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Solutions
How to Green Our Parched Farmlands and Finance Critical Infrastructure
There are workarounds the U.S. can use to fund affordable housing, drought responses, and other urgently-needed infrastructure that was left out of the two recent spending bills.
Sep 03, 2022
Congress has passed two major infrastructure bills in the last year, but imminent needs remain. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law chiefly focused on conventional highway programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) mainly centered on energy security and combating climate change. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), over $2 trillion in much-needed infrastructure is still unfunded, including projects to address drought, affordable housing, high-speed rail, and power transmission lines. By 2039, per the ASCE, continued underinvestment at current rates will cost $10 trillion in cumulative lost GDP, more than 3 million jobs in that year, and $2.24 trillion in exports over the next 20 years.
Critically needed water and other infrastructure projects can be funded without tapping the federal budget, with funds generated through a national infrastructure bank.
Particularly urgent today is infrastructure to counteract the record-breaking drought in the U.S. Southwest, where 50% of the nation's food supply is grown. Subsidies for such things as the purchase of electric vehicles, featured in the IRA, will pad the coffers of the industries lobbying for them but will not get water to our parched farmlands any time soon. More direct action is needed. But as noted by Todd Tucker in a Roosevelt Institute article, "Today, a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress balks at appropriating sufficient money to ensure emergency readiness. ... [T]he US system of government's numerous veto points make emergency response harder than under parliamentary or authoritarian systems."
There are, however, other ways to finance these essential projects. "A work-around," says Tucker, "is so-called off-balance sheet money creation." That was the approach taken in the 1930s, when commercial banks were bankrupt and the country faced its worst-ever economic depression; yet the government succeeded in building infrastructure as never before.
Off-budget Funding: The Model of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
For funding its national infrastructure campaign in the Great Depression, Congress called on the publicly-owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). It was not actually a bank; it got its liquidity by issuing bonds. Notes Tucker, "The RFC was allowed to borrow money from the Treasury and the capital markets, and then invest in relief and mobilization efforts that would eventually generate a return for taxpayers, all while skating past austerity hawks determined to cut or freeze government spending."
According to James Butkiewicz, professor of economics at the University of Delaware:
The RFC was an executive agency with the ability to obtain funding through the Treasury outside of the normal legislative process. Thus, the RFC could be used to finance a variety of favored projects and programs without obtaining legislative approval. RFC lending did not count toward budgetary expenditures, so the expansion of the role and influence of the government through the RFC was not reflected in the federal budget.
The RFC lent to federal government agencies including the Commodity Credit Corporation (which lent to farmers), the Electric Home and Farm Authority, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It also made direct loans to local governments and businesses and funded eight RFC wartime subsidiaries in the 1940s that were essential to the war effort.
The infrastructure projects of one agency alone, the Works Progress Administration, included 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields; and some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings (built, rebuilt, or expanded), including 41,300 schools. For local governments that had hit their borrowing limits on their taxpayer-funded general obligation bonds, a workaround was devised: they could borrow by issuing "revenue bonds," which were backed not by taxes but by the revenue that would be generated by the infrastructure funded by the loans.
A bill currently before Congress, HR 3339, proposes to duplicate the feats of the RFC without increasing the federal budget deficit or taxes, by forming a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB).
China's State "Policy Banks"
China is dealing with the global economic downturn by embarking on a stimulus program involving large national infrastructure projects, including massive water infrastructure. For funding, the government is drawing on three state-owned "policy banks" structured like the RFC.
The Chinese government is one of those systems referred to by Todd Tucker as not being hampered by "a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress." It can just issue a five-year plan and hit the ground running. In May 2022, it began construction on 3,876 large projects with a total investment of nearly 2.4 trillion yuan (about $350 billion).
Funding is coming chiefly from China's "policy banks" set up in 1994 to provide targeted loans in areas where profit-driven banks might be reluctant to lend. They are the China Development Bank, the Export- Import Bank of China and the Agricultural Development Bank of China. As noted in a June 30 article in the Washington Post, China could also draw on its "Big Four" banks--Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., and Bank of China Ltd.--but "they are essentially profit-driven commercial banks that can be quite picky when it comes to selecting borrowers and projects. The policy lenders, however, operate on a non-profit basis and are often recruited to pour cheap funds into projects that are less attractive financially but matter to the longer-term development of the economy."
