3145. Thomas L. Friedman: "The Green New Deal Rises Again"

By Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, January 8, 2019

Thomas L. Friedman. Photo: Wikipedia.

Back in 2007, I wrote a column calling for a “Green New Deal,” and I later expanded on the idea in a book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded.” Barack Obama picked up the theme and made a Green New Deal part of his 2008 platform, but the idea just never took off. So I’m excited that the new Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others have put forward their own takes on a Green New Deal, and it’s now getting some real attention.

There is no agreed-upon policy road map for a Green New Deal. But as one of the leading climate bloggers, Joe Romm, recently pointed out, “Since the midterms, dozens of U.S. representatives and at least four Democratic senators have pledged support to create a Select Committee to create legislation for a Green New Deal. The goal is a ‘detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan’ to rapidly transition the country away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy, such as a solar, wind and electric cars.”

The Green New Deal that Ocasio-Cortez has laid out aspires to power the U.S. economy with 100 percent renewable energy within 12 years and calls for “a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one,” “basic income programs” and “universal health care,” financed, at least in part, by higher taxes on the wealthy. Critics argue that this is technically unfeasible and that combining it with democratic socialist proposals will drive off conservatives needed to pass it.

Myself, I like the urgency and energy she and groups like the Sunrise Movement are bringing to this task. So, for now, I say: Let a hundred Green New Deal ideas bloom! Let’s see what sticks and what falls by the wayside.

My own definition of a Green New Deal, which has evolved since 2007 as the technology has gotten better and the climate problem has gotten worse, remains focused on how a green revolution in America can drive innovation, spur new industries and enhance our security. Originally I also thought it could help us get our groove back after the 2007-8 recession. Success required changes in attitude, scale, and innovation.

Clean energy is a problem of scale. If you don’t have scale, you have a hobby. I like hobbies. I used to build model airplanes. But you can’t mitigate climate change as a hobby. The reason I called for a Green New Deal was first and foremost to convey that this undertaking required a massive, urgent response commensurate with the scale and time frame posed by accelerating disruptive climate.

For too long “green” was viewed as a synonym for a project that was boutique, uneconomical, liberal, sissy and vaguely French. I wanted to recast green as geostrategic, capitalistic, economical, innovative and patriotic. My motto was, “Green is the new red, white and blue.” I did not believe in being a “nice” green. I believed in being a mean green. I believed greens should be as brassy, bold, big sky and in-your-face as any oil and gas executive.

I liked the way environmental writer David Roberts put it in 2008: “Like so much of the American left, the environmental movement has become acclimated to the notion that it is operating outside the mainstream, knocking sheepishly on the door. Its rallying cry might as well be, ‘If it’s not too much trouble. …’” Forget that, Roberts argued, it is time for the green movement to think big and make big demands — something oil and gas executives do every day.

To achieve scale, though, my view was that a Green New Deal had to be embraced by more than liberals. You had to reach conservatives and even climate deniers. My way of doing that was to focus on something we can all agree on: math. There are about 7.6 billion people on the planet today and, according to the United Nations, there will be 8.6 billion in 2030. A billion more people driving, flying, eating protein, building homes and drinking water in just over a decade.

If they all adopt the per-capita consumption habits of today’s Americans, we’re going to burn up, heat up, eat up, plow up, choke up and smoke up the planet, whether the climate changes or not. That means that clean power, clean cars, clean manufacturing, clean water, and energy efficiency have to be the next great global industries — otherwise, we humans are going to be a bad biological experiment, whether the climate changes or not.

Who believes that America can remain a great country and not lead the next great global industry? Not me. A Green New Deal, in other words, is a strategy for American national security, national resilience, natural security and economic leadership in the 21st century. Surely some conservatives can support that.

And to make sure that they have an incentive to, I would also guarantee that a portion of every dollar raised by a carbon tax in a Green New Deal would be invested in two new community college and high-speed broadband in rural areas of every state. Each state could decide where. Every American needs to feel a chance to gain from a Green New Deal.

