every few years!)
 +
 +
 +
 +==== Richard Smith: Ecosocialist Path to Limiting Temperature Rise to 1.5°C ====
 +
 +By Richard Smith //System Change Not Climate Change//​\\ ​
 +[[https://​systemchangenotclimatechange.org/​article/​ecosocialist-path-limiting-global-temperature-rise-15%C2%B0c]]
 +
 +AOCs’ Plan is first of all, a definitive break with the Reagan-Thatcher-Friedman “capitalism good, government bad” doctrine which holds that the best role for government is to “get out of the way and just incentivize the private sector.” Instead, the Plan calls for robust expansive government to drive the needed changes, for two reasons: (1) scale and (2) time: First, “The level of investment required will be massive. Even if all the billionaires and companies came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.” Besides, “private companies are wary of making massive investments in unproven research and technologies;​ the government, however, has the time horizon to be able to patiently make investments in new tech and R&D, without necessarily having a commercial outcome or application in mind at the time of the investment.” Second: “The speed of investment required will be massive. Even if all the billionaires and companies could make the investments required, they would not be able to pull together a coordinated response in the narrow window of time require to jump-start major new projects and major new sectors.
 +
 +AOC explicitly rejects the Reaganite idolatry of the private sector with its concomitant reliance on coaxing capitalists with incentives: “We’ve also seen that merely incentivizing the private sector doesn’t work – e.g. the tax incentives and subsidies given to wind and solar projects have been a valuable spur to growth in the US renewables industry but, even with such investment-promotion subsidies, the present level of such projects is simply inadequate to transition to a fully carbon neutral economy as quickly as needed. . . we’re not saying there isn’t a role for private sector investments;​ we’re just saying that the level of investment required will need every actor to pitch in and that the government is best placed to be the prime mover....
 +
 +Of course all this sounds wildly utopian at the moment and this Plan is certain to go nowhere under Trump and the Republican Senate. But a vigorous campaign for this Plan could change the conversation from false “market solutions” to restoring the idea of government intervention,​ government planning, and popular democracy as central to the success of the fight against global warming. After all, polls have long shown that citizens want and expect the government to lead the fight against climate change by limiting CO2 emissions, in effect to “do what the science demands before it’s too late.” Let’s hope that with a developing vision and a monumental mobilization around this Green New Deal and around fossil fuel nationalization,​ we can derail the capitalist drive to ecological collapse and build an ecosocialist civilization to save the human race.
 +
 +
 +==== Matt Huber: Lessons From the Original New Deal ====
 +
 +By Matt Huber //Verso Blog// 11/​19/​18\\ ​
 +https://​www.versobooks.com/​blogs/​4131-building-a-green-new-deal-lessons-from-the-original-new-deal
 +
 +Demands centering on the need for a "Green New Deal", focused on the creation of a public works “green jobs” infrastructure policy, have helped energise the American left in recent weeks. In this article Matt Huber offers four vital lessons from the original New Deal that contemporary activists and policymakers must learn:
 +
 +  -The New Deal was made through mass working class protest and revolt
 +  -The New Deal was built on an antagonistic politics of wealth redistribution from the rich
 +  -The New Deal was very popular
 +  -The New Deal brought energy to the people
 +
 +[[http://​culturesofenergy.com/​160-matthew-t-huber/​|Listen]] to a podcast interview with Matt Huber (Cultures of Energy, 1/17/19)
 +
 +==== Robert Pollin: De-Growth vs. a Green New Deal ====
 +
 +By Robert Pollin //New Left Review// 112 Jul-Aug 2018\\ ​
 +https://​newleftreview.org/​II/​112/​robert-pollin-de-growth-vs-a-green-new-deal
 +
 +The core feature of the Green New Deal needs to be a worldwide programme to invest between 1.5 and 2 per cent of global GDP every year to raise energy-efficiency standards and expand clean renewable-energy supplies. Through this investment programme, it becomes realistic to drive down global CO2 emissions relative to today by 40 per cent within twenty years, while also supporting rising living standards and expanding job opportunities. CO2 emissions could be eliminated altogether in forty to fifty years through continuing this clean-energy investment project at roughly the same rate of about 1.5–2 per cent of global GDP per year. It is critical to recognize that, within this framework, a higher economic-growth rate will also accelerate the rate at which clean energy supplants fossil fuels, since higher levels of GDP will correspondingly mean a higher level of investment being channeled into clean-energy projects. [See also this [[fb-pollin|critique of Pollin]].]
