Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
Introduction:
What follows below started out as an Email to a citizen’s group just beginning to form around the idea of a Green New Deal for Western Maryland...a reunion, of sorts, with the successful anti-fracking campaign stalwarts. We initially gathered to watch the Sunrise movement’s national broadcast on February 5, at the River’s Edge Cafe in Friendsville, Maryland.
Then, suddenly, the name shifted from Green New Deal (or something else to be worked out by consensus, I hope) to “Resiliency” and that triggered a few thoughts about the “R” word, national political maneuvering on the Green New Deal, and the pending Resolution for it in Congress, and just what a Green New Deal might be built upon, actually do, in Western Maryland. I think that the movement has potential for a lot of other parts of rural, Red State, De-Industrialized America, so here goes:
Maybe I missed an Email, or a side discussion, but I thought our group was contemplating A Green New Deal (GND) , and then I saw the word change to "Resiliency." Now Resiliency is a fine word, and I'm all for it, but it has become, since Hurricane Sandy, employed by everyone, like the old "Sustainability." By the end of my environmental career in NJ, that is by 2001, I hated to use the “S” word because of the way it lost meaning - and the way institutional players tossed it around (Governor Whitman) for greenwashing purposes.
To the rich and powerful, resiliency can mean making it on your own, the environmental version of Horatio Alger, or a Hobbesian social realm, since they have no intention via institutions and politics, to do anything major or anything fast (except call a vote on the GND Resolution in the Senate) - so do we have a choice?
The 1%-30% can say of "R": "I have it, that's why I am where I am today, you better get it, you'll need it." But it always has seemed to me to have as much of the flavor of Scott Nearing’s and Annie LaBastille’s retreating into the wilderness to be self-sufficient, bomb shelters in the 1950's and generators and solar lanterns to cope with the coming environmental-societal Apocalypse, than any more focused meaning for society. Coming after 30 years of ritually hating government, chief among other institutions, it smacks too much of the worst forms of American hyper- individualism, Libertarianism and a deep bias against democratic politics and movements. Self-sufficient withdrawal in other words. I don't mean that was what was intended in its usage here; that's what comes to my mind, though.
On the other hand, to me the Green New Deal is the merging of two great and historical movements, or currents, the one economic, about inequality of income and wealth - and their regional maldistribution, building since the mid-1970's, intensified by the Great Recession; and the other ecological, building since at least Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, and then the 1970's, with cautious scientists, of all institutional players, now telling us that the level of economic change needed to deal with Climate Disruption has "no historical precedent." And they're right, the closest modern movement being the New Deal and the Mobilization for WWII. Within this framework, we will need resiliency - among other values - like courage, honesty and steadfastness - but I'm not sure its "directional" enough, and, given the shape of what we face, it doesn't address the "scope" of what's needed.
Capitalism as we have come to know it in its Neoliberal iteration of the past 40 years, has failed the working class and middles classes of our nation, and the very means it has employed to achieve the Gilded Financial Instruments, and capital ownership, for the top 20-30% is inseparable from the destruction of Nature and our Climate; indeed, Capitalism has, on those two counts proven it cannot reform itself despite the nature of the threats to it, and so it will take one the greatest reform movements in history to change it, with or without the help of the business community; preferably with their assent, grudging or not, just like it was in the New Deal, angry at FDR for having saved them from a fate worse than Social Security, labor unions and federal regulatory agencies.
The gifted Nancy Pelosi has shown rare bad judgement in passing up the opportunity to give the Green New Deal its time, and place, "standing" in other words, to flesh itself out in a Plan via a standing committee, which would not have bound anyone's existing turf in Congress to vote for what the committee might have come up with...in its call for very public planning process. Instead, she has mocked the Green New Deal while trying to hijack its energy, and given us Committee Chairs like Joe Manchin of West Virginia...and Kathy Castor of Florida...
