Neon Leon: March 2019

Global Warming-- Just Another Can To Kick Down The Road?

"We could have saved the earth, but we were too damned cheap." Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was an American writer. In a 50 year career, he published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of nonfiction. He is most famous for his gloomily satirical novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

Vonnegut has been a hero to me for 50 years for two reasons. I shared his hatred of war ( he was an Army veteran who was captured during the Battle of the Bulge in WW II and I was a Marine grunt in Vietnam) and like Vonnegut, I became keenly aware of the failure of governments to save Mother Earth for decades.

In the 12 years since his death, global warming has increased dramatically. Here's a couple of charts that provides the scary numbers:

Lowess Smoothing LOWESS (Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoothing), sometimes called LOESS (locally weighted smoothing), is a popular tool used in regression analysis that creates a smooth line through a time plot or scatter plot to help you to see relationship between variables and foresee trends. NASA is National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

NOAA is National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This blog is not a means to argue about the reality of Global Climate Change. I have covered that subject in great detail in the last few years. I am utterly convinced that we are in a world of deep doo-doo, but for those who need some background, here are some of my blogs and sources of information:  Global warming  Food supply

On the subject of water there are two blogs.  One is here  and the other is here . I also wrote about the numerous naysayers and climate deniers right here .

I stand with the thousands of climate scientists who are deeply alarmed at the existential risk to our planet. Here is a list of 200 scientific agencies involved with climate analysis who are increasingly ready to hit the panic button.

THE GREEN NEW DEAL (GND)

Who drafted this massive proposal? According to the February issue of The New Yorker, "When freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) joined members of the Sunrise Movement and the Justice Democrats at a sit-in at Nancy Pelosi’s office pushing a Green New Deal in November, she framed the proposal ...as the only way for the Party and the country to seriously address climate change. 'We do not have a choice,' she told them. 'We have to get to 100% renewable energy in ten years. There is no other option.' "

Amazingly, in just a few months, some 60 House Dems and 6 Senate Dems as well as many presidential hopefuls are now on board with the proposal.

This blog will consider the pros and cons of this uniquely American resolution that seeks to address climate change holistically viz. by including social and economic reforms along with global warming. I have included  The text of the resolution which relies on the facts presented by the October 2018 report entitled ‘‘Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC’’ by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the November 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment

The GND is fourteen pages long, so I will summarize the major parts. However, before I wade through it, I would also like to note that this is a non-binding resolution, not a legislative proposal. If the House can cobble enough support to create a bill, it will then go to the Senate for approval, and then to the President's desk for his signature or veto.

How much green will it cost for this green resolution? Somewhere between $51 trillion and $93 trillion over 10-years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The center-right policy American Action Forum noted that those sums include "between $8 trillion and $12 trillion to eliminate carbon emissions from the power and transportation sectors and between $43 trillion and $81 trillion for its economic agenda.

Let's take a look at the major elements of the resolution, and then note the pro and con reactions to the GND across the political spectrum.

Here are the goals House Dems are considering: (1) Provide for “high-quality health care.” (2) Create “affordable and safe housing (3) Strengthen antitrust policy, protecting the right of workers to organize. (4) The resolution also calls for a "green federal job guarantee" in which all citizens will have a job opportunity in the transition to clean and sustainable energy. (5) Provide "100 percent of the power demand through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.” (6) There is much in the text about improving “frontline and vulnerable communities,” defined as “indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.” (7) The GND will also “promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression.”

These ‘‘Green New Deal goals’’ are to be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization that will require the following projects: (A) "..building resiliency against climate change-related disasters...by leveraging funding and providing investments for community-defined projects and strategies; (B) repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States, including by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas ... as much as technologically feasible; (C) by guaranteeing universal access to clean water."

The Republicans have largely chosen not to examine most of the details of the GND, rather they often dismiss the whole project as an impossible, communist/socialist plot to destroy America.

The conservative American Liberty Report click here is typical of anti GND messages. Liberty's headline reads "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’ is Just Socialism in a Pretty Bow." Consider these statements in the report:

"The GND includes programs that have nothing to do with renewable energy... energy mandates are [not] the whole story. AOC’s proposal calls for both single payer healthcare policies and a number of basic income programs."

"The resolution would also call for a federal jobs guarantee... the government would artificially create jobs to be given to people who aren’t smart or talented enough to find work on their own."

