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Africa/Global: Green New Deal Could Be Game-Changer
AfricaFocus Bulletin
December 10, 2018 (181210)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
“And yet here’s the truly strange thing: I feel more optimistic
about our collective chances of averting climate breakdown than I
have in years. For the first time, I see a clear and credible
political pathway that could get us to safety, a place in which
the worst climate outcomes are avoided and a new social compact is
forged that is radically more humane than anything currently on
offer.” - Naomi Klein on the Green New Deal
Action to slow climate change is falling far short of the minimum
needed to avert catastrophe, according to report after report. At
the same time, the U.S. President has joined loudly in the chorus
of denials from those who value short-term profits over the future
of the planet. Piecemeal action is clearly insufficient, despite
advances in renewable energy at a rapid pace (see excerpts from
sample news stories below).
Any real solution, it is clear, must be both massive and
multifaceted. But, as is clear in France as well as in other
countries, it must also be part of a package designed to cushion
the transition for those who are most vulnerable, providing
visible benefits for ordinary citizens. There must be no opening
for false choices of “climate against jobs” or “climate against
being able to drive to work.”
That's why the Sunrise Movement and other progressive forces are
demanding that the Democratic victory in the U.S. House elections
be the launching pad for a groundbreaking initiative coming from
the world's largest contributor to climate change (the United
States), despite the contrary forces led by President Trump and
the fossil-fuel industry. The initiative is by no means a
guarantee of success, but it offers a breath of fresh air and
potentially a model to be applied elsewhere.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the article by climate activist
Naomi Klein cited above, as well as an excerpt from the text of
the congressional proposal advanced by Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and other members of congress.
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on climate and the environment,
visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php
For the text of the Green New Deal proposal see
https://ocasio2018.com/green-new-deal
Washington Post, December 4, 2018
http://tinyurl.com/y8lewxd3
“In the daunting math of climate action, people’s choices and
government policies aren’t adding up.
Solar panels are being nailed to rooftops, colossal wind turbines
bestride the plains and oceans, and a million electric vehicles
are on U.S. roads — and it isn’t enough. Even if the world did an
unlikely series of about-faces — halting deforestation, going
vegetarian, paying $50-a-ton carbon taxes, boosting energy
efficiency, doubling car mileage, and more — it would not be
enough.
“There’s no silver bullet,” said Andrew Jones, co-founder of the
modeling firm Climate Interactive. “There’s silver buckshot: many
actions in many domains.”
As the 24th U.N. conference on climate change kicked off in Poland
this week, a steady drumbeat of scientific reports have sounded
ominous alarms.”
New York Times, December 5, 2018
http://tinyurl.com/y7h5y4l4
“Greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are growing at an accelerating
pace this year, researchers said Wednesday, putting the world on
track to face some of the most severe consequences of global
warming sooner than expected.
Scientists described the quickening rate of carbon dioxide
emissions in stark terms, comparing it to a “speeding freight
train” and laying part of the blame on an unexpected surge in the
appetite for oil as people around the world not only buy more cars
but also drive them farther than in the past — more than
offsetting any gains from the spread of electric vehicles.
“We’ve seen oil use go up five years in a row,” said Rob Jackson,
a professor of earth system science at Stanford and an author of
one of two studies published Wednesday. “That’s really
surprising.”
Worldwide, carbon emissions are expected to increase by 2.7
percent in 2018, according to the new research, which was
published by the Global Carbon Project, a group of 100 scientists
from more than 50 academic and research institutions and one of
the few organizations to comprehensively examine global emissions
numbers. Emissions rose 1.6 percent last year, the researchers
said, ending a three-year plateau.”
New York Times, December 7, 2018
http://tinyurl.com/ybog6brs
“Three years after nearly 200 countries signed a landmark climate
agreement in Paris, they are still far off-track from preventing
severe global warming in the decades ahead. This month, diplomats
from around the world are gathering in Katowice, Poland, to
discuss stepping up their efforts.