I say this to the Speaker, and to Senators Cardin and Van Hollen, Maryland’s cautious Senators : there are historical times and forces which demand institutions recognize what is at stake, whether its the 1850's, 1929-1932, 2007-2008...or today, and rise to the occasion and adjust, just like capitalism has always demanded us all to adjust to its latest technological and ideological regimes...the very stresses and strains upon 70% of us that have led to the rise of Donald Trump...and the Populist Right in Europe: that's what's on the table with the Green New Deal, a logical response to these forces tearing the West apart, with much to be worked out still, publicly, democratically. If you want to preserve the best of the existing system, you must recognize that these are "no ordinary times," and the outlines of a Populist Left, incongruously but splendidly informed by scientists, is there staring at you in the Green New Deal, the promise to once again bring a good part of Rural and Deindustrialized America back into the national fold., on good and needed terms, under the creative security of as much of the Second Bill of Rights as the nation can afford them, and us...that's the promise here, to blend the economic and ecological reforms to improve not just impacts upon nature, but all those citizens who have suffered in "the forced march" to Globalization, built upon the ruins of De-Industrialized America. The cost of that forced march literally courses through the national veins, with the tragic results totaled up by the CDC, and many others. In a very different sense than the opioid crisis now invokes , the nation was written a very tragic "prescription" over the past 40 years.
Therefore, for all these reasons, I think today, in times like these, fraught times, that name changes are important, tell us and others what we are about, and therefore need to be discussed and voted on, just like I'm cautious about the fate of democratic processes when the GND movement employs emergency and mobilization...we’ll only succeed if we win the assent for them and we base their use on the good historical examples from 1933-1945, not from the war on Terror, or "The Wall" or worse, the uses to which infamous totalitarian regimes have put those alarm bell terms.
Two additional things on my mind:
First: how do we move our two cautious political boulders out of the center of the road, Senators Cardin and Van Hollen, who are not among the 11 or so Senators who have so far backed the Green New Deal resolution?
"Senators, did you want to be remembered as the Democrats who supported Mitch McConnell's cynical calculation, the most cynical political leader since Richard Nixon? Do you want to be remembered in the company of John Breckenridge and John Bell, the Southern Democrat and Constitutional Union presidential candidates who took 46% and 45% - 91% of Maryland's votes in the crisis election of 1860, while Abraham Lincoln took just 2.5%? In many respects, our times are like the 1850's, and are calling upon the elected officials of Maryland to rise to the scope of the crisis, by supporting the Green New Deal Resolution’s broad outlines which will show where you stand…so please stand with our presidential candidates and our own Jamie Raskin, Elijah Cummings and John Sarbanes - very good company indeed, and with the Congressional advocates, who now number 95. “
Second: What might a Green New Deal, carried out in part by a Climate Conservation Corps (?) , look like in our region? What do we as GNDealers want done that is not currently being done, funding and institutions?
I have a long list that I have been working on ever since I got here...I'll toss out just a few now:
5,000 abandoned, empty or vacant structures in Allegany County alone; in Cumberland, yes, and right here on Main Street in Frostburg too, and take a close look at 'Coney (Lonaconing, MD) ...no money and no organized work force to deal with them, yet the need blends right into something made explicit in the the goals in the GND Resolution: rebuilding all existing structures for a de-carbonized future...energy efficiency...I can envision, I wanted to write, "easily," but probably not, that such a measure could bring many now incongruent forces together: hard pressed, short of money local officials, the trade unions who ought to teach the multiple skills needed (carpentry, plumbing, equipment operators, electricians, Solar technicians...heat pumps too), the energy companies themselves, the Renewable companies too, the colleges...This may be the place to start...
Alternative agriculture has roots in our area but struggles for capital, retail and wholesale outlets...and a skilled workforce which should be paid a living wage...and not have to "Woof it"...the resolution speaks directly to the need to reform agriculture in a vast undertaking...that can have a substantial impact on rural Red state America...and as you will see below, it comes up directly as big, chemically laden modern ag is now being named as one of the chief causes of the Insect Armageddon... (the demise of the lowliest life forms, in human eyes, will, in Biblical terms, end up destroying the Great Chain of Being...or if you prefer a secular read...E.O. Wilson's alarms..)
