Reader Responses to Fighting for Their Future

In the article by Jack Brook, and in the Green New Deal literature it seems that the possibility of increasing the use of nuclear energy, which generates no green house gases, is off the table. Perhaps this is just an oversight. But in “Safer Nuclear Reactors Are on the Way,” July 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/safer-nuclear-reactors-are-on-the-way/ a convincing case is made that this technology should be re-considered.

With respect to your correspondent’s advocacy of an industry destroying “carbon tax”, the major determinants of Earth climate are the planet’s ecliptic around the sun, the absence or presence of “sunspots” and vulcanism within the planet. Failing to recognize this leads to making predictions that embarrass the writer at a later date.

I was pleased to read BAM’s coverage of the Sunrise Movement and the excellent work that Lauren Maunus ’19, Emma Bouton ’20, and their collaborators at Brown and beyond have been doing on behalf of a Green New Deal (“Fighting for Their Future,” November/December 2019).

I do suggest a revision to the ‘What Is a Green New Deal?’ box on page 24. This explanation should note that a significant and increasing number of economists support the Green New Deal. For example, Profs. Stephanie Kelton, Fadhel Kaboub, Pavlina Tcherneva, Scott Fullwiler, and Robert Hockett were among 11 presenters at a 2019 conference titled “Paying for the Green New Deal,” held at Harvard Law School (https://payforgnd.org/ and https://twitter.com/payforgnd).

In response to BAM’s coverage of Lauren Maunus’s ’19 and Emma Bouton’s ’20 involvement with the Sunrise Movement, Alex Morgan ’91 correctly describes benefits of a carbon tax, but incorrectly claims that Sunrise opposes such taxes. Actually, Sunrise political director Evan Weber has said that “a carbon tax has the potential” to be part of how we get to zero emissions [https://grist.org/article/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bipartisan-carbon-tax/]. The point that many supporters of the Green New Deal make is that a carbon tax will not be sufficient. That doesn’t mean don’t do it!

Taxes can hurt poor people and workers in particular industries if they are not implemented thoughtfully; it is for this reason (among others) that the Green New Deal is “chock full of social justice concerns,” to use the phrasing of Tim Truby’s ’73 letter. Far from the grab-bag of leftist fantasies that Very Serious People portray the Green New Deal to be, this resolution is the beginning of a decade-scale conversation about mitigating a global catastrophic risk in a manner that strengthens our country’s liveral democracy. We have about 10 years to reduce emissions dramatically if we are to maximize our chances of avoiding certain climate “tipping points”; the Green New Deal is how we achieve this goal *and* guarantee that everyone gets to participate.

Regarding Truby’s “payfor” questions and example of California abandoning a high-speed rail project: California does not  issue its own currency; the United States can. The question Truby should be asking about that project is not whether the Federal government can “find” the money for it, but why the Federal government was not more supportive of California, and whether enough workers and materials exist to build the rail system in the desired timeframe. Those interested in the macroeconomics of the Green New Deal can watch a series of academic presentations on this topic, which I helped edit: https://twitter.com/payforgnd

In 1940, when Keynes wrote “How to Pay for the War,” he did not mean where to find the money. He meant how to mobilize to achieve a public goal without causing too much inflation. And when Churchill said “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets” he did not qualify this resolve with “if we can find the money.”

It’s not surprising that letters to BAM often refer to the evils of fossil fuels and the need to ban them. I am not a “climate denier”, but I am a realist. Those who would convert the planet to pre-petroleum times are extremely short-sighted, focusing on the burning of petroleum products contributing to carbon emissions. In my opinion, even those contributions are going to be with us for a long, long time. But I would like to remind those who think we are on a path to a petroleum-free world that petroleum not only built the world we enjoy daily, beginning in the 19th century, but it is the only naturally-occurring material that has the ability to continue doing so. This is not like replacing bronze with iron 3,200 years ago. If each BAM reader will do a 360 in whatever environment he/she is in, everything visible and invisible has a petroleum component in it. Think about the things you see, then think about how they could be replaced without petroleum. If you really think through each thing and activity deeply, you will start to discern how petroleum is not just some inconvenient choice made 150 years ago, but unique and irreplaceable. Bravo for photovoltaics, windmills and even nuclear (if we ever get our heads on straight). But even a 100% conversion of ground transport to electricity is not going to make much of a dent in carbon emissions (a dent being the calculated planet temperature limit leading to uncontrollable warming).

