Category Archives: Green New Deal

A Conservative  Wet Nightmare

Capitalism, Green New Deal, Sociology of Knowledge

 

I was hearing a lot about the New Green Deal.  Until I wasn’t hearing anything anymore. The Green New Deal drives Republicans in the US and Conservatives in Canada, apoplectic. That is why Samantha Bee has called the Green New Deal the “Republicans wet nightmare.”

 

Why  don’t we hear about it anymore. Were the criticisms of it from conservatives so radically convincing? Or did interest groups get their away (again)?

Dominant groups invariably react to anything that undermines their dominance with scorn, mockery, and howls of opposition. They think the upstart must be irrational, if not absolutely insane. Listen to their howls. They scream it; they mean it. It makes no sense. None.

This is what the dominant groups in the US did when Roosevelt introduced the original New Deal. It was completely absurd they claimed. We can’t afford it. It will bankrupt the nation. How could anyone say in a time of 25% unemployment that the country must put those people to work? It made absolutely no sense they assured us. Well–they were wrong. Entirely absolutely wrong. Roosevelt has been credited with saving capitalism from its greatest foes–the capitalists! Now they complain similarly about the Green New Deal.

Is that how it will be with the Green New Deal? We have already heard the screams and howls of laughter, mockery and pain.

Karl Mannheim, in his landmark book, Ideology and Utopia, building on an insight of Marx, first pointed out that ruling groups can in their thinking become so intensively interest-bound to a situation that they are no longer able to see certain facts which might tend to undermine their sense of domination.  The ideology of ruling groups often obscures the real condition of society from itself, and often even to those groups that dominate.  The ideology of ruling groups is self-serving.  As a consequence, such groups often do not recognize the unpleasant facts which might detract from their domination.  This is usually accomplished naturally, without conspiracy.  To them, all dissent, as Herbert Marcuse noticed, is irrational, if not insane.

No one likes to lose privileges. That is the long and short of it. In fact, groups with resources, will use those resources to protect their privileges. That does not mean that all their arguments are bogus. It just means we ought to be wary of them. We should, as John Stuart Mill made clear, always look at the other side. Are we getting the whole truth from the privileged groups or are they using their influence to influence those in power to do their bidding?

Over that past 3 decades industries in the oil and gas sector, including some of the richest corporations in the world have spent enormous sums of money to convince political leaders, and even us the mere peons, that what is good for ExxonMobil is good for us too.  Is it?  Is the Green New Deal really that radically subversive? Or are we being sold another bill of goods? As the Sergeant on the television series, Hill Street Blues used to warn the police before they went out on their beat each morning: ‘Be careful out there.”

That was wise advice to the beat cops. That would be wise advice to us peons.

Green New Deal

Green New Deal, Sociology of Knowledge

 

Not many people are talking about the Green New Deal anymore. Is that because its ideas have been destroyed? I think not.

So what is the green new deal?  As Lisa Friedman of the New York times said, “

It has been trumpeted by its supporters as the way to avoid planetary destruction, and vilified by opponents as a socialist plot to take away your ice cream.”

The Green New Deal is a plan championed by some Democrats in the US that lays out a grand plan for tackling climate change. That is of course why it is so controversial. It was introduced in the US by a radical Democrat Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, also a Democrat.

Their proposal called on the US government to wean the US off of fossil fuels and curb greenhouse gas emissions across the country while guaranteeing new high paying jobs in clean or green energy industries. At the same time, it called on the government to maintain justice by helping people who would lose their jobs as a result to get new jobs in the green economy.  The resolution also tried to cure societal problems like economic inequality and racial injustice. The resolution wants to ensure that clean air, clean water, and healthy foods are recognized as basic human rights. Sounds great, but is this Pollyanna pie in the sky?

The plan also provides that after a 10 year mobilization to reduce or even eliminated carbon emissions. 100% of American electricity should be delivered by renewable zero emission sources. Every building in the country should be upgraded to be more energy efficient and the country’s transportation system overhauled by investing in electric vehicles and high-speed rail. The American government must invest in job training and new green development, particularly in communities that rely on jobs in fossil fuel industries.

Their resolution was not binding on Congress.

Of course, Republican political leaders mocked the plan as being bone-headed and wildly unrealistic.  Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas has said the deal would force Americans to have to “ride around on high-speed light rail, supposedly powered by unicorn tears.” President Trump said it would take away your “airplane rights.”  Some Republicans said eating meat would be banned and that Democrats wanted to take away your hamburgers!  Horrors! According to Lisa Friedman, “Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming and chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, warned that ice cream, cheeseburgers, and milkshakes would be a thing of the past because under the Green New Deal, “livestock will be banned.” It did not matter that the resolution said none of those things. But such wild claims tamped down the enthusiasm of Democrats who had supported the plan for a Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal is based on  the original New Deal launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help the US recover from the Great Depression in the 1930s. That plan included a series of public works programs to put people who were out of work to work in manual jobs like planting trees, building facilities in National Parks and various public works such as bridges, schools, and other public projects for the common good. Like the Green New Deal that followed, this deal was strongly criticized by the rich as being over the top expensive and would drive the country into bankruptcy. It did no such thing. Many credit it with saving capitalism and helping to pull the country out of the recession.

As an example of criticism from the right, Donald Trump has said the Green  New Deal would cost 100 trillion dollars. Of course, the conservative critics, like Trump ignore the cost of doing nothing to fight climate change as he proposed. Supporters of the Green New Deal say the doing nothing to fight climate change will cost more than the Green New Deal. Here is what Friedman reported in her New York Times article: “Modernizing the electrical grid across the United States could cost as much as $476 billion, yet reap $2 trillion in benefits, according to a 2011 study issued by the Electric Power Research Institute.”

In Vermont they estimated that their plan to convert 100 percent to clean energy would cost $33 billion but now they are finding the state is seeing substantial job growth in clean energy sectors and has said the transition should save the their taxpayers money.

Who is right? Who knows? Not me.

What I do know is that a lot of opposition comes from people who stand to gain a lot money from maintaining the status quo. Sociology of knowledge warns us to be suspicious of such criticism. The reasons for their opposition are obvious. And many of them have spent a lot of money convincing political leaders to do nothing significant about climate change. And they were very successful in doing that, while the rest of us are paying an enormous price for exactly that.