A Green New Deal Is Yet Another Pretend Technological Fix. Put Bluntly, It Is Green Washing. (Oil#3)

Isn't Green Energy and 'A Green New Deal' a solution to carbon pollution and global warming?  Well no it is not, and in a quite limited sense, yes it is. 

Certainly fossil fuels will have to be replaced by alternative types of energy.   So-called green energy sources like wind and solar will be among these.     But wind and solar have many side effects too, related to the types of mining required as inputs.  There are technical problems with transporting long distances via battery to locations far away from the extraction sites.  The supply of solar and wind is not constant.  There are ebbs and flows with the seasons, and with conditions at the extraction sites, that will only get worse with global warming impacts. 

As a result, a lot of the alternative energy sources will include the likes of nuclear and hydro and others I will not list here.  Environmentalists and the left have had good cause to campaign strongly against these energy producers in the past.  We are already rebranding them as 'green energy' producers, and pragmatically forgetting all the dangers and negative side effects that they produce.

A Green New Deal is The Ultimate Claim That There Is a Quick Technological Fix.  There Isn't. Put Bluntly, It Is Green Washing.

There is a big clue in the fact that apparently the biggest investors in so-called green energy, other than the nation state of China, are the oil companies themselves.  They see the Green New Deal solution as something they would prefer not to have to stomach, but they are fully ready to make it the latest version of a Technological Fix, like carbon capture.  They have well-developed plans (as does China) no doubt for a "Both, And" solution.  They will continue with an Oil Extraction and Oil Energy Source economy, and add green new deals here there and everywhere.  And, like carbon capture, they will pay little or nothing of their own money for it.  They will get massive tax breaks.  The taxpayer will pay for the new fig leaf.

The solution to carbon poisoning of the planet WILL NOT COME FROM ADDING so-called green energy.  It WILL ONLY COME FROM SUBTRACTING fossil fuel energy extraction and use.  And addition of one will not lead to the subtraction of the other. 

It Is An Illusion To Think That Adding Alternative Energy Will Cause States Whose Relative Power Depends on Oil To Subtract Their Oil Production from the Global Total.

It is a dangerous mistake for the left to promote the illusion that a Green New Deal will lead the USA and China (and virtually any other state in the world that owes its relative economic and political and military power to Oil) to surrender that advantage unilaterally.  There will be no sacrifice and cost free transition from fossil fuels to some lesser evil that comes next. 

We need to focus all of our own campaigns on explaining the need to campaign to subtract fossil fuels.  This will not be just a negative campaign.   We will also highlight the positive solution(s).  Building up alternative sources of energy (personally I think that it is a mistake to paint too rosy a picture and call them green) will be part of what we should add. 

But the most important solution, the one that will actually solve the problem and will require the most explanation and biggest campaigns to win, is a global treaty for Winding Down to Zero, Together.

The Fight Against Nuclear Weapons Is A Fight to Subtract Too.  We Should Not Campaign To Add Alternative Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Think of this as something like a campaign to subtract nuclear weapons, and to do so by campaigning to have the biggest owners of nuclear weapons negotiate treaties to wind down to zero together.  Anti nuke campaigners could spend a lot of time arguing that there is a perfect Technological Fix, a new set of weapons to replace nukes that would kill fewer people.  But keeping the focus on a treaty to ban nukes would unite more people and maintain the spotlight on the polluters and the need for their behaviour to change.

For the next many years fossil fuel production is likely to increase, or to slow down very slowly, too slowly. In the most optimistic scenario, a series of major ecological disasters will occur that impact the rich and powerful states and companies and individuals, and not just the rest of us. Those disasters will lead to a period of actual reducing of fossil fuel production. And then things wil go back to ‘normal’.

While this is all happening, the left should maintain a relentless focus on what many people will call the negative, the need for the biggest polluters to subtract, to reduce towards absolute zero. The positive message, the idea of adding an alternative that is better, is not the expansion of alternate forms of energy. It is the Saving of the Lives and Health of People and Nature as we scale down reliance on fossil fuels. Winding Down to Zero, Together is the only actually workable solution and we should keep it front and center.