Like the RFC, the policy banks mainly get their funds by issuing bonds. They can also get "Pledged Supplementary Lending" directly from the Chinese central bank, which presumably creates the money on its books, as all central banks are empowered to do.
Dealing with China's Water Crisis
According to the Xinhua News Agency, on July 7 construction began on a project linking China's two mega water infrastructures--the Three Gorges Project and the South-to-North Water Diversion Project--transferring water from the water-abundant south to the arid northern region of the country. The goal is a national water grid, increasing the quantity of water available for use nationally by about 20% and increasing China's irrigated area by about 10%.
The South-to-North Water Diversion Project is already well underway. The middle route, the most prominent one due to its role in feeding water to the nation's capital, begins at the Danjiangkou Reservoir in the Hanjiang River in central China's Hubei and runs northeastward to Beijing and Tianjin. It was completed and began supplying water in December 2014. The eastern route began supplying water in November 2013, transferring water from Jiangsu to areas including East China's Shandong Province. The new project will channel water from the Three Gorges Reservoir area to the Hanjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River. It is scheduled to be completed in nine years.
Solving Our Water Crisis
The total estimated investment for China's national water grid is about 2.99 trillion yuan (U.S. $470 billion). This is comparable to the $400 billion the National Infrastructure Bank Coalition proposes to allocate through HR 3339 to address the serious drought in the U.S. Southwest.
As in China, one alternative being considered by the NIB team is to divert water from areas that have it in excess. One proposal is a pipeline to ship Mississippi River floodwaters to the parched Colorado River via a Wyoming tributary. Another option is to pump water from the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest to California via a subterranean pipeline on the floor of the Pacific Ocean--not upstream water used by Washington and Oregon residents, but water from the ocean outflow where the river feeds into the Pacific and its freshwater becomes unusable saltwater.
Those are doable alternatives, but political and regulatory obstacles remain. Ideally, sources of water would be found that are new not just to the Southwest but to the surface of the planet. This is another proposal being explored by the NIB team--to tap "deep seated water" or "primary water," the plentiful water supplies below normal groundwater tables.
Studies have found evidence of several oceans' worth of water locked up in rock as far down as 1,000 kilometers below the Earth's surface. (See The Smithsonian Magazine, "How the Earth's Mantle Sends Water Up Toward the Surface," June 2022.) This water is not part of the hydrologic cycle (clouds to rain to ground to clouds again), as shown on testing by its lack of environmental contaminants. From the time when atomic testing began in the Pacific, hydrologic water has contained traces of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used as a fuel in thermonuclear bombs. Primary water shoots up tritium-free --clean, fresh and usually drinkable without filtration.
There are many verified cases of mountaintop wells that have gushed water for decades in arid lands. This water is now being located and tapped by enterprising hydrogeologists using technological innovations like those used in other extractive industries, but without their destructive impact on the environment. For more on primary water and the promising vistas it opens up, see my earlier articles here and here.
Funding Through the National Infrastructure Bank
Critically needed water and other infrastructure projects can be funded without tapping the federal budget, with funds generated through a national infrastructure bank. Unlike the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the publicly-owned bank proposed in HR 3339 is designed to be a true depository bank, which can leverage its funds as all depository banks are allowed to do: with a 10% capital requirement, it can leverage $1 in capital into $10 in loans.
For capitalization, the NIB will follow the model of Alexander Hamilton's First U.S. Bank: shares in the bank will be swapped for existing U.S. bonds. The shares will earn a 2% dividend and are non-voting. Control of the bank and its operations will remain with the public, an independent board of directors, and a panel of carefully selected non-partisan experts, precluding manipulation for political ends.
The NIB is projected to lend $5 trillion over 10 years, or roughly $500 billion per year. That means each year the NIB will have to add $50 billion in new capitalization in the form of debt for equity swaps. The incentive for investors is the extra 2% yield the NIB provides on its preferred stock, plus a government guarantee. The U.S. Postal Service, the fourth largest holder of U.S. Treasuries globally, is one possible investor. Others are pension funds and builder associations with investment portfolios, all of which need a certain number of triple-A-rated investments. NIB bonds will have a better rate of return than Treasuries, while achieving the laudable purpose of filling the critical infrastructure gap.
