During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the US President Franklin Roosevelt
launched the famous New Deal to stimulate the economy.
After years of negative growth the program promised to boost employment and
investment through infrastructure projects, social security, housing,
expansion of credit, and direct interventions to boost prices and wages.
All in all the New Deal is widely perceived as a success. Even though it
was partially scaled back in 1937, many of the institutions it created persist
to this day, and following the 2008 financial crash many have argued for a
modern version. People have converged especially on a 'Green' New Deal to
combine boosting the economy with combatting climate change. The term was
apparently coined by - of all people - the columnist Thomas Friedman in 2007 in a
characteristically bizarre op-ed, where he declared "green is the new red, white,
and blue". What the hell?
In the UK the Green New Deal Group was formed to produce the first
detailed report setting out what the idea might look like. But the Green New
Deal was largely confined to progressive policy circles until US Representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made it popular. She drafted a bill which the US Senate
rejected in a largely cosmetic vote, but polls showed quite a lot of public
support for the idea. For a while the Green New Deal was receding from the
political spotlight, but the pandemic has sparked renewed interest in the idea for
a couple of reasons. The coronavirus itself is zoonotic
which means that it was transferred from animals to humans.
*whistling*
Doh! Ow! Gi-Ah!
A bat! Now that's a new one.
Zoonotic viruses have been linked to climate change and the destruction of natural habitats, which
cause animals to migrate into human areas and spread disease. Also, because
the lockdown measures initiated it to fight the pandemic have effectively
paused the global economy, this has allowed us to take stock of what
direction we want it to head in while we stay at home. There are also concerns
about avoiding an 'emissions spike' when we come out of the pandemic.
Today I want to talk to you about the Green New Deal
and some of the debates within it. There are
some really important questions about how radical these changes need to be to
avoid environmental collapse. Because coverage of the Green New Deal can
sometimes be vague I've tried to be specific about the policies needed. What
I'm not going to do is debate whether climate change exists or that some kind
of drastic action needs to be taken. More prominent YouTubers than I have
already done this and I expect that if you follow this channel you probably
don't need convincing. However, I will start with a brief recap of the problem
to refresh your memory. So....
Here we go!
Preventing catastrophic climate change over the
next few years is going to be no mean feat. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change estimates that to stay within a global temperature increase of
1.5 degrees centigrade, the world will need to achieve net zero carbon
emissions by 2050 - and almost half of that must be done 10 years from now. This
will require investment in clean energy to the tune of about two and a half
percent of global GDP every year, about two point four trillion dollars or just
under the entire GDP of the UK. In absence of this kind of drastic action
we will see a whole host of negative consequences. In his viral article
The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells lays out the scale of what will
unfold if we fail to act. These include familiar problems like
rising sea levels leading to floods in low-lying areas; extreme temperatures
making some areas uninhabitable and others merely very difficult to live in;
droughts and famines; and the immediate health consequences of pollution. There
are also consequences we often fail to connect to climate change such as the
thawing of deadly diseases trapped in the Antarctic; increased conflict and
refugee crises; ocean dead zones releasing toxic gases; and such frequent
natural disasters that Wallace-Wells suggests we will just start calling them
"weather". The climate crisis reinforces global inequalities. Responsibility for
climate change lives largely with the richer countries, while those most
affected are in poorer countries. The emissions and resource usage of the G7
group of rich countries is roughly twice that of the rest of the globe, but it is
poorer, tropical countries that may be rendered uninhabitable. Something similar
is also true within countries, with the richest and whitest in my own country of
the UK generally responsible for more emissions - mostly owing to private travel.
The poorest contribute much less to emissions but live in the areas that are
least prepared for extreme weather events. The need for protection of these
vulnerable groups goes beyond hypotheticals. One major issue with the
original New Deal was that it excluded African Americans from many of its
benefits such as housing and Social Security, feeding the segregation of Jim
Crow and the low wealth of black communities today. The New Deal also
bought into and expanded the male breadwinner model, primarily creating
employment in typically male industries such as construction while women stayed
at home - a vision which is surely outdated today. The question is therefore
how to achieve zero emissions while ensuring that the richest bear the largest costs, the
poorest and most vulnerable are protected, and any sexist or racist
tendencies of the existing system are reduced rather than exacerbated. There
are two broad camps within this debate: the green growthers and the degrowthers.