It’s an enormous challenge. Under the Paris deal, every nation
volunteered a plan to curtail its greenhouse gas emissions between
then and 2030. But many large emitters aren’t even on track to
meet their self-imposed targets, according to new data from
Climate Action Tracker.
What’s more, even if every country did manage to fulfil its
individual pledge, the world would still be on pace to heat up
well in excess of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over
preindustrial levels, the threshold that world leaders vowed to
stay “well below” in Paris because they deemed it unacceptably
risky.
Right now, current pledges put the world on pace for around 3
degrees Celsius of warming this century. To reach the broader
Paris goals, countries would have to dramatically accelerate the
transition toward clean energy over the next 12 years. But, with
global emissions on pace to rise sharply this year, time is
running short.”
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++
The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal
Naomi Klein
The Intercept
November 27 2018
https://theintercept.com – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/ydde4yvf
Like so many others, I’ve been energized by the bold moral
leadership coming from newly elected members of Congress like
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna
Pressley in the face of the spiraling climate crisis and the
outrageous attacks on unarmed migrants at the border. It has me
thinking about the crucial difference between leadership that acts
and leadership that talks about acting.
I’ll get to the Green New Deal and why we need to hold tight to
that lifeline for all we’re worth. But before that, bear with me
for a visit to the grandstanding of climate politics past.
It was March 2009 and capes were still fluttering in the White
House after Barack Obama’s historic hope-and-change electoral
victory. Todd Stern, the newly appointed chief climate envoy, told
a gathering on Capitol Hill that he and his fellow negotiators
needed to embrace their inner superheroes, saving the planet from
existential danger in the nick of time.
Climate change, he said, called for some of “that old comic book
sensibility of uniting in the face of a common danger threatening
the earth. Because that’s what we have here. It’s not a meteor or
a space invader, but the damage to our planet, to our community,
to our children, and their children will be just as great. There
is no time to lose.”
Eight months later, at the fateful United Nations climate summit
in Copenhagen, Denmark, all pretense to superheroism from the
Obama Administration had been unceremoniously abandoned. Stern
stalked the hallways of the convention center like the Grim
Reaper, pulling his scythe through every proposal that would have
resulted in a transformative agreement. The U.S. insisted on a
target that would allow temperatures to rise by 2 degrees Celsius,
despite passionate objections from many African and Pacific
islander delegates who said the goal amounted to a “genocide” and
would lead millions to die on land or in leaky boats. It shot down
all attempts to make the deal legally binding, opting for
unenforceable voluntary targets instead (as it would in Paris five
years later).
Stern categorically rejected the argument that wealthy developed
countries owe compensation to poor ones for knowingly pumping
earth-warming carbon into the atmosphere, instead using muchneeded
funds for climate change protection as a bludgeon to force
those countries to fall in line.
As I wrote at the time, the Copenhagen deal — cooked up behind
closed doors with the most vulnerable countries locked out —
amounted to a “grubby pact between the world’s biggest emitters:
I’ll pretend that you are doing something about climate change if
you pretend that I am too. Deal? Deal.”
Almost exactly nine years later, global emissions continue to
rise, alongside average temperatures, with large swathes of the
planet buffeted by record-breaking storms and scorched by
unprecedented fires. The scientists convened in the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have confirmed precisely
what African and low-lying island states have long-since warned:
that allowing temperatures to rise by 2 degrees is a death
sentence, and that only a 1.5-degree target gives us a fighting
chance. Indeed, at least eight Pacific islands have already
disappeared beneath the rising seas.
New York Times, December 5, 2018
Not only have wealthy countries failed to provide meaningful aid
to poorer nations to protect themselves from weather extremes and
leapfrog to clean tech, but Europe, Australia, and the United
States have all responded to the increase in mass migration —
intensified if not directly caused by climate stresses — with
brutal force, ranging from Italy’s de facto “let them drown”
policy to Trump’s increasingly real war on an unarmed caravan from
Central America. Let there be no mistake: this barbarism is the
way the wealthy world plans to adapt to climate change.
