Green New Deal

                                                Comments due  March 9, 2019

I imagine that each of you has heard of and maybe has formed ideas about the Green New Deal. The following is the text as it was released by AOC. Since this post is a bit long and since we have an exam on March 1, 2019 I decided to treat this post as two separate assignments. That is why the due date is two weeks from now and not the customary one week. I expect to read about your views: do you think the plan is viable, do you think that we can afford it, do you think that it will make a meaningful difference if implemented. Speak your mind but as always what you say must be guided by facts.

If you prefer to read the slightly longer full text instead of the resolution then go to: http://filesforprogress.org/pdfs/Green_New_Deal.pdf

· We will begin work immediately on Green New Deal bills to put the nuts and bolts on the plan described in this resolution (important to say so someone else can’t claim this mantle).

 · This is a massive transformation of our society with clear goals and a timeline.

o The Green New Deal resolution a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic prosperity for all. It will: § Move America to 100% clean and renewable energy § Create millions of family supporting-wage, union jobs § Ensure a just transition for all communities and workers to ensure economic security for people and communities that have historically relied on fossil fuel industries § Ensure justice and equity for frontline communities by prioritizing investment, training, climate and community resiliency, economic and environmental benefits in these communities. § Build on FDR’s second bill of rights by guaranteeing: · A job with a family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security · High-quality education, including higher education and trade schools · Clean air and water and access to nature · Healthy food · High-quality health care · Safe, affordable, adequate housing · Economic environment free of monopolies · Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work · There is no time to waste.

 o IPCC Report said global emissions must be cut by by 40-60% by 2030. US is 20% of total emissions. We must get to 0 by 2030 and lead the world in a global Green New Deal. · Americans love a challenge. This is our moonshot.

o When JFK said we’d go to the moon by the end of the decade, people said impossible.

o If Eisenhower wanted to build the interstate highway system today, people would ask how we’d pay for it.

o When FDR called on America to build 185,000 planes to fight World War 2, every business leader, CEO, and general laughed at him. At the time, the U.S. had produced 3,000 planes in the last year. By the end of the war, we produced 300,000 planes. That’s what we are capable of if we have real leadership · This is massive investment in our economy and society, not expenditure.

o We invested 40-50% of GDP into our economy during World War 2 and created the greatest middle class the US has seen. o The interstate highway system has returned more than $6 in economic productivity for every $1 it cost o This is massively expanding existing and building new industries at a rapid pace – growing our economy · The Green New Deal has momentum.

o 92 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans support the Green New Deal o Nearly every major Democratic Presidential contender say they back the Green New deal including: Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Jeff Merkeley, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jay Inslee. o 45 House Reps and 330+ groups backed the original resolution for a select committee o Over 300 local and state politicians have called for a federal Green New Deal o New Resolution has 20 co-sponsors, about 30 groups

 Why 100% clean and renewable and not just 100% renewable? Are you saying we won’t transition off fossil fuels? Yes, we are calling for a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases. Anyone who has read the resolution sees that we spell this out through a plan that calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy. Simply banning fossil fuels immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it – this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically. We do this through a huge mobilization to create the renewable energy economy as fast as possible. We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero. Is nuclear a part of this? A Green New Deal is a massive investment in renewable energy production and would not include creating new nuclear plants. It’s unclear if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant within 10 years, but the plan is to transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible. No one has put the full 10-year plan together yet, and if it is possible to get to fully 100% renewable in 10 years, we will do that. Does this include a carbon tax? The Green New Deal is a massive investment in the production of renewable energy industries and infrastructure. We cannot simply tax gas and expect workers to figure out another way to get to work unless we’ve first created a better, more affordable option. So we’re not ruling a carbon tax out, but a carbon tax would be a tiny part of a Green New Deal in the face of the gigantic expansion of our productive economy and would have to be preceded by first creating the solutions necessary so that workers and working class communities are not affected. While a carbon tax may be a part of the Green New Deal, it misses the point and would be off the table unless we create the clean, affordable options first. Does this include cap and trade? The Green New Deal is about creating the renewable energy economy through a massive investment in our society and economy. Cap and trade assumes the existing market will solve this problem for us, and that’s simply not true. While cap and trade may be a tiny part of the larger Green New Deal plan to mobilize our economy, any cap and trade legislation will pale in comparison to the size of the mobilization and must recognize that existing legislation can incentivize companies to create toxic hotspots in frontline communities, so anything here must ensure that frontline communities are prioritized. Does a GND ban all new fossil fuel infrastructure or nuclear power plants? The Green New Deal makes new fossil fuel infrastructure or nuclear plants unnecessary. This is a massive mobilization of all our resources into renewable energies. It would simply not make sense to build new fossil fuel infrastructure because we will be creating a plan to reorient our entire economy to work off renewable energy. Simply banning fossil fuels and nuclear plants immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it – this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically. Are you for CCUS? We believe the right way to capture carbon is to plant trees and restore our natural ecosystems. CCUS technology to date has not proven effective. How will you pay for it? The same way we paid for the New Deal, the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs. The same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars. The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit. There is also space for the government to take an equity stake in projects to get a return on investment. At the end of the day, this is an investment in our economy that should grow our wealth as a nation, so the question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity. Why do we need a sweeping Green New Deal investment program? Why can’t we just rely on regulations and taxes and the private sector to invest alone such as a carbon tax or a ban on fossil fuels? · The level of investment required is massive. Even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.

