Written by Don
Fitz and first published at Green
Social Thought
The Green New
Deal has attracted perhaps the greatest attention of any proposal for decades.
It would guarantee Medicare-for-All, Housing-for-All, student loan forgiveness
and propose the largest economic growth in human history to address
unemployment and climate change.
But the last of
these hits a stumbling block. Creation of all forms of energy
contributes to the destruction of nature and human life. It is possible to
increase the global quality of life at the same time we reduce the use of
fossil fuels and other sources of energy. Therefore, a “deep” GND would focus
on energy reduction, otherwise known as energy conservation.
Decreasing total energy use is a prerequisite for securing human existence.
Recognizing
True Dangers
Fossil fuel
(FF) dangers are
well-known and include the destruction of Life via global heating. FF problems
also include land grabs from indigenous peoples, farmers, and communities
throughout the world as well as the poisoning of air from burning and
destruction of terrestrial and aquatic life from spills. But those who focus on
climate change tend to minimize very real danger of other types of energy
production. A first step in developing a genuine GND is to acknowledge the
destructive potential of “alternative energy” (AltE).
Nuclear
power (nukes). Though
dangers of nuclear disasters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and
Fukushima are horrific, problems with the rest of its life cycle are often
glossed over. Mining, milling, and transporting radioactive material to supply
nukes with fuel and “dispose” of it exposes entire communities to poisoning
that results in a variety of cancers. Though operation of nukes produces few
greenhouse gases (GHGs), enormous quantities are released during production of
steel, cement and other materials for building nuclear plants. They must be
located next to water (for cooling), which means their discharge of hot water
is an attack on aquatic life. Radioactive waste from nukes, kept in caskets for
30-50 years, threatens to poison humanity not for decades or centuries, but for
millennia (or eternity), which makes nukes at least as dangerous as FFs.
Inclusion of nuclear power as
part of a GND is not the slightest bit green. The only way to address
nuclear power is how to abolish it as rapidly as possible while causing the
least harm to those who depend on it for energy and income.
Solar power requires manufacturing processes
with chemicals which are highly toxic to those who work with them. Even before
production begins, many different minerals must be mined and processed,
which endangers
workers and communities while destroying wildlife habitat. Additional
minerals must be obtained for batteries. Once solar systems are used, they are
discarded into large toxic dumps. Though few GHGs are created during use of
solar panels, large amounts are created during their life cycle.
Wind power creates its own syndrome of
nerve-wracking vibrations for those living next to “wind farms,” along with
even larger issues with disposal of 160-foot blades. Like solar farms, wind
farms undermine ecosystems where they are located. The life cycle of wind power
includes toxic
radioactive elements to produce circular rotation of blades.
Hydro-power from dams hurts
terrestrial as well as aquatic life by altering the flow of river
water. Dams undermine communities whose culture center around water and
animals. Dams destroy farms. They exacerbate international conflicts when
rivers flow through multiple countries, threaten the lives
of construction workers, and result in collapses which can kill over
100,000 people at a time.
Several
problems run through multiple AltE systems:
- Despite claims of “zero emissions,”
every type of AltE requires large amounts of FFs during their life cycle;
- Every type of AltE is deeply
intertwined with attacks on civil liberties, land grabs from indigenous
communities, and/or murders of Earth defenders;
- Many have cost overruns which
undermine the budgets of communities tricked into financing them.
- Transmission lines require
additional land grabs, squashing of citizen and community rights, and
increased species extinctions; and,
- Since the most available resources
(such as uranium for nukes, sunny land for solar arrays, mountain tops for
wind farms, rivers for dams) are used first, each level of expansion
requires a greater level of resource use than the previous one, which
means the harvesting of AltE is increasingly
harmful as time goes by.