But which Green New Deal? Mine is focused on innovation. I believe there is only one thing as big as Mother Nature, and that is Father Greed — a.k.a., the market. I am a green capitalist. I think we will only get the scale we need by shaping the market. If I were drafting a Green New Deal platform today, it would put in place steadily rising mileage, manufacturing and emissions standards; stronger building codes; and carbon market prices that would say to our industries and innovators: Here are the goals, here is the level of clean power or efficiency that you have to hit every year — and may the best company win.

As I wrote in my 2007 column: “To spark a Green New Deal today requires getting two things right: government regulations and prices. Look at California. By setting steadily higher standards for the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances — and creating incentives for utilities to work with consumers to use less power — California has held its per-capita electricity use constant for 30 years, while the rest of the nation has seen per-capita electricity use increase by nearly 50 percent, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. That has saved California from building 24 giant power plants.”

To keep it simple, my goals would be what energy innovator Hal Harvey has dubbed “the four zeros.” 1. Zero-net energy buildings: buildings that can produce as much energy as they consume. 2. Zero-waste manufacturing: stimulating manufacturers to design and build products that use fewer raw materials and that are easily disassembled and recycled. 3. A zero-carbon grid: If we can combine renewable power generation at a utility scale with some consumers putting up their own solar panels and windmills that are integrated with the grid, and with large-scale storage batteries, we really could, one day, electrify everything carbon-free. 4. Zero-emissions transportation: a result of combining electric vehicles and electric public transportation with a zero-carbon grid.

That’s my Green New Deal circa 2019. It basically says: Forget the Space Race. We don’t need a man, or woman, on Mars. We need an Earth Race — a free-market competition to ensure that mankind can continue to thrive on Earth. A Green New Deal is the strategy for that. It can make America healthier, wealthier, more innovative, more energy secure, more respected — and weaken petro-dictators across the globe.

I am eager to see what other people propose, but we don’t have another decade to waste. This may well be our last chance to build the technologies we need at the scale of the challenge we face in the time we still have to — as scientists say — manage the unavoidable aspects of climate change and avoid the unmanageable ones.

As the environmentalist, Dana Meadows once put it, “We have exactly enough time — starting now.”

2103. The Economist on Climate Change Policy

By The Economist, November 28, 2015

Climate protestors in Paris where demonstrations are banned offer the shoes instead.

IN SOME ways, the climate talks that begin in Paris on November 30th will show world leaders at their best. Taking a break from pressing issues such as terrorist threats and stuttering economies, they will try to avert a crisis that will pose its gravest risks long after they have left office. It is the opposite of the myopic thinking that is often said to afflict politics. A pity, then, that politicians have set themselves an impossible task, and that they are mostly going about it in the wrong way.

That climate change is happening, that it is very largely man-made and that it is exceedingly dangerous, are all now hard to deny (though America’s leading Republican presidential candidates routinely try). This year will all but certainly be the hottest since 1880, when NASA’s records begin. If so, 2015 will break a record that was set only in 2014. Every single year so far this decade has been hotter than every single year before 1998 (see article).

The wind turbines and solar panels that are spreading across Europe, America and China are barely restraining carbon-dioxide emissions. Since the turn of the century, global energy has become more, not less, carbon intensive. Coal now supplies 41% of the world’s electricity and 29% of the world’s energy—a bigger share than at any time in at least four decades. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is 40% higher than it was at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

A terrible two

The presidents and prime ministers who gather in Paris will insist that global warming must be halted before the world becomes 2°C (3.6°F) hotter than it was in pre-industrial days. That is what they have said for years but, considering the momentum behind climate change, this target is as unrealistic as it is arbitrary. If annual greenhouse-gas emissions remain at the present level, enough pollution will enter the atmosphere in just 30 years eventually to warm the world by two degrees.