  
 ==== Movements (Finally) Get Visionary Again ==== ==== Movements (Finally) Get Visionary Again ====
Line 193: Line 364:
 https://​www.commondreams.org/​news/​2018/​12/​17/​cuomo-touts-green-new-deal-new-york-critics-warn-empty-rhetoric-just-dangerous https://​www.commondreams.org/​news/​2018/​12/​17/​cuomo-touts-green-new-deal-new-york-critics-warn-empty-rhetoric-just-dangerous
  
 +==== The GND Fails to Transform Institutions ====
 +
 +By Lisi Krall //Green Social Thought// 1/​30/​19\\ ​
 +http://​greensocialthought.org/​content/​historical-moment-demands-transformation-our-institutions-green-new-deal-won%E2%80%99t-do
 +
 +While many of the potential policies being discussed, including a more steeply progressive income tax, would in themselves be positive developments,​ none of them would reduce greenhouse emissions as deeply as is required. To understand why, we should first look back at the economic foundations of the Depression-era New Deal, which is serving as inspiration for the Green New Deal (GND)....
 +
 +Nowhere in the landscape of the New Deal was there any recognition that there were problems with growth itself or fossil fuel use. As Stan Cox wrote, “As far as I know, no one complained at the time about the 65 percent increase in fossil fuel consumption that occurred between 1935 and 1945 thanks to a growing economy.” ​ This was because the danger of running up against future biophysical limits was not recognized....
 +
 +The challenge for the GND is to be revolutionary in the face of climate change. It seems clear we can’t solve the contradictions of capital with the same institutional baggage. ​ Assuring some measure of equality in the face of reduced energy will require limits. The build-up for WWII provides a precedent for our capacity to impose collective limits when we have to do so.  Collective limits are managed fairly only when reinforced and fortified with expansive social welfare institutions.
 +
 +But we also need institutions that orbit around limits and not around growth and stagnation. The quick and decisive transition to renewable energy, orchestrated with strict limits, a commitment to equity, and rationing of both production and consumption will help us to begin this revolutionary transition recognizing that the 21st century problems of capitalism are unique.
 +
 +
 +
 +==== Ben Ehrenreich: To Those Who Think We Can Reform Our Way Out of the Crisis ====
 +
 +By Ben Ehrenreich //The Nation// 1/​15/​19\\ ​
 +https://​www.thenation.com/​article/​climate-change-fossil-fuel-capitalism-divorce/​
 +
 +Politicians are not often good at thinking in planetary terms. The system in which they function—national governments and international institutions alike—evolved alongside the carbon economy and has for decades functioned mainly to serve it. However enlightened their representatives may appear at climate talks, wealthy countries continue to subsidize fossil fuel extraction—last year to the tune of $147 billion. In the United States, Trumpian climate denialism and Pelosian tepidity are two faces of the same phenomenon. Congressman Frank Pallone, who chairs the toothless committee that Pelosi resurrected to tackle climate change, announced that he plans to propose nothing more than “some oversight” of Trump’s assaults on preexisting federal programs, and that requiring committee members to reject donations from fossil fuel industries would be “too limiting.”
 +
 +Centrists continue to reassure, unshaken in the conviction that no problem exists that cannot be solved with a little technocratic fiddling. Just before he left office, Barack Obama penned an article in Science, contending that climate change “mitigation need not conflict with economic growth.” Wealthy countries, the argument goes, have already managed to reduce emissions without sacrificing growth. “Decoupling” is the magic word here. Imagine a gentle, Gwyneth Paltrowesque divorce between fossil fuels and capital, followed by a fresh romance with greener tech, perhaps a few extra therapy bills for the kids.
 +
 +But someone always gets hurt in a break-up. The techno-optimist dream holds together only if you hide the fact that much of the progress made by the United States and Europe came at the expense of poorer countries: as corporations off-shored manufacturing jobs over the last few decades, they sent the carbon-intensive industries with them, allowing Western consumers, at the clean end of a very dirty process, to import massive quantities of goods....
 +
 +
 +==== Wall Street Wants an Infrastructure Plan, But the GND Isn't It ====
 +
 +By Lydia DePillis //CNN Business// 2/​14/​19\\ ​
 +https://​www.cnn.com/​2019/​02/​14/​investing/​wall-street-green-new-deal/​index.html
 +
 +The American business community really wants a large federal infrastructure package. It wants to shore up transportation systems, generate business through government contracts, and create new opportunities for investors to make a return. But not //this// infrastructure package....