And look at the character of Republican Governor Larry Hogan's plans to spend $1 billion dollars on our Western Maryland region; not a single green measure in them: no rail, no environmental restoration of waters, to enhance or protect biodiversity (or to supplement our great Maryland Biodiversity Project, all volunteer so far) , or to site alternative energy facilities on our damaged lands: no efforts for a "Micro Grid" for Cumberland, Frostburg, or FSU...the last big regional energy facility was a coal burner built in the late 1990's near Cumberland: "Warrior Run" ..and while scientists at the national and international level are becoming the radicals of the day, our college and research facility scientists don't seem interested, with a couple of exceptions, in applying their knowledge to anything I just listed...part of the long process of depoliticization that struck me so forcefully when I arrived here 5 years ago.
And speaking of future directions in alternative energy, and especially about heat pumps and heat exchangers, to replace our dependence on fossil fuels for cooking, heating and cooling. Our region is honeycombed, underground, with abandoned coal mines, some 200-300 feet deep, some deeper. Frostburg the town, and the college have them in abundance. I never hear any talk, though, of how the air inside, which will be what - 55-65 degrees? , might be tested, cleaned, and re-directed for some of these purposes? Heating and cooling… Just as I see no concerted Tri-County or Tri-state push to cite solar facilities on all our thousands of acres of abandoned coal mines. No one else see opportunities here?
If I recall correctly, the Victory Plan of the Climate Mobilization calls for planting trees - or something better - on the scale of Alaska...what could Maryland's version of that be: what to plant, where, and can it accomplish more than one goal: removing carbon dioxide, cleaning the water, and supplying some useful products for the new economy? I frequently meet students studying ethno botany, but I haven't seen any awareness on their part that the Sunrise movement or the Green New Deal have registered, despite its promise for their directions and ideas.
Let's try to change that.
And one more opportunity, the kind many communities don't have : an existing right of way, and rail line, shaky at times , but there, runs between Frostburg and Cumberland, and the region is loaded with former trunk coal and timber lines...is this the best we can do, a tourist train, which we are happy to have, but which runs on that existing infrastructure...what, .0001% of the year? Seems like we could do something relatively inexpensive about that....and if it needs an elevator in Frostburg for the elderly and handicapped, that seems also very doable.
Do any of these directions suggest a new Civilian Conservation Corps, and a parallel “Climate” Conservation Corps, to carry them out? Start out at reasonable scale, experiment, learn and then scale up…
And finally, three good articles, to tie these thoughts together for you: the first one was sent to me last night: scientific urgency: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html By David Wallace Wells: "Time to Panic." Here is why, in part, I liked it so much:
"That is what is meant when politics is called a “moral multiplier.” It is also an exit from the personal, emotional burden of climate change and from what can feel like hypocrisy about living in the world as it is and simultaneously worrying about its future. We don’t ask people who pay taxes to support a social safety net to also demonstrate that commitment through philanthropic action, and similarly we shouldn’t ask anyone — and certainly not everyone — to manage his or her own carbon footprint before we even really try to enact laws and policies that would reduce all of our emissions.
That is the purpose of politics: that we can be and do better together than we might manage as individuals."
And this, along the same lines from the current issue of Dissent magazine, by a Sunrise leader in New York: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/sunrise-movement-green-new-deal
And from The Guardian newspaper, the link between big ag practices and the destruction of insect life, which may not be a political winner with the general public, after all, who loves bugs ? - but will have surprises for us all given the trends, and is surely a sign that something has gone terribly wrong in the human-nature relationship: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature
The message is right there in the title. I got the human side of that when Angus Deaton and Anne Case wrote about “Deaths of Despair” in the parts of America that weren’t celebrating “the great economy,” three years ago: www.nytimes.com/… There it is for you: human and ecological tragedy, and the causes intersect. That’s why I’m all for a Green New Deal — with much work, agonizing work, and details, yet to be struggled over in a public process, not behind closed doors in Beltway deals — and sellouts.
Best,
Bill of Rights
Frostburg, MD