"It would have no effect on 'global warming.' The main reason for the GND...is to curtail the effects of climate change. However, there is no reason to think that their projections on climate change are remotely accurate. Even if the US...cuts emissions by 100%, those of Africa, China, and India would more than make up for it. In other words, only the US is expected to participate in any of the green initiatives [in] the program ."

"It would give money to many left-wing interest groups...[who] have little or nothing to do with green energy.... [For instance] there are ...provisions...for the creation of new labor unions and related programs...which would, 'deeply involve national and local labor unions to take a leadership role in the process of job training and worker deployment. It also promises “funding for massive investment in the drawdown of greenhouse gases.'...It seems rather that AOC’s ghostwriters are just as fairy-brained as she is."

"Renewable energy is way more expensive than fossil fuel....[and] fossil fuels are far more powerful and efficient than solar and other so-called green energies...[and] the high tech electronics needed for [renewables]...[requires]... new development in battery technology...[which] is one of the dirtiest and least environmentally friendly processes there are. What’s more...green energy devices call for a huge increase in strip mining for rare minerals."

"It would blast the national debt into orbit...[because of] the price tag- which comes in at about $40 trillion in the first ten years...[and] add to that the burden of an economy drained flat by the cost of this insane program."

Finally, Liberty notes that the resolution's name is "...reminiscent of The New Deal, which has made the poor massively dependent on welfare and destroyed the family unit."

Conservative pundits have been trying to rally the troops by discrediting Rep. AOC by repeating this mantra: "She’s trying to steal America’s burgers."

President Trump has chimed in by saying that under the proposed deal, airplane travel and electric power would cease to exist.

Vice President Pence called the resolution Socialism and warned in remarks at the recent CPAC conference that "Democrats want to trade American-made freedom for Venezuelan-style socialism."

Pence also said “Under the guise of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, Democrats are embracing the same tired economic theories that have impoverished nations and stifled the liberties of millions over the past century. That system is socialism.”

According to The New York Times, Trump's staff is also preparing an executive order to establish a 12 member climate panel headed up by White House advisor Dr. William Happer, a Princeton physicist (no other members listed). Happer has said that carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas that scientists say is trapping heat and warming the planet) is "beneficial to humanity."  The aim of the panel is to examine potential security threats as well as the validity of climate science.

My take on the GND: It's a work in progress that I can only partially address because of the sheer size of the proposal and space limitations in my blog. Of course, like any legislative proposal, it has some good and bad points. What follows is my take on some of them.

If the goal is to “promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression” is to be reached by paying reparations for the sins of slavery, count me out. I believe that providing financial redress for those folks is simply impossible because determining financial payments based on 200 years of history would necessitate a huge bureaucracy and endless arguments about who deserves how much and when.

No, the GND will not take your hamburgers away. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez addresses that issue thusly:  “It’s not to say you get rid of agriculture. It’s not to say we’re going to force everybody to go vegan or anything crazy like that,” she said. “But it’s to say, listen, we’ve got to address factory farming. Maybe we shouldn’t be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Like, let’s keep it real. 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.” (The latter comment was quickly removed from the GND site after considerable negative reaction.)

OK, so the belches and manure of cattle produces more methane than farts. That's not the point. Rather it is the amount of methane pollution and it's a lot.  According to researchers at New Zealand's largest Crown Research Institute, AGResearch, "...up to 95 percent of the emissions comes from the cow's mouth rather than its behind. Each cow lets out between thirty and fifty gallons of methane per day. With an estimated 1.3 to 1.5 billion cattle in the world today, this adds up fast; they are the largest source of methane gas emissions worldwide, contributing over 28 percent of total emissions."

About those tweets of  Trump that the GND will eliminate air travel:  The resolution does not call for that. It only states that transportation emissions should be reduced “as much as is technically feasible,” and suggests three ways of reaching that goal, including high-speed rail and zero-emission vehicles, which would include electric cars. There is no mention of air travel.

Vice President Pence's comments on the evils of Socialism, standard fare for Republicans for decades, are too narrow in scope. History shows that the Soviet state eventually strayed far from Marx's idea of socialism towards Lenin's totalitarian communism. But in its purest form, socialism was a political, social, and economic system meant to empower the working class. Presently though, the most common definition of Socialism refers to the services provided by government which are paid for with taxes. It is wrongly associated with Communism by the right but is increasingly popular with the left.