 +
 +
 +==== Adam Dean: The Magical Technology Behind the Green New Deal ====
 +
 +By Adam Dean //Medium// 1/4/19\\
 +https://​medium.com/​@atomdean/​the-magical-technology-behind-the-green-new-deal-71b0fa383017
 +
 +The problem of the Green New Deal is not only its omission of real costs. Its root problem is that it is designed to maintain our over-consumption of energy. Growth is our problem. It cannot be our solution. Pandering to a mass addiction for more energy under the renewable name is political theater. It’s not just that we can’t achieve the ambitious promise of the Green New Deal, but to try is to cash in what few resources we have left for our children, only to briefly extend the unreasonable energy demands that we’ve come to realize are unsustainable. The Green New Deal, in striving to fulfill its promise, means tremendous infrastructure changes that will increase our upfront carbon costs at a time when we know we must curb them aggressively. Conservation,​ not infrastructure expansion, is the obvious and necessary next step.
 +
 +We must accept that solar, wind, hydroelectric and thermal power are lifeboat resources and just as precious and finite as fossil fuels. If we go ahead we will only fall short on the goal and re-learn what we already know: conservation is our only path. Solar arrays and wind farms of the magnitude projected in the Green New Deal will not meet demand and will permanently transform the landscape, leaving nothing for future generations except more industrial scenery and a heavy maintenance bill...
 +
 +
 +==== Stan Goff: Beyond a Green New Deal: Farm/Food Policies ====
 +
 +//Medium// 12/13/18\\
 +https://​medium.com/​@stangoff/​beyond-a-green-new-deal-2f28c5add027
 +
 +“This paper will argue that the Green New Deal, as currently articulated,​ is a necessary but insufficient response to our global emergency which has ecologic as well as social ramifications that are inextricable from one another, and that no plan can succeed without a well-informed account of agriculture as its cornerstone.
 +
 +I would go so far as to say that better nomenclature — which would reach beyond those who see themselves as “green” — an Agrarian New Deal. Then the same farmers who turn their faces away from “greens” will turn around to look when they see that word. It reminds us that water and agriculture are where we begin to make the most basic changes, or every other attempt will fail. It tells those farmers that you recognize the crucial role they play, and then you can tell them: if we do this a new way, the first step, before anything else, is subsidizing a decent standard of living for those agrarians who will carry out the changes.”
 +
 +“Water and food are prior to electricity;​ and yet the Green New Deal — which emphasizes conversion of energy sources to the complete exclusion of conservation (including rationing), with no acknowledgement of the physical limits to “growth” that are imposed by natural laws which already tell us that conversion is the icing, and conservation is the cake. Likewise, there is little acknowledgment by the mostly urban, white-collar,​ or academic activists and mavens of the centrality of agriculture for any worthwhile analysis or synthesis.
 +
 +“Among agricultural considerations is the fact that more than a third of all carbon emissions are from agricultural activity. And while most sectors in the US economy suffer less than 40 percent corporate concentration (ownership and control belong to absentee corporations),​ agriculture in the US is closer to 70 percent control by big absentee corporations.”
 +
 +
 +==== TUED: When '​Green'​ Doesn'​t '​Grow'​ ====
 +
 +Facing Up to the Failures of Profit-Driven Climate Policy, by Trade Unions for Energy Democracy 12/​31/​18\\ ​
 +http://​unionsforenergydemocracy.org/​resources/​when-green-doesnt-grow/​
 +
 +The market-focused approach to climate protection has failed spectacularly. Using “sticks and carrots” policies aimed at the private sector, governments anticipated a surge of new “green growth” investment that would create millions of good jobs. This did not happen. It is now absolutely clear that climate policy must shift in a radically different direction, and unions can help ensure that such a shift occurs as soon as possible.
 +
 +Growing numbers of unions are already calling for a decisive shift away from policies that push privatization – including predatory “public private partnerships” (P3s) – and that are designed to please private investors who deliver too little and take too much.
 +
 +Unions are increasingly rallying behind the idea of a needs-based,​ “public goods” approach to climate protection – one that is grounded in extending public ownership and democratic control. Such an approach will give us a real chance to reach the Paris targets, and to advance the struggle for political and economic democracy, equality and decent work. This is the only way to achieve a just transition for all.
 +
 +
 +==== Eric Levitz: Is a Green New Deal Possible Without a Revolution? ====
 +
 +By Eric Levitz //New York// 12/​13/​18\\ ​
 +http://​nymag.com/​intelligencer/​2018/​12/​what-is-the-green-new-deal-explained-revolution.html
 +
 +To the median Democrat, a Green New Deal is just a fancy name for an infrastructure bill that includes significant investments in renewable energy, and climate resiliency. To the progressive think tank Data for Progress, it’s a comprehensive plan for America to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, through a combination of massive public investment in renewables, smart grids, battery technology, and resiliency; turbocharged environmental regulations;​ and policies that promote urbanization,​ reforestation,​ wetland restoration,​ and soil sustainability — all designed with an eye toward achieving full employment, and advancing racial justice.
