GREEN DEALING

The future will be green or not at all. ~ Bob Brown  

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (OAC), Sen. Ed Markley and their fellow Green Dealers may be in their ascendency. Their Feb. 7 introduction of the Green New Deal (GND) certainly got the media’s attention. So much so that it was promptly designated another key litmus test that all Democrats vying for the 2020 presidential nomination must judge. How many Dem candidates are there now? It seems like at least 23; with the list including Pete Buttigieg [mayor of Ft. Wayne, IN] but at this moment it’s merely 13 and sure to rise.

After Medicare for All appeared at the top of candidates’ litmus tests several weeks ago, it’s now just basic blue and the GND now basks as uppermost. These litmus tests are being tossed at candidates as each new “hot topic” newly emerges and the media decides it’s one that candidates must instantaneously adopt or reject. Unfortunately, most candidates readily take the bait before understanding what they’ve signed on to. These repeated tests must make each candidate feel like they’re back in high school. Ah, the good ol’ days.

Green Dealers like OAC seem to believe that shouting from the proverbial tippy-top of endangered redwood trees, combined with a fervent belief that they’re holding a royal flush of solutions, is the best way to change laws. Others, including the many more taciturn Democrats, likely disagree. OAC hopes the GND manifesto will rearrange everyone’s priorities, now. Why; because she has gladly taken the scepter of lead spokesperson for the capital “P” Progressive clan at the capital “C” US Capitol and beyond. She also sees herself as savior of the truly environmentally righteous (or is it leftous) across their much-expanded purview. This expansion comes from the nature of progressivism.

Progressivism is progressive. Over time it seeks ever larger moral advance. If progressives have their way, the list of things considered unequal, unjust and unworthy will broaden, as the scope of the GND’s “environmental” agenda has swelled. This can be a good, but. Here’s a recent example of progressivism’s progressiveness: Additional New York City regulatory guidelines to be released this week will give legal recourse to individuals who have been harassed, punished or fired because of the style of their hair. NYC will henceforth ban discrimination based on an individual’s hair style, which will now be considered racial discrimination.

Because I live way outside the DC beltway, I wasn’t aware of the GND’s initial rounds of formulation, based on gathering opinions of experts and stakeholders. There were some discussions, right? If so, it’s not obvious. Instead, it appears OAC and Markley couldn’t and didn’t say no to any progressive idea that’s somehow connected to an improved “environment” for needful people, especially workers. Beyond decarbonizing the entire US economy in 11 years, the GND’s extra-environmental commandments, er objectives include the government being responsible for:

·        guaranteed jobs, with living, sustainable wages and full benefits for all workers, including folks who have been unable or unwilling to work;

·        affordable, adequate and energy-efficient housing for all;

·        universal, high-quality health care provided by a single-payer;

·        competitive economic markets not clouded by nasty monopolies and oligopolies; and

·        high-quality, free public college tuition for all.

In other words, the GND comes in many varieties of green that will cost lots of green; likely over $40 trillion during the next decade. And these multiple, herculean goals must be accomplished by 2030, only a few proverbial ticks of the governmental clock to entirely revamp the world’s largest economy. Sir Thomas More, the creator of utopian literature 500 years ago, would be impressed with the GND.

Advocates of the GND, being fantasists, are insisting that no trade-offs will be needed nor sacrifices incurred in order to satisfy their manifesto’s objectives. Indeed, AOC has stated, “The question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what is the cost of inaction, and what will we do with our new shared prosperity created by the investments in the Green New Deal.” [Emphasis added.]

She’s not worried about how to pay for these grand objectives perhaps because progressives like her are thoroughly at one with emerging Modern Macroeconomic Theory (MMT). MMT posits that sizeable government deficit spending, which increases the nation’s public debt, isn’t a concern at all. The government can keep printing Benjamins 24/7 as long as inflation doesn’t rise to an unpleasant level.

Fiscal irony is very much alive and well in Washington. MMT’s semi-magical leftish thinking is completely in line with solidly-right Republican conservatives who happily passed their unfunded 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that’s raised the US debt to historically high levels. This year’s federal budget deficit will be nearly $1 trillion. The 2017 tax law revealed Repubs to be hyper-hypocritical deficit scolds. They condemn “excessive” government expenditures only when it involves Democratic policy, not their own.  

