We each make our own little efforts to make the world a better place—or should anyway. But my it’s hard to deal with the rain/reign of evil descending. A bad, lying, red-baiting man says that the U.S. under a social democratic program would be on the path to Venezuelan perdition. And the destruction of the planet is not happening anyway, so why spoil the fun? Then yesterday the troller-in-chief sarcastically invited a Green New Deal (“GND”) as political suicide for Democrats.
I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called “Carbon Footprint” to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military - even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!
(mobile.twitter.com/...)
In the face of such abuse to our minds and hearts, we must stay focused and steadfast. The serious challenge of global climate change requires democratic consideration of serious measures up to the task. Yet we do and will continue to live under predominantly capitalist conditions for the foreseeable future. What’s a poor green socialist to do other than compost, walk, and cheer on the notion of a GND from a distance?
The political-economic question is whether we simply adjust to these conditions, with a regulation here, a social democratic program there, or attempt to change these conditions at their essence by democratically proposing for implementation elements of socialism when they might do some good even under capitalist conditions. Just because we cannot usher in utopia and break the power of profit everywhere does not mean that we cannot and should not break the power of profit in some places. The question then becomes, what then are these places where the power of profit should be broken under a GND that also relies on needed regulations and social democratic elements?
Under the capitalist conditions where we find ourselves a maximalist general demand (“mgd”) for a “complete transformation of world society” would amount to a grandiose sectarian retreat where we could feel proud of our socialism but not actually attempt to use any of it on our actual Planet Earth. A mgd does not provide a specific program that can be democratically debated. Neither, despite its international feel, does a mgd truly recognize that, when it comes to the atmosphere, “society” knows no boundaries. World socialist transformation cannot take place in a vacuum apart from the messy real world of nation states and their messy relations. To be effete is to retreat and be a co-conspirator with Trump.
Trump is, after all, ironically exposing a truth about the global nature of climate change when he says “even if no other country would do the same.” Ever the liar, and leader of the denial movement, Trump, of course, is actively undercutting the Accord de Paris. For all its weaknesses, the Paris Agreement “for the first time brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so.” (unfccc.int/...) Perhaps we owe him thanks for unintended consequences and heightening the contradictions. Trump’s contribution to the dialectic is adding to the momentum for a GND in the anticipated ashes of the burning agreement.
In June 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw his country from the agreement. Under the agreement, the earliest effective date of withdrawal for the U.S. is November 2020, shortly before the end of President Trump's current term. In practice, changes in United States policy that are contrary to the Paris Agreement have already been put in place.
(en.m.wikipedia.org/...)
Even the most idyllic national program will be woefully inadequate. Nonetheless, we must not shy away from endorsing necessary transformative nation state-based measures because they will be susceptible to red-baiting, junk science theories believed by people who also believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, and generic Trumpian hypocrisy. And we must take into account (a) the needs for specificity and democratic integration into a Green New Deal that has worthy regulatory and social democratic features that are not at all socialism but that are daily accused of being so by Trump, et al., and (b) various dialectical processes that already are at work, some of it involving Trump’s own nationalistic fixation.
Caveat to what follows: This writer is not qualified and moreover has insufficient time to make a proposal deserving of the subject of this piece. Please critique but forgive its shortcomings. Our collective mass intellectual and emotional abilities are what is required, but we each must take a stand the best we can. For me tonight it’s bringing this gnarly blog to your tired eyes, my fellow Ammuricans. I’ve run out of time to incorporate the dozens of relevant links I’ve collected the past few weeks, but perhaps your eyesight will thank me.
Here’s the proposal, by fuel type.
COAL: Selectively nationalize any temporarily needed portions of the “dying” profit-seeking U.S. coal industry that otherwise could go on a long time; implement a five-year phase-out of the industry (with rights to reemployment and social democratic protections for displaced workers and power plant substitution assistance [see also NATURAL GAS, below]); and give five-year advance notice of a simultaneous upcoming ban on importation of goods from countries still using coal as an energy source.
No single environmental problem exceeds the continuing use of coal in power and industrial plants around the world. In the U.S., one-third of our electricity continues to come from coal. China’s percentage is twice as high. (en.m.wikipedia.org/...)
Despite this continuing major role in power generation, the U.S. coal industry is a teetering giant constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. Its desperate employees plea to Trump to “bring back coal” because even though coal is still a huge player in energy production, it is descendant in relation to natural gas and renewables.
A problem is that, as with lung cancer, cigarette companies, and tobacco farmers, coal companies and miners have no incentive to recognize the truth—that their industry is enormously harmful. They are in a pitched battle to drag out coal production as long as it can be made profitable. Profits are conjured by cutting corners and Chapter 11 bankruptcies where union contracts are voided and conflicted consulting profiteers make a killing.
We don’t have a generation or more to dither around while coal companies continue to wring out profits by any means necessary. We must then eliminate the ability of coal companies at home and abroad to wring out profits. How?
Domestically, in addition to strictly regulating mining safety and power plant emissions, we should deny future leasing of federal lands (a major source of coal in Western states) and bankruptcy reorganization to coal companies. In addition, we should opportunistically federalize coal company temporarily-needed assets and not leave abandoned communities to bear the after-effects of mining. This would be relatively inexpensive as companies undergo Chapter 7 liquidation. Trump himself has bandied about the idea of coal industry nationalization, the supposed better to keep the industry going.
Coal mines must be put to death over a five-year period with merciful terms for employees and federal assumption of clean-up costs where remaining company assets and haircuts will not suffice. Coal companies must no longer be subsidized or allowed to minimize or shift costs to workers. In the interim, until substitutes are fully available, federally-operated mines can be operated as cooperative worker-managed enterprises that do not cut safety corners with a national policy board to set policy.