So what socialist services do the federal, state and local governments provide?
*military*police*firefighters*voting*Medicare
*Medicaid*Social Security*healthcare (via emergency room, for people who can't pay)
*public libraries*public schools
*government college grants, scholarships, and loans *the FDA *the EPA *roads (except road tolls) and much, much more.  So, do Americans want to forego these socialistic services? I think not.

The word Socialism no longer has the dark image of past generations. There are numerous media reports about a rise in "Millennial Socialism"
which focuses on some of the failures in Western democracies ( rising inequality, global warming and political corruption.).

An analysis of those countries who actually have a socialist economic structure reveals many similarities to the USA (as well as many differences). Here is Wikipedia's list of some of the most socialistic nations in the world today:
China, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Canada,
Sweden, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand, and Belgium. Are these the failed nations Pence speaks of?

I have some news for The Liberty Report: There is EVERY reason to think that projections on climate change are accurate. Here is a partial list of the organizations who have done the research on climate change for decades: NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL, NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE AGENCY,
WORLD DATA CENTRE FOR GREENHOUSE GASES, PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, and THE UNITED NATIONS INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE.

Poll after poll has shown that 92% of climate scientists world wide are on record that global warming is a reality and an existential risk for humans. Do climate deniers have a similar wealth of data to boost their cause? I have researched their claims since 1972 and found little that bears the weight of scientific analysis.

As for the White House's plan for a new climate panel :   Been there. Done that. There are multiple climate reports already available, to wit:

According to Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, “The link between climate science and national security has been closely studied for over a decade at the highest levels of the U.S. government ... and all those studies have made a strong case that various aspects of climate change have an effect on national security.”

The report continued, “Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea level rise, soil degradation and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”

The January 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment, (issued by Dan Coates, the American Director of National Intelligence, said that climate change and other environmental degradation were “likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress and social discontent through 2019 and beyond.”

What we have here, in my opinion, is yet another example of Trump's desire to ignore the findings and recommendations of his own intelligence and defense officials.

How do we pay for the GND?

The resolution is hazy on the subject, but some of the suggestions out there include: A new tax on the very rich (those with $10 million or so),
printing more money (quantitative easing or QE), public financing and making the fossil fuel industry pay. (However QE, in my opinion, should be applied only when short-term interest rates are approaching zero and when the economy needs a kick start for economic growth.)

As for this blogger, I would add the proposals of Jacobin Magazine. I have summarized their ideas thusly:

(1) "One [big] source of ... misallocated capital is corporate America’s vast hoard of semi-hibernating cash. Last year the Federal Reserve reported that nonfinancial corporations held $4.8 trillion in cash. That sum is equal to almost one quarter of the entire US annual economic output, which last year was $20.5 trillion. And this $4.8 trillion in cash is only a subset of a larger, less liquid, hoard of $22.1 trillion worth of financial assets held by nonfinancial corporations."

(2) "This is not money paid out to stockholders as profits or to managers as bonuses. This is money retained by firms for investment...but it is at work...in the financial sector...fueling the next speculative bubble...for the next big thing... something [like]...the advent of the internal combustion engine, electrification, or the rise of [computers] and the internet. The Green New Deal [would use] the hoarded corporate cash [for] a...wave of investment in clean energy."

(3) "... the US government would need to use a combination of regulation, investment, procurement, and subsidy. ...step one should be to stop all fossil fuel extraction on public lands and end all subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates that federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal production average about $26 billion a year. That sum could shift to subsidizing clean energy production."

(4) "Next, put the fossil fuel sector on an aggressive, legal timeline towards extinction. At the same time, government needs to increase 'renewable portfolio standards' — that is, increase the percentage of clean power each utility company is required to produce. What would happen to the money...invested in building oil pipelines? It too would shift into building the clean energy sector such as electric vehicles, retrofitted buildings, massive wind farms, and photovoltaic solar panels on every roof."

(5) "Another tool for...investment is government procurement...[such as] energy-saving retrofits on all of its 450,000 buildings [and] switching from] gas to electric vehicles in the public sector to the private sector-- auto manufactures would have to invest to meet the demand."

(6) "Far from “costing too much” the GND promises [what]...Wall Street...[doesn't]: more opportunity and more income for more people."