Greens say that the target is a rallying point—that it is useful because it inspires action, and action, once under way, will inspire yet more action in a virtuous circle. If only world leaders would stiffen their spines and promise even more green energy, they argue, disaster could be averted. But this drastically understates the challenge. The parts of the planet that have become rich have done so by tapping a vast store of fossil energy with feckless, if understandable, abandon. For the rest of the world to join them over the century ahead, and then for all concerned—as well as the planet’s non-human inhabitants—to flourish in the centuries that follow, will take a lot more than just a big expansion of existing renewable technologies.

The world and its leaders need more ambition and more realism. The ambition requires increasing the options available. Generous subsidies perpetuate today’s low-carbon technologies; the goal should be to usher in tomorrow’s. Unfortunately, energy companies (unlike, say, drug firms or car companies) see investment in radical new technologies as a poor prospect, and governments have been feeble in taking up the slack. A broad commitment quickly to raise and diversify R&D spending on energy technologies would be more welcome than more or less anything else Paris could offer.

This would be costly. But remember three things. One is that spending money to reduce grave risks is reasonable. The second is that some of today’s climate policies cost a lot more than a greatly expanded research portfolio and yield rather less. The subsidies that have created thousands of wind and solar farms have achieved only a little and at great cost. Other green subsidies, such as some of those for biofuels, have done actual harm. There is plenty of money to be saved.

A third is that one of the best measures against climate change raises money. Well-designed carbon prices can boost green power, encourage energy-saving and suppress fossil-fired power much more efficiently than subsidies for renewables. A few brave places have plumped to set such prices through carbon taxes: the latest is Alberta, in Canada. Most countries that have tried to price carbon have instead issued tradable pollution permits—invariably too many of them, with the result that the price is too low to change behaviour. Ideally such countries would admit their mistake and start taxing. Failing that, they should keep their emissions-trading schemes but add a floor price, and raise it steadily.

The new research agenda needs to tackle the deficiencies of renewables. Though solar, in particular, has become a lot cheaper, new materials, manufacturing and assembly technologies could make it cheaper still. Better ways of storing energy are required—so that wind or solar power can be used, for example, in the cold, still winter evenings when European electricity demand tends to peak. So are better ways of getting it from A to B, either through larger grids or in the form of newly synthesised fuels. Could biotechnology produce photosynthetic bugs that pump out lots of usable fuels? No one knows. It would be worth a few billion to find out.

Nor should the ambitions for research be limited to renewables. There are other forms of fossil-fuel-free energy, such as nuclear. Innovation in nuclear energy is not easy: such power plants are dangerous and need vigilant, independent regulation; they are unpopular and currently vastly expensive. But a civilisation that looks decades or more ahead cannot exclude new forms of nuclear from the research agenda.

Living with it

Radical innovation is the key to reducing emissions over the medium and long term, but it will not stop climate change from getting worse in the meantime. This is where the realism comes in: many people will have to adapt to a hotter Earth, and some of them will need help.

Wealthier countries (including China) have promised $100 billion a year to help poorer ones. The trouble is that it is not clear what counts towards this total or what the money is for. If the Paris climate conference dissolves in rancour, this will probably be the cause. The priority should be research into crops that can survive extreme weather; better sanitation and health care to make the poor more resilient to climate shocks; and cheap energy, whether green or not. The poor need all these things more than they need gifts of green-power technologies that even the West finds too expensive.

The final strand of new thinking ought to be research into cooling the Earth artificially. Climate models suggest that global warming could be slowed by spraying particles into the stratosphere or by using salt crystals to make clouds whiter, and hence better at reflecting sunlight. No one knows whether such “geoengineering” projects can be designed in a way that does not replace existing climate risks with worse new ones. But that is a reason for research and debate, not for looking the other way. Geoengineering is not a substitute for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions (for one thing, it does not stop carbon dioxide from changing the chemistry of the oceans). But putting it off-limits, as many greens desire, is foolish.

In short: thinking caps should replace hair shirts, and pragmatism should replace green theology. The climate is changing because of extraordinary inventions like the steam turbine and the internal combustion engine. The best way to cope is to keep inventing.