States such as West Virginia heavily-dependent upon rail-transported coal to feed power plants will need federal assistance to construct energy substitutes, including, where renewables and conservation cannot meet demand, likely some federally-owned natural gas pipelines which can be shutdown as natural gas is itself phased out.
Internationally, the U.S. must be fair to its own workers by banning importation of goods from countries still using coal after a five-year notice period. If there is to be a trade war, saving the planet is a justifiable ground for having one and could hopefully leverage environmental improvements in low-wage coal-powered industries around the world.
NATURAL GAS: Nationalize the first quarter-mile of existing natural gas pipelines.
Natural gas is itself highly polluting (en.m.wikipedia.org/...). Although natural gas companies also should be heavily-regulated and denied federal lands, subsidies, and Chapter 11 reorganizations, the nature of the industry is such that for a much longer period of time in the U.S. it will be much more competitive and sticky than coal. Moreover, as coal is phased out the price of natural gas would likely substantially increase even without a carbon tax. This would in turn likely further incentivize renewable power production. However, the natural gas industry would receive windfall profits, the incentive to wrecklessly frack would be increased, and needed natural gas reserves (used not only for power generation but also in Nitrogen fertilizer production) would be depleted at a much faster rate. The U.S. could sooner or later fall off a natural gas cliff even if natural gas production and use were benign, which they are most assuredly not.
The natural gas industry has the potential to control pertinent government decision-making as it too seeks to wring out profits as long as possible. We saw this with Enron. We are seeing this again with the way state governments kowtow to fracking proponents.
Unfortunately, nationalization of needed natural gas assets would be much more difficult and expensive under the Fifth Amendment’s just compensation clause than with coal. In the long run, all U.S. power plants should be nationalized. (This is self-evidently needed with nuclear power plants, which have the capability to kill millions.) But even then, the natural gas industry threatens to have a increasing stranglehold over democracy.
One way of lessening this grip is to assert much more direct federal control over the way natural gas gets from the so-called “producers” to power plants. Moreover, although natural gas pipelines are for the foreseeable future necessary evils, they are not as safe as the industry would have us believe.
By exercising eminent domain over the first quarter-mile of existing domestic natural gas pipelines, the federal government would itself gain the upper hand for a reasonably low price, which could in turn be reimbursed through pipeline fees paid by power plants. Power plants, especially those owned by publicly-traded stock companies and expressly run for profit, that failed to sufficiently maximize renewables and conservation could be threatened with a cut off. Downstream pipeline companies that failed to maintain strict standards similarly could be cut off.
Because with a coal phaseout the federal government probably should be building some federally-owned natural gas pipelines anyway, it could soon have ample expertise in operating its own pipelines. Adding the first quarter-mile of existing natural gas pipelines to federal ownership would not be substantially burdensome.
This still leaves the issue of electricity pricing. Anyone who has ever attended a state public utility commission hearing knows how resistant ratepayers are to higher prices. Under a GND, further subsidizing of renewables and conservation, and decreasing of less expensive natural gas usage, would have to be paid for.
Cutting out the profits, stock buybacks, dividends, and outrageous payments to publicly-traded power company executives represents a rich source of funds for potential redeployment. So does charging higher usage rates to the wealthy and wasteful, although at some point the wealthy can go off the grid.
OIL: Opportunistically nationalize domestic automobile companies and convert bankrupt gas stations into people’s service stations.
Carbon taxation is not a panacea for vehicular fuel any more than it is for coal and natural gas-fueled power plants. As with electricity pricing, there is a need for variable petroleum and diesel pricing at the pump so that the rich and gluttonous pay much higher power bills. Compassionate working class carve outs and conservation assistance are needed. The recent experience in France and the failure of Washington State voters to approve a statewide program with carbon taxation demonstrate that working class voters are not inclined to making their fuel taxes higher.
Corporate lemons will have to be squeezed to make public lemonade. With each serious recession, one or more U.S. “automaker” threatens to go bankrupt. The next time the federal government finds itself in control of a GM, it should retain ownership. The company could then be tasked with producing only highly fuel-efficient hybrid and electric vehicles by a national board to set policy and run as a worker-controlled cooperative with subsidized pricing for working class vehicle buyers.
The qualifying vehicles could be fueled, with discounted pricing for the working class, by “powering up” and, to the extent still necessary, filling up, at people’s service stations, owned by the federal government (and, perhaps one day, sourced from a reworked strategic petroleum reserve supplied from a worker-managed federal oil company), often purchased for a song. Petroleum “producers” and marketers should be denied Chapter 11 protection just as with their fellow polluting corporate cousins in the coal and natural gas industries. We don’t have time for their reorganizations, and their “just” compensation rightfully should be chump change.
Conclusion
We cannot afford to make socialism an all-or-nothing proposition when it comes to global climate change. Merely making a mgd is not a meaningful recipe for revolution, at least not in the time that we have to save the planet. Even under capitalist conditions socialism has much to democratically offer as part of a GND.
Whether it is in the U.S. or in Asia producing goods to bring into the U.S., profit-making from pollution is the major driver of the global climate destruction equation. This driver should be directly, morally, and democratically addressed, including with progressive use of socialism to provide public ownership of selected means of production and distribution. If one day, say five years hence, we have to wage an international trade war, we need a fair system in place for the working class to deal with the downside, rather than austerity, and coal’s role in planetary destruction should be the defining rationale.
With progressive use of socialism, along with appropriate regulations and social democratic programs, our consciences can be clean that we in the U.S. are really doing our part (at least when it comes to global climate change—imperialism and the MIC being a subject for another day!). Whether we want to admit it or not, everything is on the line to save our one beautiful world by all just democratic means necessary.