To fight climate change, a better Green New Deal is needed

Drawing attention to the flaws of the Green New Deal (GND) is not to cast doubt upon the exigency of acting to combat climate change. The time to have acted is long past; yet the consequences of failing to act now are too great. If the GND isn't the answer, what is? Sorting through the increasingly dire warning of catastrophe in store due to anthropomorphic climate change has become a numbing exercise. In its most recent assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut between 40 percent and 60 percent of 2010 levels by 2030 to avoid a nightmare scenario. After years of torpor, Americans are awakening to the threat, spurred on by seemingly permanent drought affecting wide swaths of the country, horrifically destructive hurricanes, fires destroying areas the size of Rhode Island and the melting of a Greenland ice shelf three times the size of Texas that could raise sea levels along the eastern seaboard to above snorkeling depth. Mosquito-borne pestilence could threaten the health of millions of Americans. A recent survey by Yale University and Virginia's George Mason University found 69 percent of Americans are now somewhat worried or very worried about climate change. Headlining the GND resolutions introduced in Congress is the call for a 10-year national mobilization aimed at reaching net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030, when 100 percent of the nation's power would be sourced from renewable and other zero-emissions resources. Energy efficiency upgrades would be made to every home and building in the country accompanied by greening of the nation's infrastructure and transportation system. Also called for are guarantees of universal health care and education and food security noble aspirations but perhaps included more to attract support than to decarbonize and foster climate resiliency. The core problems with the GND are practical and political. There's the fundamental question of feasibility. Vibrant Clean Energy estimates the cost of achieving the 2030 net-zero goal at almost $1.7 trillion annually equal to about 9 percent of U.S. GDP and 40 percent of annual federal spending. This is a conservative estimate by a firm that advises the renewable energy industry on managing solar and wind assets. Higher estimates have been proffered by less sanguine constituencies. Holding constant for Social Security and Medicare, spending on the GND at these levels would crowd out almost everything else the federal government does. Despite Americans' newfound appetite for raising taxes, there's no politically palatable level of taxation that would solve this. Investments in industries made redundant by the GND would become worthless, depleting retirement accounts. And large numbers of workers would find themselves displaced, many without the skills needed to fill jobs in the newly ascendant greener industries. Cutting transportation emissions would require downsizing suburbia to achieve greater densities so commuters would not have to travel as far to work, reducing millions of homes' values. There's more, but you get the point. It's a recipe for unraveling hard-earned public awakening about the need to get serious about climate change. The place to start with a practicable national climate action program is with a carbon tax or cap-and-trade mandate. There's no rocket science here carbon pricing is a known quantity. Taxing carbon incentivizes economy-wide decarbonization, and carbon costs can be stepped year-over-year to accelerate progress without the sort of wrenching dislocations implicated in the GND. The key is to properly value carbon emissions and avoid oversupplying carbon allowances under cap and trade to avoid flaws that have undermined prior carbon pricing schemes. Next, no matter how successful the United States is in reducing carbon emissions, it will make no difference if other big carbon emitters like China, India and Brazil don't reduce theirs. The way for the U.S. to incentivize others to decarbonize is to place tariffs on imports of goods from countries that do not impose measurable and enforceable action to reduce their own emissions. Doing this requires the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Agreement to avoid claims the U.S. is engaging in protectionism than versus bona fide global decarbonization. The third critical element is an accelerated drive to green the nation's infrastructure. The need is great, but a short list includes accelerating deployment of no- and low-emission vehicle infrastructure, expanding transit, targeting roadway investments to encourage denser development and retrofitting landfills and sewer treatment plants for methane recapture to produce renewable natural gas. There also needs to be substantially greater investment in research and development. This challenge is twofold: first, practicable and affordable technologies to reduce and eliminate carbon emissions, and second, projections of when our ecosystem will reach the climate tipping point keep getting shortened. Many experts have concluded that even if emissions can ultimately be brought under control, there will be a period during which at least some regions exceed the tipping point (some may have already). R&D needs to focus on not only emissions mitigation but technologies to make the most at-risk places resilient to support continued habitation. You can call what's needed a Green New Deal, the Climate Emergency Mobilization and Investment Act or whatever you like. What we need now is action that is both forceful and able to gain the level of political support needed to ensure that it's enduring. ----- Matt Slavin founded M.I. Slavin to provide consulting in project management, strategic planning, research and communications. Contact him at 503-619-5601 or matt@mislavin.com Published: Fri, Mar 22, 2019