Written by John
McCollum and first published at Marxist
sociology blog
The Green
New Deal is an exciting social program generating a great deal of
interest on the left. Like its predecessor, the New Deal of President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the GND holds out the promise of preventing the
worst effects of anthropogenic climate change, and guaranteeing a better
standard of living for its participants. Presumably, it would be large
enough to put upward pressure on wages in the private sector or be a guarantee
of employment and includes increased federal spending on renewable energy, social
democratic guarantees of a living wage, and other forms of environmental
cleanup.
For the Marxist
left, the GND is an object of considerable interest, both politically and
academically. Many of the popular left-leaning and socialist publications
in the US, including Jacobin and Current Affairs,
have published extensive analyses of the
GND for a wider audience. As more Americans realize the need for a
decisive break with capitalism, the GND offers an opportunity for the US public
to challenge political and economic orthodoxy, to say nothing of the potential
to avert climate catastrophe and raise the living standards of the working
class.
It also offers
a positive social imaginary to counter the prevailing “doom and gloom” of
catastrophic climate change predictions. The GND also promises to close
racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities. Indigenous activists have also
drafted their own plan, the Red Deal, to
address the environmental and economic struggles of indigenous peoples in the
United States. A recent addition to
the GND through the Sanders’ presidential campaign and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s
office includes decarbonized, affordable housing.
To the credit
of the GND’s supporters and their efforts to promote it, a wide swathe of the US
population is interested in the program, according to recent polling.
A broad segment of the working class, including many self-declared Republicans,
finds the idea of environmental sustainability and a decent living standard
enticing. The GND holds out hope of challenging neoliberal doctrines and
bringing a large portion of the economy under democratic control.
Eliminating the “reserve army of labor” through a jobs guarantee would
massively increase labor’s bargaining power. Similarly, such a bill could
lead to a “just transition”, nationalizing fossil fuels en route to complete decarbonization
of energy.
Despite this
good news, there are some reasons for hesitation. There are some issues
surrounding the Green New Deal that the left needs to broadly consider coming
out of the eco-Marxist left, especially the scholarship and writing of John
Bellamy Foster and the “treadmill of production” theorists, including Allan
Schnaiberg, David Pellow, and Kenneth Gould. Second, we must consider the
likelihood of the state becoming the main engine of this movement, rather than
private capital, replacing our prevailing system of production with a
“state-sponsored” green capitalism.
I consider the
GND’s limits in the most optimistic and open spirit, and I hope that this piece
will help to write a more effective program. The political opportunities
opened by such a plan are something to celebrate, but if the GND ultimately
worsens the climate crisis, the Deal will hardly have been worth the political
capital spent in passing it into law. For this reason, I hope leftists of
all orientations will take a moment to consider these critiques.
The dangers
of expanded production and consumption
One of the most
prominent theories in environmental sociology is the “treadmill of production”
theory pioneered by Allan Schnaiberg in his 1980 The Environment:
From Surplus to Scarcity, and expanded
upon with his frequent collaborators Kenneth Gould and David
Pellow. This theory holds that demands by both capital and labor to
expand economic production create new and greater forms of waste.
Similarly, this pressure promotes more efficient use of resources.
However, this efficiency incentivizes further net consumption.
This “Jevon’s
Paradox” was first demonstrated in 1865 by William Stanley Jevons in
Britain’s improvements in steam engines resulting in faster consumption of the
country’s coal supplies. A similar phenomenon prevails with small cars in
the US today. Take, for instance, the gain in “miles per gallon”
efficiencies in personal automobiles. Although the
fuel efficiencies of most vehicles have risen dramatically since the 1970s,
the addition of millions more automobiles and the increased distances Americans
commute mean that Americans
are consuming more gasoline than ever before.
The treadmill
of production idea becomes relevant in the context of the GND because of the
gains in energy production efficiency, as well as the program’s proposed
investments in the expansion of public transportation and “clean” manufacturing
methods. The efficiency gains of a nation-wide energy efficiency program
can be undone by a total increase in material inputs.