       The miracle of petroleum comes with constraints, however. Those who would ban it don’t bother to think through the unintended consequences. One of those is aircraft of all types. These machines run on a form of kerosene, a basic product of crude oil. Although we hear a lot of science fiction about electric airplanes, there are many detailed scientific studies which demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there is no possible technology that would allow a conversion to large electric aircraft (not economically, physically). Why is that important? Because you cannot choose what you want out of a barrel of crude oil. Every crude has an “assay”, which tells you what you’re going to get. If you want jet fuel, you are also going to get gasoline, diesel fuel, and other things, like it or not. This is a physical problem, not a choice. If a 300,000 barrel a day refinery produces 30% jet fuel, then the other 70% has to go somewhere. If, as a society, we have determined we are not going to burn it, where does that nearly 9 million gallons a day go? That’s from only one typical refinery.

          Plastics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, medical supplies, paint and a million other products are made directly from petroleum. 10 million more are derived by further steps. 100 million more are converted to consumer products and transported to markets where the lights and air conditioning make shopping pleasant. All of this, the jet fuel, consumer products, and more, rely on a value balance of products out of a refinery. If this balance is artificially changed, that refinery is gone in a matter of days. Consumer prices go up dramatically to keep the surviving producers alive and shortages of unimaginable types abound. While we focus on motivators like carbon taxes and subsidies, we ignore technology that can make petroleum use more benign as we phase it out over the next millennia. Let’s modify our reaction to “fossil fuels,” our willingness to kill the internal combustion engine, and our rush to judgment on alternate electricity with a dose of petroleum reality. You wouldn’t like to live in a world without it. There has to be a reasoned, planned balance in combatting climate change, not just an emotional siege on the obvious that provides the fantasy of a solution, often for political ends.

Offer us actionable solutions rather than attacking folks who disagree. If we have an honest road map, people are more likely to get behind it.

As a landscape artist who spends months each year photographing this earth of ours, I was interested in the recent piece on the Green New Deal. I actually read the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bill and was underwhelmed—18 pages of marketing fluff that the Senate Republicans easily turned into a joke.

BAM’s sidebar on the Green New Deal was more detailed in terms of jobs and chock full of social justice concerns. But there was only one sentence on how this multi-trillion-dollar initiative would stop global warming. The rest of the article has even less meat; it’s about  activism, not the nuts and bolts of this fundamental issue of our age. 

I can see why the alumni magazine offered all this coverage on our dedicated young activists. Brown’s known as the progressive school in the Ivy League, dedicated to teaching social change. And these two activists have been ardent in attacking those (Nancy Pelosi, Tom Perez ’83, Jim McGovern, etc.) who aren’t moving fast enough. But AOC and the Sunrise Movement gave the speaker no substantive action steps.   

The article says the plan includes improving high speed rail. Not quite. The plan is to eliminate all carbon-based fuel by 2030, replacing air flight with high speed rail. Let’s get real. California decided to build high speed rail from San Diego to San Francisco, but recently gave up—the price of a 500-mile route had doubled to $100 billion. That’s $200 billion for a thousand miles. America has 100,000-plus miles of air routes connecting cities. The Green New Deal suggestion for helping to pay that $20 trillion tab? Eliminate fossil fuel industry subsidies—about $10 billion a year. 

Air transportation is only one issue, but one that has no easy solution. That doesn’t mean we accept global warming. It’s not gonna go away. But let’s start by researching ways to build high speed rail cheaper and with fewer years of environmental studies and legal battles. Let’s make better batteries a priority, to hold the energy that solar and wind create. Let’s see if the tech companies have solutions instead of calling them “soul sucking.” Let’s attend to the inconvenient truths. My humble suggestion to the Brown activists is to offer us actionable solutions rather than attacking folks who disagree. If we have an honest road map, people are more likely to get behind it. 

Hooray for Lauren Maunus ’19 and Emma Bouton ’20 for speaking out on climate change with the urgency it deserves (“Fighting for Their Future,” November/December 2019). My generation made the mistake of being too polite and meek to speak up for the future of the planet for too long, and because of this, our world is suffering profound damage. For this, Lauren and Emma, I am so, so sorry. However, I was disappointed to read that the Sunrise Movement is sharply critical of the idea of a carbon tax. It’s true that a carbon tax does not go far enough, now things have gotten this bad. The need to rebuild our energy economy is an emergency; thus the need for something like the Green New Deal. However, this should be in addition to, not instead of, a carbon tax. The problem with fossil fuels is that they still seem “cheap” because their costs are external costs. Taxing them, so that the cost to consumers more closely aligns with their true costs, is needed. Without accurate price signals, you’ll find that outside the idealistic Brown campus, too many people do not care enough to make a change. I’ve been lobbying for electric car chargers in my condo complex, against allowing fossil fuel heat in new residential construction, against the Weymouth compressor station, and that we need more wind turbines and solar rooftops. But it’s hard enough to get people to think of doing things differently; it’s an even harder sell when untaxed externalities tilt the playing field away from renewables.