Let’s look at the GND’s principal environmental objective, rapid decarbonization of our $20.7 trillion economy. I spent the majority of my career working to promote and assess energy efficiency programs and policies. I’m all in with a greener America. The GND’s objective of requiring the entire nation to produce 100% of its energy from renewable sources and produce net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is as astonishing as it is realistically unattainable. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) has previously and ambitiously proposed to cut global emissions just by 40% to 60% by 2030, and hopefully get to net zero by 2050. How does OAC and her Green Dealers propose do to this in 20 less years than the IPPC? They never say; that’s for others to stress about.

For reference, in 2017 (a baker’s dozen years before 2030) just 18% of total US power generation was produced from renewable energy sources, an all-time high. In the nine years between 2008 and 2017 this renewable share of power generation doubled, an impressive accomplishment. The GND’s goal for 100% of US energy use, not just power generation (electric power accounts for about 16% of total energy use), to be produced from renewable sources, would require renewable energy to increase by 550% over the next 13 years. The Green Dealers leave reality by the side of their utopian, all electric-vehicle throughways to the future.

I have no doubts that were only one of the GND’s lofty objectives to be undertaken; it could certainly benefit us all and would create many prosperous winners in that endeavor. But there also would be losers. For example, the vast majority of workers in the coal, oil, gas and petrochemical industries (1.44 million people, over half of which are blue-collar workers) would be out of jobs. Sure, job retraining is clearly called for, but in the undefined interim that can last for a while in job retraining, such workers would be SOL. They are not likely to be happy GND campers, nor would their employers. But no worries; each of them would be offered a government-guaranteed job.

Eliminating the internal combustion engine as the transportation sector’s motive power, another GND goal, would likewise lead to numerous lost high-paying manufacturing jobs and large economic dislocation in the short- to medium-term. Transportation of people and goods accounts for 29% of US total energy use. The auto industry is one of the largest in the US, contributing about 3% to the US GDP. Three percent seems like a small number, but it works out to $620 billion in cumulative yearly economic activity. That’s not a small number to trifle with. In 2018, US electric vehicles (EVs) sales reached an all-time high of 361,300, accounting for 2.1% of total vehicle sales. Getting to 100% EVs in 11 years boggles my mind’s engine.

As always, trade-offs will be present if and when the government begins investing in GND’s vast decarbonization. Any and all trade-offs have been denied by the Green Dealers, together with dismissing the substantial costs of attaining the manifesto’s goals. Such denials weaken OAC’s Green Dealing in the jungles of Congress and make the prospect of political victory much smaller. She might not care.

However, if AOC et al. really do want to create actual legislation based on the GND, then it’s incumbent on them to transparently develop specific plans for how the GND objectives could be met by 2030; how these objectives can overcome inevitable challenges; and what trade-offs, if any, the Green Dealers are willing to make to secure decarbonization within 11 years. That process is unexciting and tedious compared to commandment creation.

Maybe OAC is playing a longer game. Fundamentally, I suspect the Green Dealers don’t view their GND as a basis for actual legislation. In this sense it’s worthwhile remembering that Nancy Pelosi has already agreed to step down as Speaker by 2022. After all, the GND will require unprecedented and very big expansions of federal, state and local government programs, oversight and regulation. This is entirely consistent with the precepts of the few elected democratic socialists, like AOC and Sen. Bernie Sanders. This future is not consistent for the majority of current Congressional Democrats. Speaker Pelosi has given the GND a “seal clap,” hardly unequivocal support. But who knows what the future will bring.

With all its practical and political challenges I imagine AOC and other acolytes see their GND more as an edict for progressives of every stripe to rally around their maypole, not as a summarized playbook for real legislation.

Any specific legislation that might have a chance of becoming law coming through Speaker Pelosi and other “establishment Democrats” will elicit cries of derision from progressives. Because Democrat decrees that could actually pass the House will be instantly declared limited, insufficient and unworthy by Green Dealers. They have already claimed the very highest green ground, even if it’s realistically and politically impossible. They’ve now planted their flag, the GND, atop an ever-green Mt. Everest, without having to worry about actually climbing it.

It will be a long time before AOC and Green Dealers might gain enough votes in the House to pass her GND. I’m not holding my exhaled CO2-filled breath. Nevertheless, she has three million Twitter followers right now who have rallied behind her and probably the manifesto. To these devotees, the GND and its 6 commandments are gospel for achieving an alleged more perfect and far greener future. Alas, I’m not one of them; I’m too pragmatic.