The only thing resembling a cape at the White House these days are
all those coats Melania drapes over her shoulders, mysteriously
refusing to use the arm holes for their designed purpose. Her
husband, meanwhile, is busily embracing his role as a climate
supervillain, gleefully approving new fossil fuel projects,
shredding the Paris agreement (it’s not legally binding after all,
so why not?), and pronouncing that a Thanksgiving cold snap is
proof positive that the planet isn’t warming after all.
In short, the metaphorical meteor that Stern evoked in 2009 is not
just hurtling closer to our fragile planet — it’s grazing the
(burning) treetops.
And yet here’s the truly strange thing: I feel more optimistic
about our collective chances of averting climate breakdown than I
have in years. For the first time, I see a clear and credible
political pathway that could get us to safety, a place in which
the worst climate outcomes are avoided and a new social compact is
forged that is radically more humane than anything currently on
offer.
We are not on that pathway yet — very far from it. But unlike even
one month ago, the pathway is clear. It begins with the galloping
momentum calling on the Democratic Party to use its majority in
the House to create the Select Committee for a Green New Deal, a
plan advanced by Ocasio-Cortez and now backed by more than 14
representatives.
The draft text calls for the committee, which would be fully
funded and empowered to draft legislation, to spend the next year
consulting with a range of experts — from scientists to local
lawmakers to labor unions to business leaders — to map out a
“detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan”
capable of making the U.S. economy “carbon neutral” while
promoting “economic and environmental justice and equality.” By
January 2020, the plan would be released, and two months later
would come draft legislation designed to turn it into a reality.
That early 2020 deadline is important — it means that the contours
of the Green New Deal would be complete by the next U.S. election
cycle, and any politician wanting to be taken seriously as a
progressive champion would need to adopt it as the centerpiece of
their platform. If that happened, and the party running on a
sweeping Green New Deal retook the White House and the Senate in
November 2020, then there would actually be time left on the
climate clock to meet the harsh targets laid out in the recent
IPCC report, which told us that we have a mere 12 years to cut
fossil fuel emissions by a head-spinning 45 percent.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to activists with the Sunrise
Movement protesting in the offices of House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi in Washington D.C., on Nov. 13, 2018. Photo: Sarah
Silbiger/The New York Times via Redux
Pulling that off, the report’s summary states in its first
sentence, is not possible with singular policies like carbon
taxes. Rather, what is needed is “rapid, far-reaching and
unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” By giving the
committee a mandate that connects the dots between energy,
transportation, housing and construction, as well as health care,
living wages, a jobs guarantee, and the urgent imperative to
battle racial and gender injustice, the Green New Deal plan would
be mapping precisely that kind of far-reaching change. This is not
a piecemeal approach that trains a water gun on a blazing fire,
but a comprehensive and holistic plan to actually put the fire
out.
If the world’s largest economy looked poised to show that kind of
visionary leadership, other major emitters — like the European
Union, China, and India — would almost certainly find themselves
under intense pressure from their own populations to follow suit.
Now, nothing about the pathway I have just outlined is certain or
even likely: The Democratic Party establishment under Nancy Pelosi
will probably squash the Green New Deal proposal, much as the
party stomped on hopes for more ambitious climate deals under
Obama. Smart money would bet on the party doing little more than
resuscitating the climate committee that helped produce cap-andtrade
legislation in Obama’s first term, an ill-fated and
convoluted market-based scheme that would have treated greenhouse
gases as late-capitalist abstractions to be traded, bundled, and
speculated upon like currency or subprime debt (which is why
Ocasio-Cortez is insisting that lawmakers who take fossil fuel
money should not be on the Green New Deal select committee).
And of course, even if pressure on lawmakers continues to mount
and those calling for the select committee carry the day, there is
no guarantee that the party will win back the Senate and White
House in 2020.
And yet, despite all of these caveats, we now have a something
that has been sorely missing: a concrete plan on the table,
complete with a science-based timeline, that is not only coming
from social movements on the outside of government, but which also
has a sizable (and growing) bloc of committed champions inside the
House of Representatives.