· The speed of investment required will be massive. Even if all the billionaires and companies could make the investments required, they would not be able to pull together a coordinated response in the narrow window of time required to jump-start major new projects and major new economic sectors. Also, private companies are wary of making massive investments in unproven research and technologies; the government, however, has the time horizon to be able to patiently make investments in new tech and R&D, without necessarily having a commercial outcome or application in mind at the time the investment is made. Major examples of government investments in “new” tech that subsequently spurred a boom in the private section include DARPA projects, the creation of the internet - and, perhaps most recently, the government’s investment in Tesla.

 · Simply put, we don’t need to just stop doing some things we are doing (like using fossil fuels for energy needs); we also need to start doing new things (like overhauling whole industries or retrofitting all buildings to be energy efficient). Starting to do new things requires some upfront investment. In the same way that a company that is trying to change how it does business may need to make big upfront capital investments today in order to reap future benefits (for e.g., building a new factory to increase production or buying new hardware and software to totally modernize its IT system), a country that is trying to change how its economy works will need to make big investments today to jump-start and develop new projects and sectors to power the new economy.

 · Merely incentivizing the private sector doesn’t work - e.g. the tax incentives and subsidies given to wind and solar projects have been a valuable spur to growth in the US renewables industry but, even with such investment promotion subsidies, the present level of such projects is simply inadequate to transition to a fully greenhouse gas neutral economy as quickly as needed. · Once again, we’re not saying that there isn’t a role for private sector investments; we’re just saying that the level of investment required will need every actor to pitch in and that the government is best placed to be the prime driver.

Resolution Summary

 · Created in consultation with multiple groups from environmental community, environmental justice community, and labor community

· 5 goals in 10 years:

                                      o Net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers

                                      o Create millions of high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all

                                      o Invest in infrastructure and industry to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century

                                      o Clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all

                                      o Promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of frontline and vulnerable communities

· National mobilization our economy through 14 infrastructure and industrial projects. Every project strives to remove greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from every sector of our economy:

           1   Build infrastructure to create resiliency against climate change-related disasters

          2    Repair and upgrade U.S. infrastructure. ASCE estimates this is $4.6 trillion at minimum.

          3   Meet 100% of power demand through clean and renewable energy sources

          4   Build energy-efficient, distributed smart grids and ensure affordable access to electricity

          5   Upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency

          6   Massively expand clean manufacturing (like solar panel factories, wind turbine factories, battery and storage manufacturing, energy efficient manufacturing components) and remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing

           7   Work with farmers and ranchers to create a sustainable, pollution and greenhouse gas free, food system that ensures universal access to healthy food and expands independent family farming

          8   Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle

           9   Mitigate long-term health effects of climate change and pollution

         10  Remove greenhouse gases from our atmosphere and pollution through afforestation, preservation, and other methods of restoring our natural ecosystems

          11  Restore all our damaged and threatened ecosystems

          12  Clean up all the existing hazardous waste sites and abandoned sites

          13  Identify new emission sources and create solutions to eliminate those emissions

          14  Make the US the leader in addressing climate change and share our technology, expertise and products with the rest of the world to bring about a global Green New Deal