Taking into
account the extreme problems of the life cycle of every type of energy
extraction leads to the following requirements for a genuine GND: Nuclear
energy must be halted as quickly and as safely as possible with employment
replacement. FF extraction should be dramatically reduced immediately (perhaps
by 70-90% of 2020 levels) and be reduced 5-10% annually for the next 10 years
thereafter. Rather than being increased, extraction for other forms of energy should
be reduced (perhaps 2-5% annually).
Since honesty
requires recognition that every form of energy becomes more destructive with
time, the critical question for a deep GND is: “How do we reduce energy use
while increasing employment and the necessities of life?”
The Naming
of Things
But before
exploring how to increase employment while reducing production, it is necessary
to clean up some greenwashing language that has become common in recent years.
Decades ago,
Barry Commoner used the phrase “linguistic detoxification” to describe the way
corporations come up with a word or phrase to hide the true nature of an
ecological obscenity. One of the best examples is the nuclear industry’s term “spent
fuel rods” which implies that, once used, fuel rods are not radioactive,
when, in fact, they are so deadly that they must be guarded for eternity. An
accurate term would be “irradiated fuel rods.”
Perhaps the
classic example is the way agribusiness came up with “biosolids” for renaming
animal sewage sludge containing dioxin, asbestos, lead, and DDT. As John
Stauber and Sheldon Rampton describe in Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (1995),
industry persuaded the Environmental Protection Agency to reclassify hazardous animal waste to “Class A
fertilizer” biosolids so they could be dumped on fields where food is
grown.
Rather than
preserving traditions of early environmentalists, many current proponents of
AltE use the terms “clean” and “renewable” to describe energy which is neither.
AltE is not “clean” due to the many GHG emissions throughout the life cycle of
all types of energy in addition to assaults on ecosystems and human health.
Though the sun, wind and river power may be eternal, products that must be
mined are very much exhaustible, meaning that no form of AltE is renewable.
An honest GND
would never refer to AltE as either “clean” or “renewable.” Such a GND proposal
would advocate the reduction of FFs but would not suggest a goal 0% of FFs by
such-and-such a date because it is unattainable. Every type of AltE requires
FFs. While it may be possible to produce some steel and some cement
by AltE, it is impossible to produce massive quantities of energy for the
entire world with AltE. Instead, a genuine GND would explain that the only form
of clean energy is less energy and specify
ways to use less energy while improving the quality of life.
A genuine GND
would never imply that FFs are the only source of monstrously negative effects.
Privileging AltE corporations over FF corporations is stating that
environmental problems will be solved by choosing one clique of capitalists
over another. This means that (a) if FFs should be nationalized, then all
mining, milling and manufacturing processes to produced materials needed for
AltE should be nationalized; and, (b) if FFs should remain in the ground, then
all components for operating nuclear plants, dams, solar facilities and wind
farms should also remain in the ground.
A Shorter
Work Week for All
The greatest
contradiction in current versions of the GND is advocating environmental
improvement while having the most massive increase in production the world has
ever seen. These two goals are completely irreconcilable. A progressive GND
would address this enigma via shortening the work week, which would reduce
environmental damage by using less energy.
It is quite odd
that versions of the GND call for Medicare-for-All, Housing-for-All, Student
Loan Forgiveness-for-All; but none of them suggest a Shorter-Work-Week-for-All.
The absence of this old progressive demand could be due to the incorrect
neoliberal assumption that the best way to solve unemployment is via increased
production.
Increased
production of goods cannot create a long-term increase in employment. (It
was WW
II and not Roosevelt’s New Deal that consistently
increased employment.) US
production increased 300-fold from 1913 to 2013.
If employment had increased at the same pace, everyone would be working at
dozens of jobs today.
Unemployment
increases from recent economic disruptions like the 2008 financial crisis and
Covid in 2020 were due to the inability to shift work from some areas of the
economy to others. A planned shrinking of the economy would require including
the entire workforce in deciding to shift from negative to positive employment.
