The Green New Deal
Same as the Green Old Deal
Freshman U. S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who surprised everyone this Thursday by joining U. S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on the short list of women spontaneously declaring themselves to be Indians, also Thursday introduced a new House resolution, “Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.”
The resolution is ridiculous. The goal it sets is the transformation of America into a quasi socialist state within ten years. And it’s been badly received. People sympathetic to its objective are casting it as dreaming too many impossible dreams at once, while people opposing it are celebrating an early birthday of unusually excellent presents.
The preamble of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal enumerates seven Whereas’s. The first could be called the “We’re all going to die” whereas. The second could be called the “And the United States is largely to blame” whereas. The fifth is a sop, terse boilerplate about climate change being a national security threat, to the heartless right. I skipped the third and fourth, but here they are:
Whereas the United States is currently experiencing several related crises, with—
(1) life expectancy declining while basic needs, such as clean air, clean water, healthy food, and adequate health care, housing, transportation, and education, are inaccessible to a significant portion of the United States population;
(2) a 4-decade trend of wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and antilabor policies that has led to—
(A) hourly wages overall stagnating since the 1970s despite increased worker productivity;
(B) the third-worst level of socioeconomic mobility in the developed world before the Great Recession;
(C) the erosion of the earning and bargaining power of workers in the United States; and
(D) inadequate resources for public sector workers to confront the challenges of climate change at local, State, and Federal levels; and
(3) the greatest income inequality since the 1920s, with—
(A) the top 1 percent of earners accruing 91 percent of gains in the first few years of economic recovery after the Great Recession;
(B) a large racial wealth divide amounting to a difference of 20 times more wealth between the average white family and the average black family; and
(C) a gender earnings gap that results in women earning approximately 80 percent as much as men, at the median;
Whereas climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction have exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices (referred to in this preamble as “systemic injustices”) by disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preamble as “frontline and vulnerable communities”);
If the preamble of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal were being read aloud at a planetary emergency meeting, at this point, someone would interrupt. He or she would note that time was short and the speaker was getting into the weeds. And what does “wage stagnation” have to do with saving the planet?
The question would be rhetorical, and the answer would be “nothing.”
To be fair to Ocasio-Cortez, her Green New Deal is about more than saving the planet. But all legislation purporting to save the planet is about more than saving the planet.
The preamble of the Paris Agreement isn’t overly long, and recognizing that I need to quote so much of it, in pursuit of writing this essay, and acknowledging that most people have never seen it, please allow me to fully quote it:
The Parties to this Agreement,
Being Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, hereinafter referred to as “the Convention”,
Pursuant to the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action established by decision 1/CP.17 of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention at its seventeenth session,
In pursuit of the objective of the Convention, and being guided by its principles, including the principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances,
Recognizing the need for an effective and progressive response to the urgent threat of climate change on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge,
Also recognizing the specific needs and special circumstances of developing country Parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, as provided for in the Convention,
Taking full account of the specific needs and special situations of the least developed countries with regard to funding and transfer of technology,
Recognizing that Parties may be affected not only by climate change, but also by the impacts of the measures taken in response to it,
Emphasizing the intrinsic relationship that climate change actions, responses and impacts have with equitable access to sustainable development and eradication of poverty,
Recognizing the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts of climate change,
Taking into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities,
Acknowledging that climate change is a common concern of humankind, Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity,
Recognizing the importance of the conservation and enhancement, as appropriate, of sinks and reservoirs of the greenhouse gases referred to in the Convention,
Noting the importance of ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems, including oceans, and the protection of biodiversity, recognized by some cultures as Mother Earth, and noting the importance for some of the concept of “climate justice”, when taking action to address climate change,
Affirming the importance of education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information and cooperation at all levels on the matters addressed in this Agreement,
Recognizing the importance of the engagements of all levels of government and various actors, in accordance with respective national legislations of Parties, in addressing climate change,
Also recognizing that sustainable lifestyles and sustainable patterns of consumption and production, with developed country Parties taking the lead, play an important role in addressing climate change,
Have agreed as follows:
Notice that the Paris Agreement contemplates, from the very beginning, “eradication of poverty”; “food security and ending hunger”; “a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs”; and respecting, promoting and considering “obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity.”
Note. That last “respecting, promoting and considering” part might have punctuation issues, but I quoted it verbatim because I’m not sure if or how it should be fixed.
Less conveniently quoted, most of the balance of the Paris Agreement preamble contemplates a socialization of nations and might be best summed up as “from each according to its ability, to each according to its needs.”
Maybe the reason all the legislation and grand schemes purporting to rescue the earth from this latest impending catastrophe read more like socialist manifestos than serious, emergency plans, and the reason socialism will remain inconveniently woven into anything new that’s offered, is because the impending catastrophe gives socialist activists something they haven’t had in a long time: the possibility of revolution. Americans don’t want a fundamental transformation of their country, taken as their economy and their manner of living, for example; and their response to socialist activists has cooled from an alarmed distrust to an irritably bored “no.” (Americans support safety-net styled programs, taken one at a time, that are socialist enough; but not an ideologically constrained restructuring.) To hold the apocalypse at stave’s end, though, transformation is required, asserts the hope. I would expect an always passionate, always frustrated socialist activist like Ocasio-Cortez to hold tightly onto the idea of anthropogenic global warming until it burned both her hands.
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The sixth and seventh whereas’s of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal:
Whereas the Federal Government-led mobilizations during World War II and the New Deal created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen, but many members of frontline and vulnerable communities were excluded from many of the economic and societal benefits of those mobilizations; and
Whereas the House of Representatives recognizes that a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era is a historic opportunity—
(1) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States;
(2) to provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States; and
(3) to counteract systemic injustices: Now, therefore, be it
And something by Jonah Goldberg: “Everyone a Conscript: Metaphorical wars, drummed-up crises, and the link between statism and one-nation politics”
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