Examining
renewables in greater detail, wind turbines and solar panels produce a host
of environmental externalities. Both technologies rely on the
availability of rare
earth metals. Their manufacturing and disposal generate other forms
of toxic pollutants. Also, converting land from either “natural” usage to
land for renewables will also have a variety of environmental externalities,
exemplified by solar farms in California’s deserts, which have displaced native
species like the desert
tortoise.
Another issue
resulting from this practice will be a widening of the “metabolic rift” between
global regions and between the natural metabolism of the earth and humanity’s
production and consumption of natural resources. John Bellamy
Foster’s work on
the “metabolic rift” derives from Marx’s Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844 and Marx’s attendant interest in the widening gap
between “town and country.”
Marx studied
the developments in agricultural science and soil chemistry during his era and
noted the tendency of capitalism’s material demands to outstrip nature’s
restorative capacities. As the natural fertility of soil declined,
agricultural producers came to rely on distant sources of nitrogen-based
fertilizers. This shift led to a “metabolic rift” in the spatial distribution
of soil nutrients and a temporal rupture in the earth’s natural cycles of soil
fertility.
The GND
threatens to reproduce this gap. To use a single example, though the US
has some deposits, the rare earth metals used in solar panels and wind turbines
will come from Global South states where mining and
processing these minerals poses great risks to human health and the
environment. The benefits of using these materials in renewable
technologies will not be seen by the citizens of those countries where
extraction occurs.
The GND’s
agricultural methods hold some promise of making major gains in de-carbonizing
the US’s agricultural system, but the movement of soil fertility around the US
as agricultural goods made in one region move to another still would widen the
spatial and temporal elements of the metabolic rift.
At present, it
does not appear that the GND is dealing with the contradictions of the
treadmill of production and a widening metabolic rift. The “treadmill of
production” poses yet another problem though: the contradiction of
continually expanding production to meet the systemic demands of capital to
accumulate and workers’ attendant dependence on this cycle for wages.
Production of “green” things may need to expand continually to generate
employment and welfare benefits for workers.
Workers in a
new state sector could find themselves dependent on this expansion, just as
they would have under private capital. Although “green”, this expanded production
will recreate the environmental problems the GND is meant to end. Getting
off this treadmill is going to require more than just vigorous investment by
the state in green infrastructure. Next, I turn to the GND’s potential to
create a state-sponsored green capitalism.
The creation
of a green fraction of capital
The GND is
consciously modelled on the New Deal of the 1930s. The New Deal saw an
expansion of social programs benefiting wide swathes of the working
class. Social Security was lifted wholesale from socialist
programs. Farm aid encouraged both recovery from environmental problems
like the Dust Bowl and debt relief for poor farmers. Infrastructural
development raised wages and boosted further growth. In terms of arts and
culture, working people were mobilized into new forms of cultural production
celebrating working-class identity. The general agitation during this
period by the broad left pushed these programs forward despite the opposition
of powerful factions of the capitalist class in the United States.
Despite this
legacy, the New Deal preserved capitalism during one of its most dire crises to
date; the GND may perform a similar regulatory function. One of the
boosts the GND is likely to give to capital is through state investment through
private partnerships. The GND does not propose the creation of state
ownership of utilities, much less agriculture, housing, or medical care.
Similarly, the bill has provisions for energy upgrades through refurbishing
existing buildings, environmental cleanup, and an unusual provision to “ensure
businesspersons are free from unfair competition.”
Without further
establishing state ownership over these sectors, many of these provisions are
going to add value to existing private property or rely on contractors to do
the work, paid for by large sums of public money. Although the GND
provides decent employment and these emission reduction programs are
desperately needed, much of this activity will generate further wealth in
private hands if not performed by the state. The present electoral left
may not be capable of enacting or want to deliver on this revolutionary goal.
The Green New
Deal could end up following a similar course of initial interest, growth, and
collapse. However, a “Green” New Deal has other social and environmental
goals which need to be considered. As environmental degradation
continues, compromise measures that do not lead to drastic cuts in greenhouse
gases, mining and processing of non-renewable energy sources, and losses of biodiversity
will not suffice. However, such activities might provide some degree of
environmental stability that will enable capital to continue its dominance.
John McCollum is an assistant professor of sociology at Minot State University.