To clear checks from the newly-created loan deposits, the NIB will bring in cash from incoming customer deposits, loan repayments, NIB-issued bonds, and/or borrowing from the Federal Reserve. How much cash it will need and its timing depends on how many infrastructure companies maintain their deposit accounts with the NIB.
The $5 trillion the NIB lends over 10 years will add $5 trillion to the total money supply; but the "productive" loans it will be making are the sort that do not add to price inflation. In fact, they can reduce it--by raising GDP growth, increasing the supply side of the supply-versus-demand inflation equation.
America achieved its greatest-ever infrastructure campaign in the midst of the Great Depression. We can do that again today, and we can do it with the same machinery: off-budget financing through a government-owned national financial institution.
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The Cynics' Monkey Wrench
We're all in this together.
Jul 29, 2022
If you depart from an "us vs. them" philosophy of life, your first confrontation is likely to be with the cynics.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned was how deeply and intensely people wanted to be listened to.
Last week, for instance, I wrote about the weekend I spent, a decade ago, getting handgun training from the NRA--and what I learned, which is that the things you need to fear are endless, and when one of them pops up in your life you'd better be prepared to kill it. One reader said he wondered "if Robert has ever truly felt as though his life or those he values were threatened" and quickly answered his own question: Of course not! And then he crooned, oh so tenderly: "Must be nice for Robert to live in such an insulated bubble."
Issue solved! Everyone needs a gun, except for the utterly naive.
If I'd had a gun, I may have taken aim at this snarky fool, but eventually I started calming down and thinking about his words--this monkey wrench of cynicism, as I called it--with slightly more positive energy.
Have I ever felt threatened? Well, considering that I live in Chicago--in a neighborhood on the city's northeast side called Rogers Park, which is one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse neighborhoods on Planet Earth--the answer is, uh . . . yes. In fact, I started thinking about my move to Chicago, from rural Michigan, when I was in my late 20s. Oh, the welcome I had!
I had been a back-to-the-lander, work for which I had no natural skills, and decided I needed to begin looking for a career in journalism. When I got nowhere locally, I realized my best option was the big, complicated city 120 or so miles to the west. This was a complex move, to put it mildly: from a rented farmhouse to a fifth-floor-walkup studio apartment, in the neighborhood known as Lakeview, which had not, in the mid-'70s, begun to gentrify. It was untamed in those days, as exemplified by some graffiti that showed up one day in the foyer of my new building: "Little Eagles of Wilton." (Wilton was a street a block away.) "Will Kill!"
My friend Dick, who had a pickup truck, helped me with the move. We hauled the basic miscellany that was now my life--a mattress, a chair, a table, my bicycle, a few dishes, a bunch of books--up those five floors. Within minutes of finishing, there was a knock on the door. Huh?
A voice said: "Police." Then: "This is a homicide investigation."
Wow! Welcome to Chicago! Turns out they wanted to talk to my neighbor, who wasn't answering his door, so they wanted to climb through my window and walk across the flat roof--I was on the top floor of the building--to the neighbor's window and enter his apartment that way. Yeah, sure, go ahead.
I later learned that no, the neighbor was not a murderer. He wasn't actually a suspect, just someone who may have had some information. I have no idea what became of the investigation, but I later became friends with the guy. And this "welcome" to Chicago certainly had metaphorical significance, telling me I had just moved to a city full of surprises. All sorts of surprises. I had essentially known that anyway, but now I knew it in real time.
Fortunately, this potential for surprise is what attracted me to the city in the first place. I had moved with a determination not to be afraid--of the people I encountered, of the city itself. What I told myself right from the start was: Look everybody in the eye. Doing this accomplished something more significant than simply making eye contact. The first thing it did was give me control of my own emotions, because I imagined that, somehow, we're all in this together. Thus I created an emotional foundation for myself that acknowledged complexity--I might be shocked--but regardless, I was not going to think of the other person as my enemy . . . and thus be afraid of him.