· Social and economic justice and security through 15 requirements:

o Massive federal investments and assistance to organizations and businesses participating in the green new deal and ensuring the public gets a return on that investment

o Ensure the environmental and social costs of emissions are taken into account

o Provide job training and education to all

o Invest in R&D of new clean and renewable energy technologies

 o Doing direct investments in frontline and deindustrialized communities that would otherwise be hurt by the transition to prioritize economic benefits there

o Use democratic and participatory processes led by frontline and vulnerable communities to implement GND projects locally

o Ensure that all GND jobs are union jobs that pay prevailing wages and hire local

o Guarantee a job with family-sustaining wages

o Protect right of all workers to unionize and organize

o Strengthen and enforce labor, workplace health and safety, antidiscrimination, and wage and hour standards

o Enact and enforce trade rules to stop the transfer of jobs and pollution overseas and grow domestic manufacturing

o Ensure public lands, waters, and oceans are protected and eminent domain is not abused

o Obtain free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples

o Ensure an economic environment free of monopolies and unfair competition

o Provide high-quality health care, housing, economic security, and clean air, clean water, healthy food, and nature to all

Earth Overshoot Day: Is it a good measure?

                                        Comments due by February 23, 2019

Experts widely agree that human activities are harming the global environment. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world economy has grown dramatically. Overall this is a success story, since rising incomes have lifted millions of people out of poverty. But it has been fueled by population growth and increasing consumption of natural resources.

Rising demand to meet the needs of more than 7 billion people has transformed land use and generated unprecedented levels of pollution, affecting biodiversity, forests, wetlands, water bodies, soils and air quality.

On Aug. 1, humans will have consumed more natural resources in 2018 than the Earth can regenerate this year, according to the California-based Global Footprint Network. This environmental nonprofit calculates the annual arrival of Earth Overshoot Day – the date when humanity’s demands on nature exceed what the network’s analysts estimate the Earth can regenerate over the entire year. Aug. 1 is the earliest date since ecological overshoot began in the early 1970s.

Aug. 1 is the earliest arrival of Earth Overshoot Day since humans started overusing the planet’s resources in the 1970s.Global Footprint Network, CC BY-SA

As an ecological economist and scholar of sustainability, I am particularly interested in metrics and indicators that can help us understand human uses of Earth’s ecosystems. Better measurements of the impacts of human activities can help identify ways to sustain both human well-being and natural resources.

Earth Overshoot Day is a compelling concept and has raised awareness of the growing impact of human activities on the planet. Unfortunately, the methodology used to calculate it and the ecological footprint on which it is based is conceptually flawed and practically unusable in any science or policy context. In my view, the ecological footprint ultimately does not measure overuse of natural resources – and it may very well underestimate it.

Rising demands, finite resources

The Global Footprint Network estimates when Earth Overshoot Day will arrive based on its National Footprint Accounts. These include extensive data sets that the organization uses to calculate two overarching indicators:

·         The ecological footprint, perhaps the most commonly used metric of the environmental impacts of human resource use. Each country’s ecological footprint is an estimate of the biological resources required to meet its population’s consumption demands and absorb its carbon emissions.

·         National biocapacity, which is an estimate of how well each country’s ecosystems can produce the natural resources consumed by humans and absorb the waste and pollution that humans generate.

Both of these measures are expressed in global hectares. One hectare is equal to 10,000 square meters, or about 2.47 acres.

Going into overshoot

To estimate when Earth Overshoot Day will arrive, the Global Footprint Network calculates the number of days in a given year for which Earth has enough biocapacity to provide for humans’ total ecological footprint. The rest of the year represents “global overshoot.”

When the footprint of consumption worldwide exceeds biocapacity, the authors assert that humans are exceeding the regenerative capacity of Earth’s ecosystems. This year, they estimate that humans are using natural resources 1.7 times faster than ecosystems can regenerate – or, put another way, consuming 1.7 Earths.

As an example, the ecological footprint for France is 4.7 global hectares per person, and global biocapacity is 1.7 hectares per person. Therefore, it would take (4.7/ 1.7 =) 2.8 Earths if everyone lived like the French.

France’s Overshoot Day would be estimated as (365 x (1.7/ 4.7)) = 130, or the 130th day of the year, which is May 5 based on 2014 data. The United States reached overshoot even earlier, on March 1However, there are some fundamental and misleading shortcomings in these calculations. In a 2013 paper, six authors from academia, The Nature Conservancy and the California-based Breakthrough Instituteanalyzed how the Ecological Footprint falls short. In their view, it primarily measures humans’ carbon footprint but does not address other key impacts.

