#225: "All You Need Is Love"
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The first thing one notices about The Green New Deal is its inclusive outreach: it references the 1930's New Deal, which provides a familiar hook; it's vague, which avoids dissension, and it fronts a woman of color, along with a soft spoken gentleman, as chief sponsors, emphasizing its everybody's-in-this approach.
Then come the detractors, either laughably denying the science, or demanding an even more ambitious assault on airborne carbon. Science denial is of course obvious nonsense, fed by greedy corporate interests that pay dishonorable 'scientists' to twist the truth. They will flail and fail. The cries of full-throated alarmists, however, are much more significant, because they're often right about the science.
My sense is that alarmists are both useful, in drawing attention to Climate, but also dangerous, in that their rowdier half will provide obvious targets for fear-mongers and the low-information voters easily swayed by sensational claims. This has already happened, unfortunately, as during the roll-out of the Green New Deal, a chief sponsor's staffers accidentally posted unscreened information suggesting that using airplanes and eating hamburgers were problematic activities.
So, let's look into the alarmist's view, in this case Samuel Miller McDonald at the New Republic, "The Green New Deal Can't Be Anything Like The New Deal". He asserts the following (my reaction in green):
1. "The climate crisis is much bigger than the Great Depression, for the very fate of humanity is at stake."
As I've noted, banging the drum for repentance is helpful to a point. The problem is that persuasion usually requires warmth, outreach, and good humor (the traditional hallmarks of female strength, it might be noted).
2. "Worse, the crisis is being accelerated by the very thing that the New Deal helped save: fossil fuel capitalism."
Making this about capitalism is a sure loser. The appetite for a critique of capitalism is limited to Deep Blue areas of the country; this is not where more votes for a Senate majority, and for a GND, are needed.
3. "Thus, rather than emulating its predecessor, the Green New Deal must undo many of [the New Deal's] accomplishments."
This wild-eyed radicalism is usually the sign of leftie candidates, like Bernie, who're focused more on a desired end (single-payer healthcare, for example), than on the immediate need for persuasion (the much less disruptive medicare buy-in, for instance).
4. "FDR’s [New Deal] programs not only made industrial capitalism financially and socially stable; they sent it into overdrive by leaving monopolistic corporations intact, building the foundation of the interstate highway system, expanding car-dependent suburban housing, incentivizing consumption, expanding air travel, accelerating mechanized extraction, and ramping up resource-intensive manufacturing."
Again, this is poison if you're seeking to win an election. The much more persuasive approach is to avoid mentioning anything in that sentence, and instead speak to the benefits of a progressive next step, which then leads to another progressive step, with the desired end only hinted at.
5. "The resources necessary to maintain our current rate of production simply don’t exist on the planet."
If true, this sobering jeremiad would be warranted. But it assumes we aren't already transitioning.
* "There isn’t enough topsoil to sustain agricultural production; at its current rate, topsoil will be depleted in a few decades and lead to mass starvation." True, at its current rate, but topsoil loss has been declining in the US, and given the resources there's no reason we can't accelerate that trend, and do so dramatically, and worldwide.
* There’s not enough cobalt, lithium, and other resources necessary to electrify transportation at its current scope; demand is already outstripping supply of such minerals and electric vehicles currently account for less than 2 percent of the market. If there weren't alternatives available, or on the horizon, car manufacturers wouldn't be committing to electric vehicles (several companies have pledged to permanently transition to manufacturing only electric).
* There aren’t enough fish to keep trawling the oceans at our current intensity, with virtually every single commercial fishery in the world headed toward collapse. True, there's no excuse for over-fishing, and many fisheries have already crashed. But there are others where enforcement of catch limits has worked; and there are no fundamental barriers to these successes being replicated.
* There’s not enough wild habitat to keep deforesting at the current rate, with sixty football fields of forest being destroyed every minute and dozens of species going extinct everyday." So true. And there's been backsliding on a heartbreaking scale. But given sufficient economic resources, these trends can be reversed.
6. "What a Green New Deal must do is begin to establish the political and cultural conditions in which this scale of transition becomes possible, and do so within the timeframe of about two Senate elections. It’s not entirely clear what that would look like...."
McDonald's attempt to help usher in sustainability may over-shoot its mark, but there is a case to be made for a jolt of reality on occasion. For example, the carefully constructive, but unwavering David Roberts recently noted that 'middle-path' efforts to transition our energy economy using natural gas aren't going to be possible if we're aiming below that famous 1.5%^ average temperature target. On the other hand, the phrase "...begin to establish the political and cultural conditions..." does remind one of a certain, typically male, palms-up helplessness, especially when coupled with "It's not entirely clear what that would look like...."
Again, though, let's admit we need an earthquake of sense now and again, and move on.
About that "...two Senate elections..." timeframe:
* Almost all close Senate elections in 2020 will involve states that traditionally vote Republican, or in a few cases, are closely contested. This is where the GND begins, convincing voters that retrofitting buildings, providing solar and wind subsidies, planting trees, encouraging no-till agriculture, and cutting back on government waste (sh! mostly at the pentagon sh!) is the way to prosperity. That's the GND translated into Red state language.
* Come 2021, assuming a Democratic House, Senate and President, the GND becomes a massive investment in renewables, a reconfigured energy grid, and an end to all fossil fuel subsidies. And that's just Energy. How does this pass the Senate? The one-off Reconciliation process would likely be saved for returning the tax structure to 2016, plus a significant boost in higher rates. The GND itself is passed after the Senate votes to 1) impanel top scientists in numerous fields, and 2) consult those panels before key votes, as well as 3) lower the threshold to 50 votes for passing science-related bills backed by relevant panels.
There's also statehood for Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and perhaps other US territories, balancing the current Republican advantage in the Senate.
* For the 2022 elections, the GND is taken a notch higher.
This is the progressive way. What's hard to understand is that it starts with a crash course in speaking Red State. The initial hurdle to get to at least 50 Senate votes (and preferably many more) in 2020 is counter-intuitively dependent on temporarily toning down the GND's scope. But that's the reality of our present condition.
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