Green growthers want to continue expanding the economy but make it environmentally
friendly, while degrowthers think that the economy needs to shrink - or at least not
grow any further - if we are to have any hope of staying within environmental
boundaries. A good way to understand the argument of degrowthers is through
Jevon's Paradox. In 1865 the economist Stanley Jevons observed that although
one might think increases in the efficiency of coal use lead people to
use less, they actually backfire. Even when people get more energy out of each
piece of coal the reduced price leads to increased demand so people use so much
more coal in total that this swamps the efficiency gains. Degrowthers points out
that over the years we have almost never seen GDP growth uncorrelated - or what
they call 'decoupled' - from environmental indicators such as greenhouse gas
emissions. The efficiency with which we use resources and generate energy
continually increases, but so does economic activity - and with it, the strain
on the environment. This is essentially Jevons paradox on a bigger scale. There
are a number of ways countries can hide their emissions and you have to watch
out for them in these debates. One is outsourcing pollutive production to other
countries which is how the US and UK have appeared to meet their emissions
targets even though their consumption based carbon footprint has exceeded them.
A thorough report named 'Decoupling Debunked' concluded that:
This seems like a strong argument against
green growth but the counter-argument is equally strong: there is no reason the
correlation between GDP and emissions is meaningful because GDP isn't a measure
of physical throughput, but one of market value. We've already seen on this channel
that a lot of arbitrary decisions and value judgments go into producing GDP
estimates, so it may not make sense to worry about this statistical monstrosity
over more concrete environmental indicators. The past may not be a good
guide to the future: in effect, the correlation between GDP and emissions is
a spurious result of the lack of effort to fight climate change over a
period in which measured GDP has been rising. Green growthers point to the
rapid decline in the cost of renewable energies such as solar and wind power,
which have massively exceeded expectations, as grounds for optimism.
Increasing investment in these areas in an equitable manner is completely
feasible. In the USA, subsidies to fossil fuels are currently seven times more
than subsidies to renewable energies. A report by the Roosevelt Institute has
suggested taxing these emissions instead of subsidising them and using the
proceeds to fund a progressive dividend. These taxes hit the poorest
hardest, so compensating people with this dividend would avoid the kind of
backlash we saw with the Yellow Vest Protests in France. Regulation also has a
key role to play. Licenses can stop being granted so that fossil fuels are left in
the ground, while other regulations can specify requirements for renewable
energy use. Still others directly require installing technologies - like grates or
converters - which can effect surprisingly large reductions in emissions. With these
types of measures achieving the IPCC targets is entirely within reach, and
this is not just true for the G7, but for countries like China and India too.
Interestingly both camps could argue that recent events give their case
renewed force. Green growthers believe the end of the pandemic will be an
opportunity to push through much-needed green investment, while counteracting the
downturn induced by the lockdown. For their part, degrowthers can point out
that the pandemic and lockdown have shown that many of us can, well, just stop,
and the world won't implode. A wind down of economic activity now feels not only
possible but desirable. It can sometimes seem like the differences between the
two sides of this debate are overstated. Both agree on a number of important things:
So is there some underlying difference here, or is it just a case of...
We believe that God's last prophet Bart
Simpson preached a message of tolerance and love. We believe The Holy Bart Man
preached a message of understanding and peace.
I'd like to offer a different interpretation of this debate: existing
coverage of the Green New Deal is overly focused on reducing greenhouse gas
emissions, and while this is understandable it may obscure broader
problems. Green growthers are probably more guilty of this but it's something almost
everyone does, and it does not make green growth proposals irrelevant. A good case
study to illustrate the problem is electric cars made by companies like
Tesla. As you probably know these cars aim to reduce emissions by using
electricity instead of burning petrol, and are thought of by many as a key part
of a carbon neutral and environmentally conscious future. However, their batteries
require Lithium, and in recent years demand for Lithium has tripled, owing to
electric cars as well as to mobile and laptop batteries. This has been linked to
massive growth of Lithium farms in Northern Chile, which has decimated the
local area, draining water reserves, disrupting ecosystems, and affecting
local farmers. This is just one example where a narrow focus on emissions may
lead to neglecting other parts of the environment - not to mention people.
I think of this problem as like a lump of air under the carpet: pushing it down
will only make another one appear elsewhere. I'm confident that with the
right amount of political will we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero
by 2050 because the technology has advanced very fast and policy has been
shown to be quite effective. Perhaps other environmental problems could be
stopped or prevented at least - at certain times and in certain places - but these
will always involve some form of displacement. When cars replaced horses,
manure became much less of an environmental problem but was replaced
by CO2. If electric cars replaced petrol cars, CO2 may no longer be a problem but
the extraction of Lithium and other key minerals will be. In the aforementioned
report on decoupling, the authors do not limit themselves to greenhouse gas
emissions. Usage of resources and energy - which are ultimately, limited - have also
risen both overall and per person during the last century. One review found that
of 69 minerals, only six had experienced an absolute
decline in usage between 1960 and 2010. Renewable energies are ten times more
mineral intensive than non-renewables, and mineral extraction is associated
with increased conflict. For example, the war in Congo, which has killed millions
over the past few decades, has been linked to the demand for cobalt - another
key ingredient in, you guessed it, electric cars and mobiles.