To calculate ecological footprints, the Global Footprint Network estimates the supply and demand of renewable biological resources across six land use types: forests, fishing grounds, croplands, grazing lands, developed lands and the area of forest required to offset human carbon emissions – that is, the carbon footprint. According to the network’s own analysis, each of these land use types is nearly in balance or in surplus, except for the carbon footprint.

The two key categories for producing food – cropland and grazing land – are defined in such a way that they can never be in deficit. And the analysis does not reflect environmental consequences of human use of these lands, such as soil erosion, nutrient runoff or overuse of water. It measures only land area.

For example, the ecological footprint for Indonesia is 1.61 global hectares per person, which is among the lowest 30 percent of all countries. But according to a 2014 study, Indonesia has the highest deforestation rate in the world.

Furthermore, the footprint calculation does not consider whether stocks of natural resources are decreasing or increasing as a result of human consumption. This question is critical for understanding ecological impacts.

These national ecological footprint calculations also conflate sustainability with self-sufficiency. They assume that every nation should produce all of the resources it consumes, even though it might be less expensive for countries to import some goods than to produce them at home.

As an example, the network lists Canada as an “ecological creditor” whose biocapacity exceeds its population’s ecological footprint. However, Canada is among the top 10 oil-producing countries in the world, and exports much of that oil for foreign consumption. Most of it goes to the United States, an “ecological debtor” that consumes more resources than it produces.

Thinking purely in terms of generic “resources,” everyone is better off when debtor countries can import resources from nations with supplies to spare. There are real and important environmental impacts associated with producing and consuming oil, but the network’s calculations do not address them. Nor do they reflect the decline in natural capital from extracting a nonrenewable resource.

Measuring sustainability

The Global Footprint Network asserts that “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” but it may be impossible to create a single metric that can capture all human impacts on the environment. Earth Overshoot Day highlights unsustainable uses of natural resources, but we need scientifically robust ecological indicators to inform environmental policy, and a broader understanding of ecological risks.

Better measurements of sustainability should reflect changes in our supplies of natural capital, include estimates of uncertainty and incorporate multiple pathways to reducing carbon footprints. The best tool for measuring human impacts on the planet may be a dashboard of environmental indicators, not a footprint.

Is NEPA Dead?