 +
 +But to the American left’s most utopian reformists, the Green New Deal is shorthand for an ambition even more sweeping. More precisely, it is a means of conveying their vision for radical change to a popular audience, by way of analogy [with World War II].
 +
 +[However, in contrast to the World War II emergency,] climate change poses less of an immediate threat to America’s contemporary economic elites than the Green New Deal does. The Koch Network fears the euthanasia of the fossil fuel industry — and confiscatory top tax rates — a lot more than rising sea levels. Thus, corporate resistance to World War II–esque state-led mobilization to combat climate change (let alone, an avowedly socialist one) is certain to be immense. And given the conservative movement’s tightening grip over the federal judiciary, and red America’s increasingly disproportionate influence over state governments and the Senate, Green New Dealers would need to defeat near-unanimous corporate opposition on a playing field sharply tilted to their rivals’ advantage. ...
 +
 +If persuading a couple dozen Democrats to support a select committee to draft a Green New Deal (which many of them understand as a little more than a climate-centric infrastructure stimulus) took repeatedly occupying Nancy Pelosi’s office, what will it take to institutionalize 100 percent renewable social democracy atop the ruins of the fossil fuel industry?
 +
 +
 +==== Jonathan Neale: Why Carbon Taxes Burn Workers ====
 +
 +By Jonathan Neale //Socialist Worker// 12/​14/​18\\ ​
 +https://​socialistworker.org/​2018/​12/​13/​why-carbon-taxes-burn-workers
 +
 +It’s not just that carbon taxes are unfair. After all, many climate activists say that if it’s unfair and it still stops climate change, then it’s worth it. There’s something to be said for that point of view. After all, ordinary people are going to pay a lot more for the effects of climate change than we will ever pay in carbon taxes.
 +
 +But the real kicker is the political effect of the unfairness. It opens a window for the right wing — the climate deniers and the oil and coal companies. They can build a coalition between themselves, those who want no climate action, and large numbers of ordinary people who feel cheated by affluent greens. That coalition can be devastating because the environmentalists are hit from two sides....
 +
 +THE CLIMATE jobs campaigns I have been involved with have faced a parallel problem. In Britain, we built a campaign with a lot of union support for a government program for a million new permanent climate jobs, most of them in renewable energy, public transport and building conversion.
 +
 +At first, our campaign was split over whether these should be all public-sector jobs. Many of the environmentalists who were involved were sympathetic to small business or to cooperatives.
 +
 +But one thing swung us toward public-sector jobs. We knew we had to guarantee that if anyone lost their job in an old high-carbon industry, they would be guaranteed retraining and a new permanent climate job. If we said private companies would deliver that, everyone would know that was a lie.
 +
 +We want that job guarantee because those oil-tanker drivers and natural-gas workers should not be punished. They built our economy. But not just because it’s right. If we don’t do that, we will divide the union movement, divide the working class and divide the electorate.
 +
 +
 +==== Max Ajl: Beyond the Green New Deal ====
 +
 +By Max Ajl //Brooklyn Rail// 11/​1/​18\\ ​
 +https://​brooklynrail.org/​2018/​11/​field-notes/​Beyond-the-Green-New-Deal
 +
 +So whence the notion of a Green New Deal? It often seems to be of a piece with the current definitional dilution “socialism” is facing, as Ted Kennedy-type liberals like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez redefine the word to fit snugly along the left edge of the Democratic Party agenda. In this sense, the Green New Deal can often be a historical-analogical shoehorn to fit our moment back into the comforting clasp of the Fordist comfort zone, maybe a few degrees left vis-à-vis social distribution—Norway plus solar panels.
 +
 +We ought also not forget that the original New Deal was social containment to avoid a world transformed. The dominant discourse also forgets the New Deal was only in the United States, and it took a World War and global decolonization to even begin to address the more widespread human consequences of colonialism,​ a condition which, after all, affected most of humanity, especially those lands now slated to suffer most under global warming. In taking stock of the climate crisis, then, we need to be honest enough to state that the notion of a GND hearkens back to the state social-engineering edifice of New Deal economic planning, seasoned heavily enough with nostalgia to make us forget that the New Deal did not do what it is represented as having done in popular memory....