As the work
week is reduced, every group of workers should evaluate what it does, how labor
is organized, and how jobs should be redefined so that full employment is
preserved. The only part of this idea which is novel is making changes democratically
– job categories continuously change, with some types of work shrinking (or
disappearing entirely) and other types of work expanding or coming into
existence. Just as economic growth does not guarantee increases in employment,
economic shrinking need not worsen unemployment if the work week is shortened.
However, a
shorter work week will not accomplish environmental goals if it is accompanied
by an “intensification of labor” (such as requiring workers at Amazon to handle
more packages per hour or increasing class size for teachers). This means that
a genuine GND requires workers’ forming strong unions which have a central role
in determining what is produced as well as working conditions.
Producing
According to Need Instead of According to Profit
If a core part
of a GND becomes a shorter work week (without speed-up), the question naturally
arises: “Will lowering the amount of production result in people going without
basic necessities of life?” It is important to understand that production for
profit causes the manufacture of goods that have no part of improving our
lives.
Current
versions of the GND are based on the neoliberal assumption that the best way to
provide for necessities of life is through increased payments for purchases
(ie, market economics). A progressive GND would advocate that the best way to
provide the necessities of life is by guaranteeing them as human rights. This
is often referred so as replacing individual wages with “social wages.” For
example, the neoliberal approach to healthcare is offering medical insurance
while a progressive approach is to offer medical care directly (without giving
a cut to insurance companies). Likewise, a neoliberal GND would offer cash for
food, housing, transportation, education and other necessities while a
progressive GND would provide them directly to people. Green economics must be
based on making dollar amounts less important by replacing individual wages
with social wages.
Current
versions of the GND seek to provide necessities by increasing the quantity of
products rather than focusing on creating things that are useful, reliable and
durable. A massive increase in production is an unnecessary attack on
ecosystems when there is already much more production than required to provide
essentials for everyone on the planet. Needs are not being met because of
production which …
- …is negative, including
war materials, police forces and production which destroys farmland and
habitat (all of which should be reduced immediately);
- …is wasteful, which
includes both (a) playthings of the richest 1%, and (b) things which many
of us are forced to buy for survival and getting to work, the most notable
being cars;
- …requires unnecessary processing
and transportation, the most notable example being food which is processed
to lose nutritional value, packaged to absurd levels, and shipped over
1000 miles before being consumed; and,
- …involves planned
obsolescence, including design to fall apart or go out of style.
One important
aspect of reducing production is often ignored. Each product manufactured must
have a repairability index. At a minimum, criteria
for the index should include (a) availability of technical documents
to aid in repair, (b) ease of disassembly, (c) availability of spare parts, (d)
price of spare parts, and (e) repair issues specific to the class of products.
The index should become a basis for strengthening production requirements each
year. A durablility index should similarly be developed and
strengthened annually. Since those who do the labor of manufacturing products
are more likely than owners or stockholders to attain knowledge of how to make
commodities that are more reliable and durable, they must have the right to
make their knowledge public without repercussions from management.
There will
always be differences of opinion regarding what is needed versus what is merely
desired. A progressive GND should state how those decisions would be made. A
major cause of unnecessary production is that decisions concerning what to
manufacture and standards for creating them are made by investors and corporate
bosses rather than community residents and workers manufacturing them. A
genuine GND would confront problems regarding what is produced by involving all
citizens in economic decisions, and not merely the richest.
Reparations!
Perhaps the
issue which is least likely to be linked to the GND is reparations to poor
communities in Africa, Latin America, and Asia who have been victims of Western
imperialism for 500 years. This connection forces us to ask: “Since most
minerals necessary for AltE lie in poor countries, will rich countries continue
to plunder their resources, exterminate what remains of indigenous cultures,
force inhabitants to work for a pittance, jail and kill those who resist,
destroy farmland, and leave the country a toxic wasteland for generations to
come?”
For example,
plans to massively expand electric vehicles (EVs) undermine the vastly more
sustainable approach of urban redesign for walkable/cyclable communities. Plans
would result in manufacturing EVs for the rich world while poor and working
class communities would suffer from the extraction of lithium,
cobalt and dozens of other materials required for these cars.
