This will be great...but if the more than 90 percent of the stimulus goes to buy toxic shit with more to come, then if the inflation of all this spending (new debt) doesn't cancel out any good for a Green future, it will be a miracle.

Thanks for the article. There's plenty that's wrong with the stimulus, but I get tired of people doing nothing but complaining. There is a lot of long-term good that can come out of this spending.

I hope this part of the bill actually proves itself worthy.

Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota

What is a "smart energy grid" is it just rerouting carbon fuel produced electricity slightly more efficiently? Zippe do da.

Add all this together and it's as much as ONE Bank Bank of America paid it's disgraced executives for one years work on the tax payers dime. Pathetic!

How about 500 billion for high speed rail, high speed internet work at home programs, windmills, solar and tidal power? Then I might be impressed.

"The Stimulus: A Down Payment on a Green Future"

When I see headlines like that I know that its just as easy for the left to engage in BS as it was for the Neocons. Only the most trusting who don't read could buy this malarky.

"$8.4 billion for public transit" If it ever arrives it will get those bettors from California to Las Vegas at least.

"$11 billion for the creation of a smart energy grid
$8.4 billion for public transit
$6.3 billion for state and local energy efficiency grants
$6 billion for the cleanup of contaminated Department of Defense sites
$4.5 billion to green federal buildings
$1.2 billion for the EPA's cleanup programs"

None of this is economic stimulas unless you own one of the corporations that will be getting these jobs. Please don't bother with the company line of " people have to do the work".......not one job will be created by this and 15-20% of the construction wages will go out of the country.

The Federal government has spent billions of dollars on subsidies for ethanol. VeraSun, the second largest ethanol producer of ethanol from corn in the U.S. filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2008. Ethanol experts doubt that VeraSun can be made solvent even after reorganization. The bankruptcy judge has screwed farmers that had contracts to deliver corn to VeraSun over royally. (As near as I can discover all of the VeraSun ethanol plants are currently sitting idle.) Even with corn as cheap as it currently is, around $3.50 a bushel, with crude oil at $34.75 a barrel ethanol is not profitable. (Every gallon of ethanol gets a 46 cent per gallon Federal subsidy in the form of a tax credit). (With crude at $34.75 and gas at $2.00 a gallon expect to see another round of record oil profits the next time they announce earnings).

The Federal ethanol subsidy encouraged massive over production of ethanol distilleries in the U.S. In the Midwest there are now enough ethanol plants to turn every bushel of corn the U.S. now exports into ethanol. The U.S. accounts for 70% of THE WORLD’S CORN EXPORTS.

Yes, things are changing—but as they say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” So let’s see … $44 billion—or $60 billion—(there seems to be some confusion) for “green” technological “solutions,” out of a total of $787 billion in spending … in this economic stimulus bill. That comes to between five and eight percent … in this bill. If we add the $4+ trillion already thrown at the financial crisis during the past months, the percentage drops to less than one percent …

Real results flow from such imbalances—and in the case in point, they’ve been flowing for a long time—maybe too long. As Matt Savinar recently put it, “A society spending trillions on war and consumerism but only billions on everything that could be called an alternative has made its decision about where it’s heading.”

This $44 to $60 billion aimed in positive directions is definitely a good thing, and everyone involved deserves some credit. Yet, while handing out congratulations and feeling some sense of accomplishment, we should also keep the entirety of our situation in perspective. Quite simply, that entirety is overwhelming. The timeframes, energy, money and willpower necessary to develop and rebuild U.S. infrastructure, in order to move the country into a “green” way of life is, to put it bluntly, probably unreachable at this point. Realistically, we should have been applying billions and trillions since the 1970s, when some people understood the situation.

Similarly, even if adequate timeframes, energy, money and willpower were available, the epistemology and physical modes of a “green” American way of life—like those of the environmental and social justice movements that support it—merely reflect those of the industrialized status quo. The implied promise of the “green” way of life, which of course is never clearly articulated, is that technology will once again “save” us, that Americans (at least) will still be able to drive cars, still be able to use huge supplies of electricity, still be able to live in recognizable material comfort. Unfortunately but predictably, it’s unlikely these promises have any validity.

If we hope to align with the planetary, biogeochemical and human realities that are actually unfolding around us, change of a MUCH MORE FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER is required.

I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade. But more than ever in our species’ existence, we humans desperately need to discern some basic realities and then act accordingly. (Of course, we humans share the realities with all other beings on the planet and with the Earth itself.) One basic reality is this: for thousands of years, civilization, including its most vehement form -- the American way of life -- has been progressively destroying this planet’s capabilities to support life. Another basic reality is this: in our billions, we humans have overshot the eroded carrying capacities of the planet, which is our only home.

Furthermore, we’ve reached a point where applying the manipulative, technological and positivist ways of knowing that define civilization(including its “green” variants)is unlikely to help us address our realities. It’s hard to grasp the enormity of this concept -- much less grasp the enormities of trying to apply other ways of knowing and living, ways which might stand a chance of being truly useful for the long term.

At some point(relatively soon on civilizational timescales), we industrial humans are going to have to decide if we and the rest of the planet are going to have a “long term” or not. As far as I'm concerned, to consider this less than one percent “green” spending stimulus as part of a “solution” merely delays that necessary point of decision. It means making no decision at all, though of course in making no decision, we do make a decision …

Thanks for this article! I like how Van Jones calls it a down payment! It is a great start, and worth celebrating, but nothing to sit back on our laurels about. All of us who don't feel this is enough, let's ask ourselves what today are we going to do about it? Join Green for All or 1Sky, We or Moveon. Organize for civil disobedience in front of Coal Power plants under construction. Go to Powershift next weekend for the biggest lobby day on the Climate Change ever! Help us build a movement huge enough to make Obama do what is necessary, a movement big enough to turn the tide. Now is the time!

For more info see my blog http://reneweconomy.org

As for whether this is stimulus? This is the only kind of real stimulus-- efforts to build a green economy and create good, green jobs for all. Nothing else will work for people and the planet.

We'll never succeed at "greening" or any of the other necessary domestic goals; equity, humanity, quality of life, sustainability, (never mind O'Bomber's misguided foreign policy?) if we don't absolutely committ to and realize the reduction of automobile usage by 80% in the next twenty to 40 years, by reallocating resources and rebuilding neighborhoods so that people can get what they need by walking to the outlet.

Such will take a firm and unwavering commitment to a "Plan and Implement" Socialist economy. If O'Bomber is not man enough for the job, maybe we should just become a part of Venezuela/Cuba!!!

What a racket that super-fund crap is... What are you going to do with the contaminated earth, burn it? Then what?

It would be nice if PVs and wind power worked, but they don't.

We have so many issues that we're not addressing, and the "prod" (oh, I mean "stimulus") still looks mostly like a pork barrel swindle.

Van Jones is more blackwash/greenwash like O'Bomber, trying to sell books.

Good luck, Capitalist Swine!!!

Mike Morin
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com