Decades from now, if we are exquisitely lucky enough to tell a
thrilling story about how humanity came together in the nick of
time to intercept the metaphorical meteor, the pivotal chapter
will not be the highly produced cinematic moment when Barack Obama
won the Democratic primary and told an adoring throng of
supporters that this would be “the moment when the rise of the
oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” No, it will be
the far less scripted and markedly more scrappy moment when a
group of fed-up young people from the Sunrise Movement occupied
the offices of Pelosi after the midterm elections, calling on her
to get behind the plan for a Green New Deal — with Ocasio-Cortez
dropping by the sit-in to cheer them on.
I realize that it may seem unreasonably optimistic to invest so
much in a House committee, but it is not the committee itself that
is my main source of hope. It is the vast infrastructure of
scientific, technical, political, and movement expertise poised to
spring into action should we take the first few steps down this
path. It is a network of extraordinary groups and individuals who
have held fast to their climate focus and commitments even when no
media wanted to cover the crisis and no major political party
wanted to do anything more than perform concern.
It’s a network that has been waiting a very long time for there to
finally be a critical mass of politicians in power who understand
not only the existential urgency of the climate crisis, but also
the once-in-a-century opportunity it represents, as the draft
resolution states, “to virtually eliminate poverty in the United
States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security
available to everyone participating in the transformation.”
The ground for this moment has been prepared for decades, with
models for community-owned and community-controlled renewable
energy; with justice-based transitions that make sure no worker is
left behind; with a deepening analysis of the intersections
between systemic racism, armed conflict, and climate disruption;
with improved green tech and breakthroughs in clean public
transit; with the thriving fossil fuel divestment movement; with
model legislation driven by the climate justice movement that
shows how carbon taxes can fight racial and gender exclusion; and
much more.
What has been missing is only the top-level political power to
roll out the best of these models all at once, with the focus and
velocity that both science and justice demand. That is the great
promise of a comprehensive Green New Deal in the largest economy
on earth. And as the Sunrise Movement turns up the heat on
legislators who have yet to sign onto the plan, it deserves all of
our support.
Of course there is no shortage of Beltway pundits ready to dismiss
all of this as hopelessly naive and unrealistic, the work of
political neophytes who don’t understand the art of the possible
or the finer points of policy. What those pundits are failing to
account for is the fact that, unlike previous attempts to
introduce climate legislation, the Green New Deal has the capacity
to mobilize a truly intersectional mass movement behind it — not
despite its sweeping ambition, but precisely because of it.
This is the game-changer of having representatives in Congress
rooted in working-class struggles for living-wage jobs and for
nontoxic air and water — women like Tlaib, who helped fight a
successful battle against Koch Industries’ noxious petroleum coke
mountain in Detroit.
If you are part of the economy’s winning class and funded by even
bigger winners, as so many politicians are, then your attempts to
craft climate legislation will likely be guided by the idea that
change should be as minimal and unchallenging to the status quo as
possible. After all, the status quo is working just fine for you
and your donors. Leaders who are rooted in communities that are
being egregiously failed by the current system, on the other hand,
are liberated to take a very different approach. Their climate
policies can embrace deep and systemic change — including the need
for massive investments in public transit, affordable housing, and
health care — because that kind of change is precisely what their
bases need to thrive.
As climate justice organizations have been arguing for many years
now, when the people with the most to gain lead the movement, they
fight to win.
Another game-changing aspect of a Green New Deal is that it is
modeled after the most famous economic stimulus of all time, which
makes it recession-proof. When the global economy enters another
downturn, which it surely will, support for this model of climate
action will not plummet as has been the case with every other
major green initiative during past recessions. Instead, it will
increase, since a large-scale stimulus will become the greatest
hope of reviving the economy.