The Green New Deal Was Invented to Implement the Paris Accord Net Zero Approach.  It Is A Deliberate Alternative to A ‘Polluter Pays Proportional to the Damage Caused’ System.

Let me put the same point more sharply:  We don't need to campaign for wind and solar or any other Green New Deal.  We can count on the neoliberals and China and the oil company PR flacks to do that for us.  In fact, we need to start exposing the Joe Biden style false promise that adding non-oil energy sources will result in the subtraction of fossil fuel extraction and use. 

The stress on the "positive" of solving global warming by adding a new green energy industry is part of the bigger falsehood that Net Zero is a solution.  Net Zero is literally the Both, And idea.  Let the fossil fuel extractor states and companies , and the downstream companies and individual users, buy any one of the many kinds of permits to pollute old-energy style.  Then get the taxpayers to pay for all of the alternative energy production and downstream use that is branded as green (with a lot of help from the left).   And claim that the problem will be solved as a result.  Both, And.

Let's Demand That Polluters Pay Punitive Taxes Proportional to the Amount that They Pollute.  Is This A Non-Starter Because the Biggest Polluters Will Refuse?  Yes and No.  It Puts the Focus on the Crux of the Problem.  It Leads to a Winding Down To Zero, Together Solution.

Progressive environmentalists, and the Left, used to center their campaigns on the demand and slogan of Make the Polluter Pay.  We need to return to this approach. 

Your immediate thought will likely be that making the states and companies pay massive amounts of money based on a formula that makes the amount payable directly proportional to the amount of pollution is impractical (they will simply refuse).  It is also unfair.  Those who pollute less get off.  Shouldn't we all share the burden since it is in everyone's interests to end fossil fuels based pollution?  Aren't we all polluters, at least a little bit?

Well no we should not do more than a little bit to share the burden.  We should pay in strict proportion to what we do to cause the pollution problem.  It is not in everyone's equal interests to end carbon pollution.  If it were, the carbon polluters would be voluntarily designing and implementing a winding down to zero solution.  They have a lot to lose.  The rest of us have a lot to gain. 

An 'Everyone Pollutes So Everyone Should Pay' Approach Is Mistaken.  We Need to Name the Main Culprits and Explain Why They Refuse to Stop Polluting.

We will only win if we are very clear and specific about who the states and companies (and individual consumers of gas guzzling products) are who are causing the problem.  We need to do the patient work of researching and educating to explain to the public who exactly the culprits are.  And who exactly are mostly not the culprits.  There is no room for hair shirt campaigns that falsely suggest that "everyone pollutes", and so everyone should pay equally by organizing people in the neighbourhood to pick up the rubbish in the park.  And then go home to pay your "green"  taxes, to subsidize the Polluters and their latest technological fix scheme.

Let me use capitalist market logic here in support of the Let the Polluters Pay in Proportion to the Amount of Damage that their Pollution Causes approach. 

By Capitalist Market Logic, Making the Biggest Polluters (States and Companies) Pay Proportionately Will Lead Investors To Put Their Money Elsewhere.  That's What We Want.

While we are all waiting for the post capitalist world economy to arrive, let us use capitalist market incentives to change behaviour.  Apply big money (and threat of confiscation) costs to all acts that pollute.  Make the costs directly proportional to the amount of pollution generated by the activity.  Agree with the pro-capitalists like The Economist that we need to attach a price to carbon.  But make the price one that is paid by the polluter, and make it strictly proportional.  According to capitalist economics 101, making polluting extremely expensive for the polluter will get capitalist and state investors to take their money out of Carbon and put it somewhere else. 

In actual fact that would work.  So let us propose it as an indispensable part of the solution.  Let pro-capitalists come up with a dozen tricky policies that will route money back to the capitalist and state investors later (like Britain did when it paid a bounty to slave-owners after legislating a ban on slavery).  But first and foremost use capitalistic negative incentives (punitive taxes on polluters that result in very low profit, or actual losses) to get investors to take their money out of Carbon.  Then fight the bounty for slave owners, the bailout that is only for the carbon pollution investors who caused the problem, that is certain to accompany it.  The left can come up with different ideas for how to wind down, but that is for another article.