OK cynics, I know you're getting revved, anxious to toss in another monkey wrench. I'm not saying there isn't danger out there, that life is all nicey-nice if you have a positive attitude. What I'm saying is that fear is mostly internal. We create the context in which we live. And if we live in fear, well, we can quickly, and often unnecessarily, manufacture dangerous enemies, both in our minds and in the real world.
I think back again to my first year in Chicago, living in that studio apartment. What if I'd had a gun? I'd have been stuck in my little world, ever waiting for the time to come when I had to defend myself (maybe from the Little Eagles of Wilton). I would not have been able to let the city itself, in all its complex fullness, into my life. I would not have loved my life. I would have been disconnected from it.
And the career I found my way into--journalism--required just that sort of openness . . . to everybody. Perhaps the most important thing I learned was how deeply and intensely people wanted to be listened to. And oh, they had things to say! I remember, for instance, talking to a husband and wife who had had two sons murdered, one of them--I had written about the crime--by his best friend. Guess what? I also talked to the parents of the boy who had committed the murder. I listened to both stories. The remorse was overwhelming in both living rooms. No, there was no easy fix to this; the wounds were lifelong. But they all needed to be heard, and I feel that by listening, taking notes, putting their stories into coherent words, I had, just maybe, helped us all see--envision--a world beyond the violence that had happened.
Please don't assume I say these words simplistically, naively. I've been a victim. Some years ago I was jumped on a street near my house by three teenage boys, who punched me in the face, knocked me down, attempted--but failed--to rob me. When I screamed for help, they ran. No big deal, right? Worse things have happened.
But I do know the dark side. Because I was active in the city's Restorative Justice movement, some friends held a circle for me afterward and I wound up learning how much I was loved. And if the boys had been caught, what I would have wanted most wasn't revenge. It would have been sitting in a circle with them, looking them in the eyes, listening to their stories and letting them hear mine.
In the process, we would have learned something incredible. We're all in this together.
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At a Time When America Faces Cascading Crises, Republicans Just Say No
The scope of what they won't do is breathtaking.
Jun 01, 2021
Just say no. That seems to sum up the position of Republicans in the Congress these days. For all the talk about bipartisan compromise or about the two parties working together, at the end of the day, the Republican position is simply to say no.
The scope of what they won't do is breathtaking.
They say no to expanding support for day care, vital in an economy where both parents must work. They say no to investing in renewable energy and electric cars. They say no to renovating America's decrepit and outmoded infrastructure, including clean and safe drinking water. They say no to democracy reforms and ending secret money in politics. They just say no.
It doesn't matter if the reform is essential to human life and to equal justice under the law.
It doesn't matter how popular the issue is. Most Americans want sensible gun control laws. According to the Pew Research Center, 70% of Republicans support background checks for all sales of guns, including those at gun shows. When it comes to passing the reforms, Republicans in both Houses just say no.
It doesn't matter if it is simply about basic fairness. Fifty-five of America's biggest corporations paid no federal income taxes last year and the wealth of just 650 billionaires rose by 50%, all while millions of working Americans suffered. Two-thirds of Americans support raising taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year, as Joe Biden has proposed. Republicans in both Houses reject any tax increase on corporations or the wealthy, including the 82% benefit that went to the top 1% and 63% that went to the top one-tenth of 1% of Trump's only major legislative accomplishment in 2017.
It doesn't matter if the reform is about meeting a threat to our existence. Catastrophic climate change already takes lives and costs this country billions of dollars each year--and it gets worse annually. Scientists give us about 10 years to make the transition to renewable energy. Joe Biden has proposed a modest investment in renewable energy, electric cars and retrofitting homes. His proposal is far less than scientists say is needed, far less even from what he promised during his campaign. He's already compromised in the face of expected Republican opposition. But Republicans just say no.
It doesn't matter if the reform is essential to human life and to equal justice under the law. Most Americans support police reform, including a federal ban on chokeholds (71%), a prohibition of racial profiling (71%), and an end to "qualified immunity" for officers in legal cases (59%). For decades and currently Congress hasn't been able to pass an anti-lynching law. Efforts to pass reforms meet with--no surprise now--almost universal Republican opposition.