 +
 +My concern is that in the wrong hands, [the GND] could easily become something closer to a marketing device than an accurate cartography of our current moment, which must necessarily offer a strategically useful contour map of a very uneven world. Such a set-up might easily be imagined, or might easily be repurposed, into a transmogrification of Elysium: green social democracy at home and militarized maritime and terrestrial borders, and beyond them, resource extraction for domestic clean-tech. ...
 +
 +The GND, because it is fundamentally about a rejiggering of global energy use and a low-key jobs program, fails to address far too many questions. Where are we supposed to get food, when entire patterns of urbanization have been built on dollar-cheap food lubricated by dollar-cheap energy? Will we keep using hydrocarbon-based fertilizers to plant corn, which anyway might be devastated by the next blight to which Monsanto’s monocultures are uniquely vulnerable? Where will we get new genetic stock? Is that simply the job of hard-working peasants on the Mexican milpa? Do we bear any substantive burden for the transition? Why does scarcely anyone talk about this?...
 +
 +Moving from North to South, I wonder what happens when we stop talking about the Green New Deal, or even some eco-socialist models which effectively mimic the muteness of the GNC on questions of sovereignty and agriculture,​ and talk instead about something knottier but better, because it is big enough for everyone. What if we replace, or minimally complement, talk of a GND with something like (although by all means let us find a more felicitous phrase) a green consummation of national liberation? ...
 +
 +
 +
 +==== Dan La Botz: The New Deal Is Not Enough ====
 +
 +By Dan La Botz //Socialist Forum// ​ Fall 2018\\ ​
 +https://​socialistforum.dsausa.org/​issues/​fall-2018/​the-new-deal-is-not-enough/​
 +
 +When asked to define “political revolution” and “democratic socialism,​” Sanders repeatedly answered that he meant something like an updated version of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. And following her surprising and spectacular Democratic primary victory over Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District (Queens-Bronx),​ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told morning talk shows the same thing Sanders had, that Roosevelt’s New Deal represented the kind of political revolution for which she stood.
 +
 +Sanders tapped into this old idea that Roosevelt saved the country, suggesting that he could do likewise with similar programs. But did Roosevelt’s New Deal save the American people? American historians tell us that FDR’s New Deal actually failed and that the depression returned with a vengeance as unemployment rose again to 19% in 1938. In fact, the Great Depression only began to end when war production to support England began in 1939, and the country’s economy only fully revived with America’s entry into World War II....
 +
 +As Thomas Ferguson has argued, Roosevelt’s administration was based on a constellation of financiers and industrialists as well as the new assemblage of ethnic voters. In fact, Ferguson argues, it was a particular section of the capitalist class that was the most important factor in that coalition: the heads of capital-intensive and internationally-oriented industries. Though labor was tremendously important, it was this group of capitalists that provided the power, influence, and money that came to constitute the core of the party and made FDR’s four successive presidential victories possible, Ferguson argues....
 +
 +Some on the left have argued that the New Deal coalition constituted a sort of de-facto labor party, but this was not the case. The New Deal coalition was made up of capitalist corporations,​ racist southern Democrats, big-city machines, labor unions, and black voters (where they were able to vote). The strength of the capitalist core, the southern Democrats, and the political machines explain both the New Deal’s success and its limited character.
 +
 +National prosperity during the 1950s and 1960s was also based on imperialism,​ with hundreds of military bases around the world that protected U.S. investments and geopolitical interests in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. U.S. economic prosperity in the post-war period was owed only in part to the social programs of the New Deal and the Great Society, for America’s prosperity depended on what was called the “permanent war economy.” The New Deal and postwar orders can be defined as “social imperialism,​” that is, a political economy that can offer social reforms only because it is an imperial power. U.S. domination of half the world—economic,​ political, and military—provided the basis for the “American dream” of a steady job, a home of one’s own in the suburbs, and the consumer paradise of home appliances, televisions,​ and cars....
 +
 +Equating the New Deal with socialism tends to equate the victory of the Democratic Party and its candidates with the struggle for socialism, while nothing could be further from the truth. Victories by Democrats, even progressive Democrats calling for a new New Deal, strengthen the Democratic Party, not the anti-capitalist left.
 +
 +While socialists should definitely support the kind of reforms that Sanders advocates, we must be honest with ourselves and with the working class and make clear that these kinds of reforms alone will not solve everyone’s problems, will not be permanent, and will not change the capitalist system....
  
 ==== Rob Urie: Democrats Killed the Green New Deal ==== ==== Rob Urie: Democrats Killed the Green New Deal ====
gnd-older.txt · Last modified: 2019/09/06 12:20 by admin