November 16th
Session Fourteen: Green New Deal
REQUIRED READING FOR SESSION FOURTEEN
- Blueprint for Europe’s Just Transition – https://report.gndforeurope.com/
- Austerity is not a solution to the climate collapse.
- Progress is expensive. You can’t get progress with austerity.
- Economic inequality is another major problem facing civilization.
- Democracies are collapsing around the world as a result of the unaddressed economic and climate crises.
- These three things are tied together and can only be addressed together.
- Background Process
- Get everyone on board with understanding gnd
- Listen to stakeholders and incorporate their feedback to create “the just transition”
- Bring everything together to form a comprehensive vision
- Bring the plans to the institutions
- This is where this document comes in
- Transform financialized capitalism into something that supports rather than threatens our long-term interests with regard to justice, equity, etc.
- America is the “vampire mothership”
- The private sector sucks the blood of the country like a parasite while also exterminating the population and destroying the ecology that sustains the extractive, productive, and consumptive activities which the vampire capitalism relies on
- America is the “vampire mothership”
- Class discussion:
- Main demands
- 3-day weekend/4-day work work
- More jobs, less work
- Democratize the economy and society across workplaces and communities
- Fair wages
- People should be able to afford to live if they are working
- Local job creation, including rural areas
- 3-day weekend/4-day work work
- Guarantee a basic income for industries that are being phased out
- Fund government procurement from sustainable GND manufacturers
- Use the GPW to fund major buyback programs for vacant housing stock
- Penalize non-renewable investments
- Main demands
- Austerity is not a solution to the climate collapse.
- Green New Deal Report, Data for Progress – https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal-report
- GND is necessary to meet the scale and urgency of environmental challenges facing America
- GND can bring American job and economic opportunity
- GND is popular among American citizens
- GND can be environmentally just and distribute benefits equitably
- GND is Financially feasible and necessary
- “Creating a Road Map for a Green New Deal” – https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/creating-a-road-map-for-a-green-new-deal
- AOC and others protested at the offices of Pelosi, demanding GND
- Large scale projects are essential to resolve climate crisis
- “Can A Blue Wave Deliver A Green New Deal” – https://www.thenation.com/article/can-the-blue-wave-deliver-a-green-new-deal/
- More coverage of the same AOC/Pelosi protest
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT FOR SESSION FIFTEEN
- Watch the video Clean and Resilient Recovery (1 hour 30 minutes) –https://www.wri.org/events/2020/07/webinar-building-clean-and-resilient-recovery-covid-19
- Answer the 5 questions below in writing and be prepared to discuss them in class:
- What are the main points raised in this video about Covid 19, the SDGs and Climate Change?
- The historic economic paradigms are inefficient, polluting, and not resilient.
- Alternatives exist as articulated by the UN SDGs.
- The post-covid recovery can be clean and resilient.
- What similarities and differences are different nations facing?
- Everyone faces economic collapse due both to covid and climate change
- Everyone faces disasters like covid and will continue to face wider challenges as the collapse of the biosphere progresses
- Different countries have different access to investment capital to implement change
- Different countries face different short and long-term threats from climate change
- What are the main challenges addressed in this video?
- Covid is just a sneak peek of the disasters that are coming as a result of the climate collapse
- Most of the crises we are going to face in the near future are either directly or indirectly related to the ongoing collapse of the biosphere
- What solutions are presented?
- UK
- As we recover from covid and rebuild, we can make wiser decisions about the kind of future we want.
- We need to use sustainability and resiliency as the lens through which to view the recovery and rebuilding post-covid.
- Subsidize clean alternative vehicle and transportation designs
- Bangladesh
- Scale up early warning systems for extreme storms
- These investments save 10x the cost in lives and property damage
- Covid recovery needs to be durable and resilient
- Investment must be guided by and directed through these principles
- SDG alignment is key to a resilient recovery
- Supply chains need to be circular
- Wellbeing and inclusiveness as central goals is key to securing long-term prosperity in addition to durability and resiliency
- Scale up early warning systems for extreme storms
- Korea
- Smart grids to distribute sustainable and renewable energy
- GND officially endorsed by federal govt
- We can not go on like it was before.
- Short term recovery measures must be in line with out long-term ecological interests
- Decarbonization
- Green innovation
- Job creation
- Three main pillars
- Eco-friendly and smart infrastructure
- Low-carbon energy infrastructure
- Increasing renewable power capacity
- Phasing out coal and other non-sustainable power sources
- Ten coal plants closed already with six more scheduled to close
- Green manufacturing
- We can not go on like it was before.
- Covid reveals how fragile the existing economic systems are. This should be taken as a warning, since the climate disaster is going to be so much worse than covid.
- Nigeria
- It is now cheaper to provide sustainable energy versus unsustainable energy
- Rwanda
- Significantly increased their ambitious plans for SDG progress
- Established covid economic recovery fund
- Based on climate resilience strategy and action plan
- Investing in climate action can accelerate covid recovery
- Jamaica
- Committed to establish low-carbon economic recovery from covid
- Sustainable investments in renewable energy sector
- Climate finance needs to be more accessible and more available
- UK
- How do the SDGs fit into the solutions?
- Countries can choose to double down on the polluting and inefficient economic strategies of the past or choose sustainable alternatives as articulated by the SDGs?
Videos
- The Green New Deal: Putting the climate at the heart of global policy – Jeremy Rifkin (9 minutes)
- Animal and insect populations under threat around the world
- Sea levels rising
- Planet getting hotter because of fossil fuels
- It’s not too late to change course
- GND: Fossil fuel economy will collapse by 2028
- GND is an aspirational document
- Patterned after the new deal of the 1930s.
- Roosevelt initiated massive programs to get people back to work
- GND helps us move quickly out of a fossil fuel economy in order to avoid mass extinctions
- We are on course to lose half the species on earth within the century.
- Renewable solar energy is now cheaper than the other energy sources
- This means a widespread economic collapse will happen in the energy sector because the capital invested in obsolete polluting energy sources is going to move to sustainable alternatives like solar
- Every region and community needs to locally implement GND principles in order to move into the new era of sustainable energy production and consumption
- Long-term equity (pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc.) moving out of bad bets on fossil fuels is a hugely powerful force for change.
- Small sustainable pilot projects need to expand to huge widespread projects
- This will allow long-term equity bets to move into these projects in a big way.
- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Breaks Down What the Green New Deal Really Is (5 minutes)
- A proposed resolution or vision statement about building a sustainable future through investments in better alternatives to the status quo
- This would inspire separate legislation to address each of the smaller ideas.
- Affordable housing
- Homelessness
- Free education for all
- A proposed resolution or vision statement about building a sustainable future through investments in better alternatives to the status quo
Class Discussion
- Played video of spoken word poem
- If the lifespan of the earth is a day then humans have existed for three seconds and in that time basically wrecked everything, destroyed the environment, and initiated an extermination of the population including ourselves.
- GND is the first attempt to meet the scale of the challenges of the climate crisis
- Justice, equity, jobs, etc
- Advocates for large government investments in programs and projects to resolve the crisis
- The long-term actuarial perspective of institutional capital from sources like pension funds can be a powerful force for change through green investments in renewable energy, sustainability, and resilience in the developing world.