There are also environmental feedback loops which are equally as dangerous as
global warming but are less often emphasized, such as species extinction. An
example you've probably heard of are bees. Without their pollination most of
our food systems would be completely useless. Many insect populations face
extinction and this is not just because of rising temperatures but is due to the
techniques and chemicals used by industrial agriculture. Changing this
could entail planting multiple instead of single crops, which is much better for
the local ecosystem over the long term. The Roosevelt Institute report makes a
number of other proposals for reforming agriculture which would go some way to
reducing its impact on the environment. The issue is therefore bigger than
climate change and its cause is not so much GDP itself but the structure of
production, which currently seeks to expand constantly and needs resources to
do so. As long as our economy is focused on accumulation - and this is true whether
it's done by the public or private sector - it will always find new ways to
exploit and damage the environment. You have to change how and what things are
produced if you are to have any hope of preventing environmental collapse.
Oh my god! Okay it's happening. Everybody stay calm, everybody stay calm, STAY F***ING CALM! Everybody just F***ING CALM DOWN!
There are a few different ways people have proposed to do this. Declines in working
hours are a straightforward way to reduce the level of production while
taxing, regulating, and eventually banning core pollute of industries is another.
Many of the pandemic bailouts of major polluting companies could and should
have been accompanied by wiping out the shareholders and installing management
that would enable this process where necessary - but more wide-ranging changes
than these are needed. One idea is to shift the economy from capital intensive
to labor intensive production. In his book 'Prosperity Without Growth' Tim
Jackson identifies services like health and education as relying more on people
and less on resources, and therefore as crucial to an environmentally
sustainable future. Housework and care is another
such area, and a Universal Basic Income would make sure they were rewarded and
valued. As most of these labour-intensive services are disproportionately carried
out by women, this would go some way to rectifying the male centric nature of
existing Green New Deal proposals. But that doesn't mean men would be left
behind. Many environmentally regenerative jobs are both male-dominated and labour-
intensive such as retrofitting houses, flood preparedness, and reforestation.
Additionally, a Universal Basic Income would organically ensure that those
workers in declining industries were supported too - even if that meant them
doing absolutely nothing.
Didn't you wonder why you were getting cheques for doing absolutely nothing?
I figured 'cos the Democrats were in power again.
It's obviously not the case that we can all just stay at home or teach each other.
Material goods must be produced, and capital must be used, unless we are to revert to
hunter-gatherer lifestyles. The anarchist Murray Bookchin discusses how a lot of
machinery these days is used for a single purpose,
but could be easily tweaked so that localised production facilities were
multi-purpose and could serve the needs of the community. More generally it seems
localism has a role to play in improving our relationship with nature. Community
wealth building is an idea which has taken off in recent years, exemplified by
the Preston Model. During a period of national austerity in the UK, the Preston
authorities chose to invest more in the local economy, making sure public funds
went to local firms and attaching conditions to bigger companies moving
into the area. They took control of local assets such as land and housing to
pursue social and economic goals. Community wealth building is a huge area
and I won't be able to do it justice here, so I'll just point out that it can
embed a number of environmentally conscious practices. Making supply chains
more local reduces transportation - there is also a growing move towards green
infrastructure, which provides resilience against floods, cleaner air, and aids the
natural water cycle. There are many more such ideas and their common theme is
that they work with nature rather than trying to conquer it. This might start to
sound like we'll all be living in hippie communes but actually this isn't implied at
all. The existence of cities, workplaces, and many of the comforts we enjoy today
could easily continue. But the level of geographic concentration; conspicuous or
wasteful consumption habits; and harmful production techniques simply have to
change. Ultimately we do not know exactly what moving in this
direction would lead to, but almost every one of these examples exists and has
been shown to be successful. We must make sure that any Green New Deal proposals
incorporate these types of measures to wind-down economic activity, and embed it
better into the environment. Otherwise it risks substituting one set of
environmental problems for another. Thanks for listening to this video.
Please let me know what you think of the Green New Deal and the growth versus
degrowth debate.