Liberty Report's statement that GND will "create jobs [for those] who "aren’t smart or talented enough to find work on their own" is ludicrous. Actually those jobs will be for those who are trained to meet the high tech demands of creating a new energy grid.

Those folks in dying industries like coal, hardware manufacturing, brick and mortar retail, textiles, footwear, newspaper publishing and banking will need to upgrade their skill set.

And while it is true that renewable energies supplies only a fraction of our energy needs, the fossil fuels industry is slowly dying also
according to a major industry report.

From the November 2018 article: "Amory Lovins, co-founder and chief scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute told [a group] of investors from around the world--who control [some] $8 trillion in assets that it was time to stop investing in fossil fuels because those industries are 'on their last legs.'  Lovins [also] told them they’d be 'foolish if they didn’t invest in the coming renewable energy revolution.' "

"...Lovins also noted that 'Renewable energy production hit 1 trillion watts of capacity three years ago, the next trillion watts will be added in just four years, pushing fossil fuels out of the market. He added that fossil fuels were more at risk from competition than regulation. 'In the next 4-5 years, cheaper renewables will offset growth in all fossil fuels, tipping them into decline,' he warned."

Finally, The Liberty Report's comments about how oil extraction is more environmentally safer than Lithium mining (for use in  batteries) is bogus. This is just another right wing report which
uses a photograph of a completely different type of mine for lithium, and a misleading photograph of a non-representative site for oil. Snopes fact check is right here.

OK, it's time to get real here. The GND is indeed massive, spendy and politically divisive.
Therefore, in my opinion, it will need to be broken up into multiple bills which will need to be submitted repeatedly. And given the complicated nature of our legislative process it will take years, not months to accomplish all of the goals.

Presently the resolution simply doesn't have a prayer given the long standing denial of climate change by Trump and his loyal Republicans--no bill will be taken up unless Democrats win the White House in 2020.

Further, any efforts to present a bill will most likely fail to get the sixty Senate votes needed to break a Republican filibuster. Of course, the majority Party in the Senate can eliminate the filibuster independently if can muster the fifty-one votes for doing so. But there are no candidates who are on record for eliminating the filibuster, because it radically changes how federal laws are made.

For Dems, there remains the possibility of passing some tax and spending provisions via budget reconciliation, which only requires a simple majority.

As I was working on this blog, tens of thousands of teenagers all over the world took to the streets to plead for the GND. The response by many conservative pundits was to dismiss their efforts as just a way to skip school in pursuit of a silly dream.

In fairness, Democrats have some reservations also. I saw a video of Senator Dianne Feinstein telling young activists “there’s no way to pay for the Green New Deal. “I’ve been in the Senate for over a quarter of a century, I know what can pass and I know what can’t pass.”

And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in remarks to a Rolling Stone interview (following an activist
protest that filled her office) said, “In my day—go back 30 years or more—I was pushing strollers and carrying signs myself. I say to these people who come in, I was carrying single-payer signs before you were born."

For this writer, seeing the students reminded me of the millions of young protesters when they began their long, hard, slog to end the Vietnam War and to save the polluted planet during the sixties era, surely one of the most tumultuous decades in American history.

During the 60s and 70s millions of young folks formed what would become known as the Environmental Movement. It was a slow process but they were largely responsible for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Clean Air and Water Acts and The Endangered Species Act. Air pollution and pesticide usage fell dramatically also.

Now the torch has been passed to another world wide generation of young people who seek to awaken our environmental mojo once again, this time to fight for our very existence on this lovely blue marble we call home. I wish them Godspeed as their journey begins.

her professional and technical services
> Employment growth 2008-2017: 88.4%> Employment total: 156,497
> Wage growth 2008-2017: 24.8%
> Avg. annual wage: $54,360

Vice President Pence took the administration’s war on socialism to CPAC Friday, warning that Democrats, even 2020 presidential candidates, want to trade American-made freedom for Venezuelan-style socialism.

In remarks provided in advance to Secrets, Pence said, “Under the guise of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, Democrats are embracing the same tired economic theories that have impoverished nations and stifled the liberties of millions over the past century. That system is socialism.”

Neon Leon

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Neon Leon: THE GREEN NEW DEAL--Last Chance for Survival or Ju...

THE GREEN NEW DEAL--Last Chance for Survival or Just A Dream?