The Green New Deal and Beyond by Cox Stan; Chomsky Noam;

Author:Cox, Stan; Chomsky, Noam;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers

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OFF-RAMP AHEAD

“Science shows we have barely 10 years to avoid disaster, suggesting we shouldn’t count entirely on technological innovation or self-moderation. Meanwhile, we’re all in a lifeboat with just enough space for each of us. Should we really be complaining about not getting first-class seats if doing so would bump others?”

—Eleanor Boyle, 2019225

Someday—and it had better be soon—Americans will mobilize to prevent the ecological catastrophe that is being forecast by scientists. Despite the overwhelming evidence that immediate action is demanded, most people in this country don’t seem prepared to do that yet. Politicians and pro-corporate economists are stuck in an endless loop, rejecting ideas for climate action because of their potential short-term impact on profit instead of their long-term capacity to create a stable, sustainable, and just society. We can’t limit the array of actions under consideration to those that appear to be politically and economically achievable under current conditions. If it turns out that existing institutions are unable to accept or support the policies and actions that are essential to addressing ecological meltdown, then it is those institutions, not the necessary actions, that need to be overhauled.

The U.S. economy will always be recalcitrant to any form of restraint, but political acceptability is a moving target. The past few years’ climate news alone has demonstrated the whiplash speed with which public consciousness can shift. The growing awareness now has to be expanded dramatically, and that will require a blunt, forthright discussion of how profoundly our nation is going to have to change in the hot and increasingly unstable decades ahead.

GOING ON AN ENERGY DIET

If fossil fuels are rapidly eliminated during the transition to non-fossil energy, the pool of energy available to society will shrink. How much it shrinks will depend on how fast the new energy capacity and a new electric grid can be developed. And if the transition succeeds, the handy liquid fuels that for a century have powered road travel, farming, freight hauling, and air travel will be flushed out of society forever. Operating buildings, transportation, and industry mostly on electricity will be much more complicated. But adapting to a leaner energy diet does not have to be a grim ordeal; in fact, it will provide opportunities to scale back the environmental and societal damage that potent, portable energy sources, especially liquid fuels, have empowered us to inflict.

The United States can reduce its energy consumption by first starving the harmful and wasteful parts of the economy that should have been curtailed already on other grounds. The cutting can start in the U.S. military, which produces more greenhouse emissions than most entire countries do—a huge quantity of it from jet fuel.226 The cuts should extend to demilitarizing law enforcement and abolishing mass incarceration. We can slash the energy allowance of the nation’s most affluent people, who account for a disproportionate share of energy consumption and emissions; by one estimate, households having more than $1 million in investment assets are contaminating the Earth’s atmosphere with ten times more greenhouse emissions than the average household.

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