Green New Deal and American Dream on Collision Path
by John Lawrence, June 3, 2019
The Green New Deal recognizes the fact that climate change is already impacting America and the world. Torrential rains, flooding, tornados, wildfires are destroying lives and real estate in staggering numbers. But it will only get worse based on the fact that we are emitting more greenhouse gasses than ever into the atmosphere. A Green New Deal can only hope that runaway climate change can be prevented, that some vestige of humanity and civilization can be preserved. The American Dream, on the other hand is that each generation should have more than the preceding one: more stuff, a higher standard of living (measured totally in materialistic terms), a bigger car, a better education (measured solely in terms of diplomas), a bigger house, more stuff.
The more stuff American Dream is contradictory to what needs to be done to ameliorate and mitigate climate change. Since we're all inhabitants of planet earth, it would seem that, with regards to climate change, we're all in this together. But no, say True Americans, the kind that drive around in pickup trucks with an American flag stuck in the truck bed, that's socialism. It's socialism if we are all in this together. Whatever happened to good old American self interest, short term profits and may the best man win? Whatever happened to hard work, accumulation of money and stuff and looking down on those who had less? All I need to do is to look out for Number One, Numero Uno, and all the rest will follow. Who was it who said seek ye first less materialism and all the rest would follow, or something like that.
Wall Street is only concerned with quarterly profits and not at all with the quarterly increase in greenhouse gasses flooding into the atmosphere. It seems that the discovery of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania might be the worst thing that ever happened to human civilization. Without oil, we would still be using horses and buggies which are far less polluting. American Progress has literally almost doomed the planet. Plastics, which are filling fish bellies and creating huge gyres of waste in the oceans, are probably the next worse human invention. Again progress through better living has run amuck. It seems like the good old Amish had it right. Plowing with horses is far less polluting than plowing with tractors. The industrialization of agriculture has only let to the almost universal use of Roundup, a proven carcinogen, to rid crops of weeds and improve yields, thus enhancing corporate agriculture's profits. Organics, which were universal before World War II because there was no glyphosate, are now a premium commodity as some farmers are fighting back against Monsanto's and Bayer's corporate domination of agriculture.
But some states and cities are embracing the Green New Deal. The Washington Post reported (The Energy 202: Green New Deal is alive and well in liberal cities and states https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/05/28/the-energy-202-green-new-deal-is-alive-and-well-in-liberal-cities-and-states/5cecc28b1ad2e52231e8e812/):
LOS ANGELES -- The Green New Deal may be floundering in Washington. But it is alive and well in left-leaning states and cities across the country.
From Maine to California, Democratic politicians have begun adopt the Green New Deal brand -- a progressive movement to dramatically tackle climate change over the next decade -- to describe their own contributions to address global warming.
Lawmakers in New York City are doing so when compelling landlords to cut climate-warming emissions from their skyscrapers. And Los Angeles leaders in this car-clogged, smog-choked town are doing it when pushing residents to drive electric vehicles.
All told, lawmakers in seven states have proposed various pieces of local legislation explicitly under the Green New Deal banner, according to the environmental group the Sierra Club, which is tracking the proposals.
So, too, have the Democratic mayors of the nation’s two biggest cities, Bill de Blasio of New York and Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, taken up the Green New Deal mantle to push their own climate proposals.
The popularity of the Green New Deal among young Democratic voters — even after its defeat in the GOP-controlled Senate in March — gives local lawmakers a clear way to cast state and municipal energy and transportation projects as part of a nationwide effort to halt the crisis of a changing climate.
In many cases, politicians are using the label to describe what they have already been doing to address global warming.
So even though we have an ignoramus for President of the United States, that doesn't mean that everyone in a position of power is one. But crucially, how many Americans are willing to give up the American Dream even though this will be the last generation, one way or the other, to have one. Will we reconstitute the planet and our lifestyles in recognition of the fact that "we are all in this together" or will we continue on the path of individual self-interest and feel a sense of fulfillment and completion when we die with more stuff than our neighbors?