It doesn't even matter if the measure is a bipartisan bill to have an independent bipartisan commission investigate sacking the Capitol and the attempt to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6. Even though their lives and limbs were at risk, Senate Republicans lined up in support of a filibuster to just say no.
Republicans use efforts to find common ground to stall progress before lining up to say no. They make big gestures that turn out on inspection just to be jive. For example, the biggest "bipartisan" negotiations are over Joe Biden's Americans Jobs Bill, which Republicans oppose. Biden called for $2.3 trillion over eight years to invest in rebuilding America, kickstarting the transition to sustainable energy, and ensuring quality affordable day care, essential if parents are to go back to work. In April, Republicans offered a laughable $568 billion over five years, stripping virtually everything but roads and bridges from their proposal (and most of that was already in the budget).
Biden compromised, cutting $552 billion out of his proposal. Republicans got headlines for going up to $953 billion--only that was a feint. As the analysis of the invaluable Congressional Progressive Caucus Action Fund showed, the second Republican offer was spread out over eight years. And they proposed to pay for most of that by taking funds previously appropriated to deal with the pandemic and its victims over the next years. In spending per year, the actual change in the second proposal over the first was just $2 billion a year. That isn't a good faith negotiation; that's a joke.
Republicans don't want corporations or the wealthy to pay more in taxes. They don't want to raise the minimum wage. They oppose reforms that would make it easier for workers to organize and bargain collectively. In 20 states, Republican governors are cutting off federal unemployment insurance, hoping to force people to take low-paying jobs. They don't want to revive the Voting Rights Act; they want to further suppress the vote. They don't want to limit the role of big money in elections or end gerrymandering of districts to their benefit. This list can go on.
Republicans celebrate the economy of 2018 under Donald Trump before the pandemic. Yet that was an economy in which 40% of Americans had negative net incomes, and were forced to borrow to pay for basic household needs. That was an economy that subsidized fossil fuels and ignored the threat posed by climate change. That was an economy that forced parents into debt to pay for day care, forced students into debt to pay for college, and forced Americans to pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, even those that were created on the taxpayer's dime.
Of course, when they run for re-election, Republicans will take credit for Biden's American Rescue Plan that was passed without one Republican vote. No one should be fooled. At a time when America faces cascading crises, Republicans just say no. If we want even to begin to address the troubles we have, voters will have to say no to those who are standing in the way.
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Making "Build Back Better" Better: Aligning Climate, Jobs, and Justice
Biden's timetable is not enough to halt colossal climate damage.
Jun 01, 2021
At the end of March 2021, President Joe Biden laid out his $2 trillion American Jobs Plan-part of his "Build Back Better" infrastructure program-to "reimagine and rebuild a new economy." Congress is expected to spend months debating and revising the plan. The public and many special interests will play a significant role in that process. President Biden has promised to follow up with additional proposals to further address climate policy and social needs.
Many particular interests will seek to benefit from the overall Build Back Better program-and that's good. But as Congress and the public work to shape the ultimate form of that program, we also need to keep our eyes on the ultimate prize: combining climate, jobs, and justice. What policies can integrate the needs of working people, the most oppressed, and our threatened climate and environment?
The Green New Deal reconfigured American politics with its core proposition: fix joblessness and inequality by putting people to work at good jobs fixing the climate. The Biden administration's Build Back Better (BBB) plan has put that idea front and center in American politics. Now we need to specify strategies that will actually achieve all three objectives at once.
There are many valuable plans that have been proposed in addition to Biden's Build Back Better plan. They include the original Green New Deal resolution sponsored by Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the THRIVE (Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy) Agenda; the Evergreen Action Plan; the Sierra Club's "How to Build Back Better" economic renewal plan; the AFL-CIO's "Energy Transitions" proposals; the BlueGreen Alliance's "Solidarity for Climate Action," and a variety of others. All offer contributions for overall vision and for policy details.
There are six essential elements that must be integrated in order to realize the Build Back Better we need for climate, jobs, and justice:
- Managed decline of fossil fuel burning
- Full-spectrum job creation
- Fair access to good jobs
- Labor rights and standards
- Urgent and effective climate protection
- No worker or community left behind
These strategies can serve as criteria for developing, evaluating, and selecting policies to make Build Back Better all that it could be.
