With the Trump administration supportive of direct cash payments to impacted Americans and apparently poised to push through some trillion dollars in emergency stimulus with the support of Republicans who spent years railing against just such a bailout from the Obama administration, it’s safe to say we are living through some interesting times where anything could be possible.
For example, over the past few years there have been murmurs of a truly extreme, yet reflective of the science, potential climate policy: nationalizing the fossil fuel industry and utilities. In light of the fact that the industry is suddenly failing and Trump would like nothing more than to be its savoir, Kate Aronoff at the New Republic has resurfaced the idea, building on a piece she wrote two weeks ago about how nationalization is plenty American and actually not all that radical.
In a piece (cheekily) titled “A Moderate Proposal,” Aronoff offers nationalization not as the industry’s punishment for decades of denial and pollution, but instead as the industry’s “best way out” of the combined pressures of the current economic downturn, longer-term fiscal issues stemming from cheap credit, and the need to support existing workers in the industry even as it goes bankrupt.
The coal industry’s bankruptcies offer a stark warning to frackers, and as Aronoff explains, “corporate raiders—private equity and hedge funds—swooping in to cash out, leaving mountains of layoffs, devastated communities, and reckless excess production in their wake.”
But, “by taking fossil fuel companies under public ownership while they’re cheap to buy, the U.S. could ensure the country’s energy demands are met responsibly as it transitions to a net-zero emissions economy, without the need to appease those companies’ shareholders.”
It would be a win for workers, because their pensions would be safe from vulture capitalists. It would be a win for the industry, because they would receive the bailout apparently necessary to keep functioning. It would be a win for Trump, because he would be hailed as a hero of the industry he campaigned on protecting. (In the same way that only Nixon could go to China, the only way Republicans would allow for nationalization of the industry would be if it were coming from someone like Trump.)
But most importantly, it would be a win for the public, because it would grant us the power, Aronoff explains, to “begin a managed decline of fossil fuels and guarantee workers full pensions and wage parity. As The Atlantic’s Annie Lowrey pointed out on Twitter yesterday, the government could snap up the country’s four biggest oil producers for just over $300 billion.”
With a trillion-dollar package on the table, that doesn’t seem like such a big figure. And while it probably wouldn’t be great news for emissions while Trump was in charge, if a future president were as serious about stopping climate change as Trump is about helping the fossil fuel industry, this outlandish idea starts sounding pretty enticing.
Save the fossil fuel industry from the economic climate, then save the actual climate from the fossil fuel industry.
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