Having a good idea is no guarantee of success, of course. But
here’s a thought: If the push for a Select Committee for a Green
New Deal is defeated, then those lawmakers who want it to happen
could consider working with civil society to set up some sort of
parallel constituent assembly-like body to get the plan drafted
anyway, in time for it to steal the show in 2020. Because this
possibility is simply too important, and time is just too short,
to allow it to be shut down by the usual forces of political
inertia.
As the surprising events of the past few weeks have unfolded, with
young activists rewriting the rules of the possible day after day,
I have found myself thinking about another moment when young
people found their voice in the climate change arena. It was 2011,
at the annual United Nations climate summit, this time held in
Durban, South Africa. A 21-year-old Canadian college student named
Anjali Appadurai was selected to address the gathering on behalf
(absurdly) of all the world’s young people.
She delivered a stunning and unsparing address (worth watching in
full) that shamed the gathered negotiators for decades of
inaction. “You have been negotiating all my life,” she said. “In
that time, you’ve failed to meet pledges, you’ve missed targets,
and you’ve broken promises. … The most stark betrayal of your
generation’s responsibility to ours is that you call this
‘ambition.’ Where is the courage in these rooms? Now is not the
time for incremental action. In the long run, these will be seen
as the defining moments of an era in which narrow self-interest
prevailed over science, reason, and common compassion.”
The most wrenching part of the address is that not a single major
government was willing to receive her message; she was shouting
into the void.
Seven years later, when other young people are locating their
climate voice and their climate rage, there is finally someone to
receive their message, with an actual plan to turn it into policy.
And that might just change everything.
Select Committee for a Green New Deal
For full text see https://ocasio2018.com/green-new-deal
6. SCOPE OF THE PLAN FOR A GREEN NEW DEAL AND THE DRAFT
LEGISLATION.
A. The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall
be developed in order to achieve the following goals, in each case
in no longer than 10 years from the start of execution of the
Plan:
i. 100% of national power generation from renewable sources;
ii. building a national, energy-efficient, “smart” grid;
iii. upgrading every residential and industrial building for
state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety;
iv. decarbonizing the manufacturing, agricultural and other
industries;
v. decarbonizing, repairing and improving transportation and other
infrastructure;
vi. funding massive investment in the drawdown and capture of
greenhouse gases;
vii. making “green” technology, industry, expertise, products and
services a major export of the United States, with the aim of
becoming the undisputed international leader in helping other
countries transition to completely carbon neutral economies and
bringing about a global Green New Deal.
B. The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall
recognize that a national, industrial, economic mobilization of
this scope and scale is a historic opportunity to virtually
eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity,
wealth and economic security available to everyone participating
in the transformation. In furtherance of the foregoing, the Plan
(and the draft legislation) shall:
i. provide all members of our society, across all regions and all
communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full
and equal participant in the transition, including through a job
guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who
wants one;
ii. take into account and be responsive to the historical and
present-day experiences of low-income communities, communities of
color, indigenous communities, rural and urban communities and the
front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution
and other environmental harm;
iii. mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based
inequalities in income and wealth (including, without limitation,
ensuring that federal and other investment will be equitably
distributed to historically impoverished, low income,
deindustrialized or other marginalized communities);
iv. include additional measures such as basic income programs,
universal health care programs and any others as the select
committee may deem appropriate to promote economic security, labor
market flexibility and entrepreneurism; and
v. deeply involve national and local labor unions to take a
leadership role in the process of job training and worker
deployment.
C. The Plan for a Green New Deal (and the draft legislation) shall
recognize that innovative public and other financing structures
are a crucial component in achieving and furthering the goals and
guidelines relating to social, economic, racial, regional and
gender-based justice and equality and cooperative and public
ownership set forth in paragraphs (2)(A)(i) and (6)(B). The Plan
(and the draft legislation) shall, accordingly, ensure that the
majority of financing of the Plan shall be accomplished by the
federal government, using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a
new public bank or system of regional and specialized public
banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures
that the select committee deems appropriate, in order to ensure
that interest and other investment returns generated from public
investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to
the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more
investment.
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providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
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