1. Managed Decline of Fossil-Fuel Burning
Biden's Build Back Better plan seeks 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 and net zero GHG emissions by 2050. No firm goal has been announced for 2030, but Climate Action Tracker says the U.S. needs to cut around 60% of its GHG emissions by 2030 to reach this 2050 goal.
Biden's timetable is not enough to halt colossal climate damage. It will go on adding to the GHG emissions that are already in the atmosphere. But it does provide targets for initial planning and emission reductions, which can be augmented later. The most important thing is to get started on reducing emissions right now and start planning for the subsequent stages.
Right now we are seeing a chaotic, unmanaged decline of fossil-fuel industries. This is most evident in coal, where declining demand and collapsing profitability are leading to massive mine and power plant closings, job loss, destruction of coal communities, and decimation of unions. In the COVID-19 pandemic we also saw devastation of oil and gas employment and workers. With the fall in the relative cost of renewable energy in relation to fossil fuels, the future holds more of the same for coal, oil, and gas. Public policy and civil society actions like divestment and protest will further squeeze fossil fuel industries.
The alternative to such chaotic decline is a managed decline in fossil fuel use. This requires setting step-by-step targets for reduction and then implementing policies to manage the consequences. (Programs to protect workers and communities are addressed in section 6, "No Worker Left Behind.") According to the 2020 "Production Gap Report," "the world will need to decrease fossil fuel production by roughly 6% per year between 2020 and 2030" to reach the Paris goal of 1.5degC. Countries are instead planning and projecting an average annual increase of 2%, which by 2030 would result in more than double the production consistent with the 1.5degC limit.
Fortunately, the U.S. can realize 90 percent clean energy by 2035 while actually lowering wholesale power costs because of the falling cost of renewable energy. Here is what we need to do now:
1) Legally binding enforcement of GHG emissions limits through renewable portfolio standards (RPSs) and other regulations, not just "incentives" like subsidies or cap-and-trade.
2) A freeze on new fossil fuel infrastructure.
3) Phased additional shutdowns initially focused on health promotion and reducing pollution of frontline communities.
4) Planned investment in replacement alternative energy and energy use reduction to prevent shortages and hardships.
2. Full-Spectrum Job Creation
The existing U.S. labor market is segmented, stratified, and highly unequal. Tens of millions who want to work are unemployed or defined as outside the official workforce. Forty percent of the workforce make less than $15 per hour with few or no benefits while a few workers make $100,000 a year or more. Millions have no marketable skills while employers bid for a small number with special skills and talents. Some have unimpeded access to whatever jobs are available while others have been systematically excluded by race, gender, geography, legal status, and background from all but the worst available jobs. An estimated 10 million workers have permanently lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic and the uneven "K-shaped recovery" that has benefitted some while leaving others in depression-like conditions.
The Build Back Better proposal would create 5 million new jobs. Other proposals are even more ambitious: The THRIVE Agenda, for example, pushes for the creation of 15 million new jobs. That would be enough to provide jobs for all those who want them, including those now unemployed and underemployed. And it would create a full employment economy that would create greater bargaining power and therefore higher wages for workers as a whole.
The unique opportunity presented by the current moment is to create jobs for all varieties of workers. Every kind of worker can contribute to climate protection. Highly skilled building trades workers can build new solar and wind installations, electrical grids, building retrofits, and many other means of reducing GHGs. Manufacturing workers will be needed for everything from converting to electric vehicles to manufacturing solar equipment and materials for climate-safe buildings. There is a huge amount of work for which large numbers of workers can be quickly trained, such as insulating buildings, installing solar panels, and making forests and farms more effective carbon sinks.
The climate jobs plan should include jobs for every kind of worker. It should:
- Support jobs for specific union, occupations, and other groups. But it should do so in the context of a broader strategy that benefits all workers and creates a more just and equitable world of work.
- Guarantee jobs for both high-skilled construction and manufacturing workers and for those who have been marginalized within the workforce, including undocumented immigrants.
