The Practical Case for Radicalism
The real “green dream, or whatever,” to borrow a phrase from Nancy Pelosi, is that the “faux Green New Deal” will work.11 One simple argument structures this book: An effective Green New Deal is also a radical Green New Deal.
When we talk about a radical Green New Deal, we don’t mean a fringe position. Our word radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning root: radical change is systemic change that tackles root causes rather than merely addressing symptoms. Is that too much to fight for in the United States? We agree with Ocasio-Cortez’s statement on 60 Minutes: “It only has ever been radicals that have changed this country.”12 We think a radical Green New Deal would also be a popular one. We aim to build a climate politics for the 99 percent: the multiracial masses against a tiny elite, demanding justice for all on a livable planet.
More concretely, what does it mean to get at the roots of climate change?
For one thing, we’re taking the science seriously and setting our political goals accordingly. The faux Green New Deal logic of gentler targets and slower change effectively accepts global heating of 3° Celsius, risking even more if climatic feedbacks kick in fast. Our goal is a maximum of 2° Celcius of warming, aiming for as close to 1.5° Celsius as we can get. What’s more, while the faux Green New Deal uses tax incentives and price signals as its economic levers, the radical Green New Deal would use the power of public investment and coordination to prioritize decarbonization at speed, scope, and scale. And while the faux Green New Deal focuses narrowly on swapping clean energy for fossil fuels, we see energy as connected to broader physical systems and social inequalities. A radical Green New Deal leans in to the inevitable intersections of social, economic, and environmental policy, and prioritizes equality.
Finally, the faux Green New Deal sees the scope and ambition of a radical Green New Deal as a political liability. The faux Green New Deal seeks to achieve change by maximizing elite consensus and making policy under the radar. In contrast, we see the broadening of climate policy as a political asset: it’s an opportunity to build majority support for big change and mobilize political energies to break the status quo. Let us explain in more depth.
We start with our core priority: avoiding climate collapse. We don’t know exactly how sensitive the climate system is. Planning for 2.5° or 3° Celsius of warming, as the faux Green New Deal’s gradualism implicitly does, accepts devastating impacts in Global South countries and risks an apocalyptic 4.5° Celsius. So we’re shooting for 1.5° Celsius. We’d rather miss an all-out 2030 power sector decarbonization plan by a few years than miss a slower, easier 2040 target, where failure would have graver consequences. As bad as US weather is getting, in the near term African and Asian countries will bear the greatest brunt of 3° Celsius warming. We’re not willing to let that happen just to make life easier for ExxonMobil and Wall Street. And we’re more worried about the carbon budget than the fiscal deficit. Our bottom line is the scientific consensus that the 2020s will require, as a recent essay in Science put it, “Herculean” efforts to transform the economy.13
Herculean change isn’t the specialty of market nudges. To decarbonize fast, we have to take democratic, public control of much of the economy to put equitable climate action first. Remember: Capitalists invest in projects to make money and consolidate their power, not to make the world a better place. If the latter happens, it’s a happy side effect. Even if some corporate executives worry about the world that awaits their grandchildren, they will never sacrifice profits to cut carbon emissions. If they did, their shareholders would replace them.
The faux Green New Deal tries to harness capitalist investment for climate benefit mainly through R&D funding, mild subsidies, and pricing carbon. They see a carbon tax as the main engine driving the private sector toward lower carbon investments, incentivizing companies and consumers alike to decarbonize. They also want to prioritize R&D for new technologies like large-scale geothermal energy, alternatives to conventional meat protein, and direct air capture of carbon. We agree on ramping up R&D. It’s just no substitute for dramatically accelerating deployment of the excellent clean technology we already have.
We also support a progressive carbon tax, with a rebate for low- and middle-income people. A modest price on carbon can help knock out coal, which is already on the ropes. If well-designed, it can help steer people away from carbon-intensive consumption, encouraging us to spend our extra cash on dance classes instead of a new iPad, and can help government agencies and firms plan long-term investments to account for climate change. But pricing carbon is a secondary tool, a complement to our principal levers of public spending, coordination, and regulation, all aimed at raising the general standard of living. Without accessible no-carbon alternatives, jacking up the price of gas will just cause a huge political backlash. Carbon pricing is also an oddly indirect strategy for rapid change. As the journalist David Roberts joked during a 2018 lecture in Philadelphia, the United States didn’t defeat the Nazis by taxing factories that didn’t produce planes and tanks for the war effort.
For the United States to get to net zero emissions in its power sector by the mid-2030s, the country needs to build out new clean energy at least ten times faster than in recent years. Along with public investments in ecosystem restoration, green infrastructure, and conservation work, these measures would require an enormous amount of labor—and thus create millions of high-quality green jobs. There’s simply no precedent for the private sector mobilizing that broadly and quickly. With state support, green capitalists have developed cheap and effective clean energy technologies. But while solar companies can gradually outcompete coal, they can’t legislate coal out of existence or transform the electricity grid and broader energy system.
Under a radical Green New Deal, the public sector would direct investment and coordinate production, much as it did during World War II. Can government bureaucracies handle such complex work? They could seventy-five years ago, working with legal pads and chalkboards. In the 1940s, improvised public agencies, the army, and government-subsidized businesses ramped up the production of killing machinery with unbelievable speed. The public-backed industry built the world’s largest factory in under a year near Ypsilanti, Michigan; it went on to produce a B-24 bomber every hour. Overnight, car seat factories switched to parachute production and Cadillac assembly lines started churning out tanks.14
We wish we had a different analogy for that scale of public action than World War II. But the point remains: we can build—and push—a public sector capable of stewarding a rapid and just transition. It’s often forgotten, moreover, that state capacity was built up in the decade prior by the New Deal. Neoliberals have spent four decades chipping away at these administrative capacities, weakening regulations and many federal agencies to empower big business. Rebuilding and reinvigorating public institutions is one of the most important tasks we face today.
Much of what we’re proposing is called industrial policy. It’s widespread in Europe, East and Southeast Asia, and beyond; it featured in ARRA’s success stories. More broadly, in the United States, state-funded military research has spawned most of the technologies at work in smartphones—like GPS, the internet, and microprocessors. The National Institute of Health and the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program regularly fund pathbreaking innovations. Most infrastructure development already combines public and private investment. Big states like California and New York are already experimenting with Green New Deal tools like aggressive regulations, green banks, and targeting green investments in marginalized communities.
Popular participation will be essential to make sure a large-scale mobilization doesn’t run roughshod over people’s lives. Federal power doesn’t have to mean top–down control. Labor unions, nonprofits, and community groups should all help steer the transition.