                                              Comments due by February 16, 2019


 Since 1970, the public has had a voice in major federal infrastructure projects. But the landmark environmental law that gives us that right is having its teeth pulled. The National Environmental Policy Act is the nation's oldest environmental law, widely known as the Magna Carta of green legislation. A blueprint for minimizing environmental impacts while ensuring compliance with federal laws like the Endangered Species Act, NEPA compels federal agencies to consider potential consequences of any "major" project they take on.
When President Richard Nixon signed NEPA into law in 1970, he said it would help "America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment." NEPA was forged in response to decades of preventable environmental disasters: highway growth that bulldozed entire neighborhoods in the 1950s, an oil spill in California that came from offshore drilling, and the infamous Cuyahoga River fire, among others. There are few hard statistics on the efficiency of NEPA, but the law has demonstrably improved countless infrastructure projects, saving trees, wetlands, and— yes—money throughout the United States for the last 50 years. Now, of course, the Trump administration is trying to gut the law. At six pages and one line, the law isn't long or complex; it serves more as an ingredient list than as a full recipe. It mostly just orders federal agencies to find, minimize, and report impacts of federal projects. It also establishes the Council on Environmental Quality, a group that's central in President Donald Trump's plan to defang the law. Under the purview of the White House, the CEQ is NEPA's executive operative, regulating how NEPA is implemented by and between federal agencies. Since the CEQ issued its regulation on NEPA compliance in 1978, the council has only made two amendments to its text—once to change its mailing address, and once to eliminate "worst-case" analysis from the review process (the latter change happened under President Ronald Reagan, though the withdrawal of language was apolitical, more due to confusing wording in the process that made it difficult to implement than to anything else). Over the past year, the CEQ, under the guidance of the Trump administration, has been working not just to amend NEPA, but to rewrite it altogether. As long as Trump has been president, the top spot at the CEQ has been vacant—until three weeks ago, when the Senate confirmed Mary Neumayr as chairwoman of the council. (Absent of an official chair, Neumayr had already been in the top spot at the CEQ since March of 2017.) Though her views on climate are not as extreme as those of the previous nominee—Neumayr at least says she believes in climate change—she is squarely conservative in her views on government regulation. As ThinkProgress points out, Neumayr once wrote a paper for the conservative Federalist Society criticizing government regulations, including environmental laws, for their alleged "criminalization" of corporate activity. Having served in various energy and environmental federal counsel positions spanning the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies, she looks a lot like an establishment conservative. Most important, she has pledged to carry out the agenda of the Trump administration. As chief of staff at the CEQ, Neumayr had already begun to do so. In 2017, she oversaw the withdrawal of Obama-era guidance requiring agencies to include greenhouse gases and climate change in their NEPA reviews. In June of last year, the CEQ put out a notice that it would be amending NEPA, and opened the rule for public comment. The notice poses 20 questions to the public, asking generally about whether parts of NEPA could be "updated" or "clarified," and whether the process could be made more "timely" or "efficient." While the CEQ hasn't put out any legislation yet, the tenor and thrust of these questions suggest that Trump's goal is to slash NEPA by restricting its usage and narrowing its purview. "There are two strands of attack on NEPA," says Pat Gallagher, legal director at the Sierra Club.* "What they're trying to do via regulation [is] to weaken the actual triggers for when they have to act on NEPA." Part of that strategy requires massaging the definition of what constitutes a "major federal project," which refers to projects big enough to warrant an environmental review in the first place, and expanding the list of "categorical exclusions," a list of actions that an agency may take that have been predetermined not to warrant a NEPA review.
 As an example, Gallagher says that an agency may stipulate that up to 10,000 acres of post-fire logging would be categorically excluded from undergoing an environmental review. "And that's a big problem. They're basically going to try to take big whole classes of actions and just remove them from NEPA," he says. That's not just a regulatory problem; it's a problem for democracy as well. A crucial part of NEPA is its requirement that every project undergoing the environmental review process be open to public comment. Through this mechanism, communities can drastically change the form of a project through the public comment process: They can suggest alternatives that may not only be beneficial to their local environment, but also make a project cheaper and more efficient. Public comment on a highway project in Colorado, for instance, helped minimize tree removal and dust due to construction, while adding bike lanes. The community-sourced alternative to the highway project ended up costing less than the original plan. Exempting entire categories of projects from NEPA, then, would "gut the statute. It removes the public from any review," Gallagher laments. The other strand of attack on NEPA is to place arbitrary restrictions on how long the environmental review process can take. Right now, a typical review will take three to five years; Trump's goal is to cut it to two years. He also wants to shorten the statute of limitations for claims drastically, from six years to 150 days. Ironically, this approach could make the review process even longer. "My prediction about that strand is that it will result in more litigation and more successes by the [non-governmental organization] community," Gallagher says, "because haste makes waste." As for trying to shorten the statute of limitations, Gallagher adds, "we're not that stupid. We know about statutes of limitations, so if we see a bad NEPA document, and we feel like it's grounds for litigation, we're going to pursue it." Is there a way to shorten the NEPA's often lengthy review process without sacrificing basic environmental protections? California's version of NEPA, the California Environmental Quality Act, despite being more stringent, has a one-year time limit on its review process. A NEPA review typically takes longer than a CEQA review, but it's possible to put meaningful time limits on NEPA, and stick to them ( for the most part). Still, the only way to do so would be to thoroughly examine the entire process, case by case, combing for patterns in studies and statistics. Even then, some massive projects like the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may still end up taking many years to review. The expansive scope of such projects lays out miles of hurdles, including "funding issues, engineering requirements, changes in agency priorities, delays in obtaining non-federal approvals, or community opposition to the project," according to a Government Accountability Office report. It takes competent, good-faith agency leadership to address issues as deep-rooted as these. Perhaps Neumayr, the longtime bureaucrat, could be that leader. But if she takes Trump's NEPA-gutting guidelines at face value and no further, it's not likely. In 2009, then-CEQ chair Nancy Sutley was hopeful that NEPA could be streamlined without sapping its ability to protect communities and their environments. She asked agency leaders to take a critical look at how NEPA fit into their operations, per E&E News, with the stipulation that "a scalpel is probably better than a bulldozer to deal with NEPA." Surely, after 50 years of the law, we have the tools to do this better.