- Provide jobs not just for currently high-skilled workers, but for the entire range of workers and unions, through a program to provide decent jobs for those who have been forced to accept sub-standard jobs or no jobs at all. Such a program will ensure jobs for all who want them.
3. Fair Access to Jobs and Good Jobs
Simply creating more jobs will not eliminate the grossly unjust and wasteful distribution of access to jobs. At least 40% of workers are locked into low-wage jobs that are often contingent, insecure, and lack benefits. Many more want to work but have no jobs at all. Creating access to good jobs for those who have been excluded from them will require deliberate policies, including:
- Job ladders within and between workplaces and companies to allow workers to move from lower- to higher-skill jobs.
- Strong affirmative action rules that guarantee discriminated-against groups access to jobs and training
- Industrial location policy that directs job-creating investment to depressed areas and those that are being affected by shrinking of the fossil fuel economy.
- Massive expansion of apprentice programs to allow entry-level workers to become skilled all-round craftspeople.
- Designing the green jobs programs to provide training and advancement to better jobs.
- "Hire local" requirements for employers in communities with inadequate employment.
4. Labor Rights and Standards
Simply creating more jobs will not necessarily elevate the quality or pay of available jobs. Making climate jobs be good jobs will take deliberate policies. That includes enforced job standards like minimum wages, prevailing wage policies, and health and safety protection. It also includes the empowerment of workers by guaranteeing their right to organize, bargain collectively, and engage in concerted action on the job. Public policy should create opportunities for unions to recruit large numbers of members in the "green" economy.
A green jobs program should:
- Require federal standards mandating project labor agreements.
- Establish a minimum wage that guarantees a living wage.
- Require that contractors pay the prevailing wage.
- Implement the elements of The PRO Act to ensure workers rights to organize.
- Prevent employers from interfering with workers' rights to organize.
5. Urgent and Effective Climate Protection
To meet the climate emergency, the federal and other governments should immediately invest in the known solutions that can rapidly reduce GHG emissions by as much as 90 percent. These are primarily renewable energy and energy efficiency. They should also evaluate way to eliminate the remaining emissions and fund research on those demonstrated to be most beneficial when including climate, health, safety, and environmental impacts as well as cost.
There are many ways to reduce GHG pollution. Selecting those that will best combine the objectives of eliminating greenhouse gases, creating jobs, and correcting injustice will require careful evaluation.
Effective, job-productive climate protection will involve many different elements that are complementary or even synergistic. Some ways to reduce climate destroying GHGs replace the burning of fossil fuel with other sources of energy. These are primarily renewable sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and waterpower, though they may also include other sources. GHG pollution can also be reduced by using energy more efficiently to reduce the amount that is needed. The economic sectors that use the most energy are transportation, electricity, industry, buildings, and agriculture; methods to reduce their use range from insulating houses to powering vehicles by electricity rather than gasoline.
Technologies known by such names as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) propose to remove GHG emissions from smokestacks or to suck them out of the atmosphere after they are emitted; despite massive investment, so far such technologies appear to require large amounts of energy themselves and to be costly and largely ineffective. They can do little to solve the climate emergency.
Renewable energy, including solar, wind, and geothermal energy have become much cheaper in recent years, to the point that they are often cheaper than coal and often competitive with oil and natural gas, even disregarding the enormous cost of fossil fuels in health and climate effects. According to Forbes, "plummeting wind, solar, and storage prices have fallen so fast that the
United States can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 - without raising customer costs at all from today's levels, and actually decreasing wholesale power costs 10%."
Climate safety can be achieved with existing technology; it does not require waiting for some hoped-for technology of the future. Renewable energy and energy efficiency create far more jobs per dollar invested than either fossil fuel or high-tech investments like nuclear power or carbon capture and storage. (Because some renewable energy and energy efficiency jobs are currently low paid, it is important to enforce the labor rights and standards laid out in section 4 above.)