Africa may be
the most mineral-rich continent. In addition to cobalt from
the Democratic Republic of the Congo for EVs, Mali is
the source of 75% of the uranium for French nukes, Zambia is
mined for copper for AltE and hundreds of other minerals are taken from dozens
of African countries.
If there are to
be agreements involving corporations seeking minerals for AltE, who will those
agreements be with? Will the agreements be between the ultra-rich owners of the
Western empire and its puppet governments? Or, will extraction agreements be
with villages and communities which will be most affected by removal of
minerals for the production of energy?
Discussions of
relationships between rich and poor countries make much of having “free,
prior and informed consent” prior to an extraction project. Such an
agreement is far from reality because (a) corporate and governmental bodies are
so mired in corruption that they contaminate bodies which define and judge the
meaning of “free, prior and informed,” (b) no prediction of the effects of
extraction can be “informed” since it is impossible to know what the
interaction of the multitude of physical, chemical, biological and ecological
factors will be prior to extraction taking place, and (c) affected communities
are typically bullied into accepting extraction because they fear that families
will die from starvation, lack of medical care or unemployment if they do not
do so. Thus, the following are essential components of a socially just GND:
- Reparations which are sufficient to
eliminate poverty must be paid prior to signing
extraction agreements; and,
- Every community must have the right
to terminate an extraction agreement at any stage of the project.
This is where
the other meaning of “deep” comes in. When people hear “deep green,” they often
think of how industrial activity deeply affects ecosystems. “Deep” can also
refer to having a deep respect for poor communities whose lives are most
affected by extraction. Respect is not deep if it is unwilling to accept an
answer of “No” to a request for exorbitant, profit-gouging extraction. Peoples
across the world may decide that since they have received so little for so
long, it may be time for rich countries to share the wealth they have stolen
and dig up new wealth much, much more slowly.
A New Green
Culture
Just to make
sure that it is clear and not forgotten, the fundamental question regarding
extraction of material needed for AltE is: “Will rich countries continue to
plunder minerals underneath or adjacent to poor communities at a rate that
corporations decide? Will they expect poor communities to be satisfied with a
vague promise that, for the very first time, great things will happen after the
plundering? Or should reparations be fully paid for past and current
plundering, with poor communities deciding how much extraction they will allow
and at what speed?”
Essential for
building a New Green World is the creation of a New Green Culture which asks
all of the billions of people on the planet to share their ideas for obtaining
the necessities of life while using less energy. Such a culture would aim for
one idea to spark to many ideas, all of which strive more toward living
together than on inventing energy-guzzling gadgets.
In order to
build a New Green Culture which puts the sharing of wealth above personal greed,
several things that must happen:
1. To bring billions of people out of
economic misery, every country should establish a maximum income which
is a multiple of the minimum income, with that multiple being voted on (no less
than every five years) by all living in the country.
2. Every country should establish
a maximum wealth which is a multiple of the minimum wealth,
with that multiple being voted on (no less than every five years) by all living
in the country.
3. Global reparations,
including sharing wealth and technological know-how between rich and poor
countries, is essential for overcoming past and ongoing effects of imperialism.
Establishing maximum incomes and maximum wealth possession within countries
must be quickly followed by establishing such maximum levels between countries.
A core problem
of current versions of the GND is that they propose to solve employment, social
justice and energy problems with increased production, which is not necessary
to solve any of these. Attempts to solve problems by increasing wealth feeds
into the corporate culture of greed and become a barrier to creation of a New
Green Culture. Increasing production beyond what is necessary increases
environmental problems that threaten the Earth. It tells those who are already
rich that they should grab more, more and more. It tells those who are not rich
that happiness depends upon the possession of objects. The survival of Humanity
depends on the building of a green culture that prizes sharing above all else.
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