Pathways to sustainability, #GND style
Taking over the fossil fuel industry, managing its decline responsibly, while building a labour market full of good, low-carbon jobs.
Hi all,
Welcome back and hope you’re doing fine. In the previous issue I mentioned that one of the keys to the Green New Deal (the A key, to be precise) is its political combativeness. In style, therefore, Kate Aranoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Rianfrancos (click for Twitter accounts) come out of the gate of their A Planet to Win with guns a-blazin’.
They, in fact, start with why and how to take on the fossil fuel industry, or to be more precise: all those in the fossil extraction industry who are actively trying to slow down the pace of the sustainability transition. It’s a battle that needs to be fought if any real progress is to be made.
Let’s review some key points.
Bury the fossils
(I know, pure art, but I actually got the central image from Vecteezy.com)
There is a staggering amount of subsidies going to the fossil industry. Scaling down to zero would make fossil fuel less competitive.
Another way to “deflate” the value of companies is to buff up in supply side economics, for instance in order to limit the ability to mine further assets (this prospect is already seriously undermining the viability of fossil companies). Against those (industry) critics who argue that for every well you close, another opens up, the authors cite a study that argues that’s only half true, give or take. Limiting supply does limit demand.
A carbon tax has been one of the most hotly debated policy proposals. Aranoff et al’s position, and I quote: “meh”. Just one ingredient in the mix. Instead, they emphasize good ol’ ‘industrial policy’.
In particular, they reason, once the financial value of companies is cut down to size, we can take them public, necessary for a “managed decline” able to clean up the stranded assets and which doesn’t leave workers and their communities out in the cold.
That last bit is a nice segue to the second pillar of their approach:
Green Jobs
I’ll be a little shorter on this, not for lack of merit (au contraire, mon ami!), but it ventures out a little further from the core material of this newsletter.
Their Green New Deal comes with a jobs guarantee. I was always sympathetically agnostic about this idea (it’s nice to have a job!), but reading this book was the first time this made sense to me on a practical level. The herculean effort to make it to zero-carbon by 2050 would be the first source for all the labour that a country’s population could desire. We are talking about cleaning up and securing dirty industry, carbon-neutral construction, new infrastructure for public transit, or upgrading and tending to the natural infrastructure of a country.
They also look beyond the transition, though, to a sustainable economy of the good life. They emphasize investments in low-carbon jobs such as in care-giving or education, the kind of jobs that allow us to lead fuller lives. The strengthened position of labour through the jobs guarantee should lay the basis for decent pay and reduced work-hours, creating the conditions for more liveable societies.
Implications for this newsletter:
What areas and topics should we know more about?
Studies of the social life of the fossil industry generally can enrich our understanding of what it means to work and live in the fossil world and what it would mean to “euthanise” it. Studies of the commercial logic of the industry or of fossil infrastructure could provide valuable insights in what it would take. (However, because few readers of this newsletter will be “in the rooms where it happens”, I won’t turn it into a key focus, however important it otherwise is. Let me know if you don’t agree.
Key to the GND is the claim that democracy (“public power”) will speed up the clean energy transition. They take the OG New Deal’s Rural Electrification Administration as example, which was apparently quite effective in allowing communities to set up their own utilities and set the rules they should abide by. Call it the principle of democratic scalability: empower people and they will upgrade because it’s in their own interest. Something to review (especially in light of eco-authoritarian yearnings for a Big Man to lay down the law of the sustainable land.)
Likely, you’ll need some mix of sustainability-focused regulation and (local) democratic control. As Aranoff et al. also recognize: “Ditching shareholders is no panacea”. Basically, central regulation and decentral action are both crucial. Action needs to come from multiple levels. Thus, while for one public utility “members [are] at the center of every activity we do on a daily basis,” another might made different choices. Shifts to public ownership (in whatever form) should therefore come with a rulebook, a protocol, that can be copied and implemented according to local circumstances, but guarantees democratic or some sustainable design principles. I’ll be gathering insights in this. Tips welcome!
A preliminary general observation halfway through
What’s been nice about reading this book is that it actually goes back to the New Deal and examines what we could learn and adopt from it. (The Rural Electrification Administration I mentioned above is just one example.) It’s not just a perfunctory symbolic reference. As a result, it makes it possible to imagine how we might actually do this. I cannot convey this to you in a few bullet points though, so if you’re curious and hungry for inspiration, get a copy!
Next up: rebuilding the grid and going global. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to you by Friday.
Again, in these times of seclusion, take care,
Marten