Selecting effective strategies requires science-based evaluation of their effectiveness in reducing GHG emissions, safety, cost-effectiveness, and job creation. Unfortunately, policy decisions about investment in research and deployment of technologies are often based on lobbying by interests that hope to gain from government subsidies. A useful template for scientific evaluation of climate technology choices may be the proposal in Biden's original climate plan from August 2020 regarding "small modular nuclear reactors." It makes the broad point that, to address the climate emergency, we must look at "all low- and zero-carbon technologies." The plan includes research on such reactors but does not endorse their deployment. Rather, it says the research will examine issues "ranging from cost to safety to waste disposal systems" that remain an "ongoing challenge with nuclear power today." An objective evaluation of these "challenges" is almost certain to conclude that cost, safety, and waste disposal make nuclear energy a far worse option than renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Such objective evaluation that includes all relevant factors is essential for all decisions about how to fight climate change. There are well-heeled lobbyists ready to promote projects that may squander valuable resources on wasteful and even dangerous programs. Their success would undermine the whole climate jobs program with the public and make it too costly without creating sufficient good jobs. Almost any goal or policy can serve as a misleading justification for costly, ineffective, and even dangerous programs.
A program to combine climate protection with jobs and justice should:
- Start now with technologies that are available, cost-effective, and job effective. That is likely to mean renewable energy and energy efficiency, which can provide 90% of power generation by 2030. The faster emissions are reduced, the less need there will be for costly technologies with harmful side effects.
- Accept scientific criteria for cost, safety, waste disposal and jobs in evaluating all climate programs, including nuclear power, carbon capture, pollution permit programs, and taxes.
- Include all costs, including, safety, health, and other forms of pollution, and collateral costs and benefits, in all evaluations.
- Include all job benefits, for jobs of all kinds all along the skill and wage spectrum in evaluations.
- Research other technologies that may be useful for the more difficult to eliminate forms of GHG emissions, such as some high-temperature manufacturing and air and sea transportation. Do not invest in implementation until the full benefits of renewable energy and energy efficiency have been realized.
- Carefully plan, sequence, and phase-in programs according to both social and climate needs.
- After GHG emissions have been halted, explore cost-effective techniques for removing existing GHGs from the atmosphere. While mechanical means for achieving this, such as carbon capture and storage, have been proposed, such means are unlikely to be cost-effective relative to natural carbon sinks like properly managed trees, soils and ocean plants like kelp.
6. No Worker Left Behind
While Build Back Better will produce far more jobs than it eliminates, it is likely also to threaten the jobs of some workers in fossil fuel producing and using industries. It is unjust that any worker or community should suffer through no fault of their own because of a policy that is necessary to protect everyone-and such unintended consequences of climate policy are likely to provoke a backlash against climate protection.
Fortunately, there are ways to provide alternative jobs, livelihoods, and community resources when fossil-fuel burning is reduced. The means to protect workers and communities from the unintended side effects of such change are often referred to as a "just transition." Such programs should be built into all "Build Back Better" programs.
- Community and worker protection (CWP) funds should collect money in advance of threatened closings to replace taxes and fees paid by fossil-fuel facilities and to invest in good jobs in affected communities.
- CWP funds, in cooperation with other private and public sources, should make targeted investments in fossil fuel energy communities designed to create jobs before or at the pace that fossil fuel jobs are declining.
- Workers harmed by climate protection policies should receive full wages and benefits for at least four years; up to four years of education or training, including tuition and living expenses; and decent pensions with health care for those ready to retire.
- Workers who seek a new career path should receive income replacement with either a four-year college education or vocational job training with living expenses provided, as well as assistance with dependent care, mortgage and other debt relief, transportation costs, and other areas of economic pressure for workers in transition. Such education and training should start preemptively long before workers are laid off.
- Communities adversely affected by climate protection policies should be targeted for funding for economic development investments through regional commissions and authorities, for example projects that enhance workforce competitiveness, remediate damage done by fossil fuel extraction, build and repair infrastructure, and increase community capacity like broadband projects, clean drinking water, organic farming, and energy efficiency.
As Congress and the public work out the details of Build Back Better legislation over the coming months, there are many details that will need to be considered, many of which will affect particular interests and constituencies. To establish broad support these will need to be taken into account in shaping the final legislation. But it is also essential that the ultimate plan successfully integrates the ultimate goals of climate, jobs, and justice. These six strategies provide a framework for developing, evaluating, and selecting policies to make Build Back Better achieve those goals.
Originally posted at labor4sustainability.org.
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