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abundance
Affordability, Abundance, and a New American Agenda
A growing number of Americans are ready for transformative change. Now is the time to forge a mighty movement of movements, one aimed squarely at political action.
Dec 08, 2025
Progressives of various stripes are attracted these days to several political ideas that must be handled with care or they could come back to haunt us. Considering these ideas points to the need for a new agenda for Americans concerned about climate and the environment.
Key Differences Between 'Affordability' and 'Abundance'
"Affordability" is a huge, legitimate concern for Americans and those who purport to represent us politically. Many progressives are using "affordability" as the rallying cry and point to high prices and inflation. As the success of Zohran Mamdani in NYC shows, it is a powerful political issue, and rightly so.
As I write, Trump just confirmed all this by calling affordability a hoax concocted by Democrats.
But here is something on which we should keep an eye. The underlying problem is not inflation or prices but simply that in our land of affluence, most Americans don't have enough money to live normal, secure lives. Progressives should follow Bernie Sanders’ and Robert Reich’s lead and focus heavily on that and on the vast social inequality government policies have allowed to accumulate. In addition to making prices honest, there are many, many ways for government to get actual money into the hands of people who need it. (Disclosure: in 1968—which feels just like yesterday—I helped draft model negative income tax legislation!)
Meanwhile, the "abundance movement" is a growing political force. There are already examples of it seeking to undermine public protection regulations and other guardrails that are alleged to slow or thwart progress towards abundance.
A looming issue here is that abundance advocates are moving to take advantage of affordability concerns and seeking to draw strength and momentum from those concerns. Abundance advocates must be forced at every turn to answer "abundance of what, for whom, and at what costs?"
The easy path to more and more has always been overall economic growth. It is not hard to imagine a focus on abundance supporting an effort to push GDP growth into ever higher gears. But GDP is a terrible guide to creating more abundance where it is needed. Lots of things do indeed need to grow and become more abundant, but many of them are things not reflected in GDP. And lots of things that are included in GDP need to shrink, and many of them, like fossil fuel use, need to shrink dramatically.
Also, a focus on creating abundance can implicitly endorse a national obscenity—our boundless consumerism. We should remember Wordsworth’s warning from long ago, “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” Americans should now be moving, belatedly, from a consumer society to a conserver society.
Here is my third issue. A position progressives often take is to defend climate action because it “produces jobs,” “lowers energy costs," and in general “helps the economy.” That is often true, but such arguments can be a problem. These arguments can leave environmental and climate advocates in a bad place. We cannot allow ourselves to appear to enshrine the primacy of economic values. We don’t want to be able to save the climate only if it helps the economy. Societies must act to prevent global climate chaos, even if their climate actions slow or hurt the economy in certain ways. Similarly, societies cannot let climate progress be halted or undone whenever the economy heads south.
Also, recall that the US economy still runs on about 82% fossil energy. Doing what now must be done on climate—achieving net zero fossil emissions by 2050, just 25 years away—is likely to be problematic both for low energy prices and the economy. Rather than over relying on the economic benefits of climate action, progressives should focus on measures to ensure economic security for Americans during the dramatic transition ahead, ensuring sufficient income for a decent life for those now living paycheck to paycheck or worse.
(Of course, what we are seeing today from theTrump Administration is the worst of all worlds: a determined attack on all climate progress despite its national economic benefits, all in an effort to sustain profitability of the fossil and AI industries while venomously undoing climate initiatives of the Obama and Biden Administrations.)
Past Failures and a Better Path for the Future
These issues bring into focus three great failures of US climate and environmental advocacy. I have been associated with this advocacy for many years, so I bear some responsibility. I hope these shortcomings will now be addressed with urgency.
1. First is the failure over recent decades to build a powerful political force for climate action. US environmental groups have been weak politically and especially weak when it comes to climate. We should blame section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code for some of that. Except around the edges, our leading groups have not broken out of the 501(c)(3) cocoon and its proscription of political activity and electioneering. The leaders of our environmental and climate groups should now come together and build a powerful, politically engaged movement, a fusion of forces, first among themselves and then with allied progressive constituencies.
2. We can see failure also in the absence of any real campaign to dethrone GDP as a measure of national progress and to replace it with an alternative like the Genuine Progress Indicator or something better. As Herman Daly pointed out, we have been living in a period of "uneconomic growth" for quite a while, with costs of aggregate GDP growth exceeding benefits. The best way to get beyond our current GDP fetish is to adopt a new measure or measures of national well-being and progress. One such measure should be a monetized one so that it can be compared quarterly with GDP. In various economies, analyses have shown that in recent decades while GDP rose wellbeing has tended to stagnate or even decline.
3. The third, and biggest, of our failures is the failure to appreciate and act on the underlying reasons for environmental decline. We environmentalists must confront a haunting paradox. Our groups have grown ever stronger, more sophisticated, and better funded, winning many battles along the way. Yet, 55 years after the first Earth Day, we find ourselves on the cusp of a ruined planet.
How can we make sense of that? We must begin by asking anew: What is an environmental issue? The answer must surely include this: “any issue that significantly affects environmental performance and outcomes.” When answered that way, focusing on roadblocks to environmental solutions, environmental issues will include: 1) our distorted political system; 2) a pervasive economic disparity and insecurity that paralyzes political action; and 3) the materialistic and anthropocentric values that dominate our culture. Environmental degradation is also powerfully driven by a triple imperative: 4) GDP growth at almost any cost, 5) ever-enlarging corporate profit, and 6) insatiable consumerism.
These six factors form an interacting, mutually supportive complex and are dominant features of our current system of political economy. It is no wonder that a frequent banner at climate demonstrations is “System Change, Not Climate Change!”
Regarding our political system, consider the following. When economic inequality mocks political equality, democratic progress is difficult. When corporate power dwarfs people power, democratic progress is difficult. When big money is central to campaign success, democratic progress is difficult. When the voting public is subjected to repeated lies and endless misinformation and propaganda, democratic functioning is difficult. When future generations and the natural world are not accorded political rights, democracy is deprived and unrepresentative.
These are among the underlying, root causes of our environmental decline and the climate crisis to which the US is the dominant contributor. If we hope to ever succeed at the level needed in our climate and other efforts, we must find ways to address these systemic issues, which to date our movement has largely ignored.
As I view America’s political landscape today, I think there are growing numbers of Americans who are ready for transformative change. We see that in the crowds Bernie Sanders motivates, in the many devoted followers of Bishop William Barber, and in the banners and signs at No Kings. Their numbers will continue to grow as the appalling horror show of the Trump administration continues and the need for deep change is laid bare. The message to progressive leaders, I believe, is carpe diem. Seize this day. Now is the time to forge a mighty movement of movements, one aimed squarely at political action. Those who are members of progressive organizations might well ask their leaders to get this job done.Keep ReadingShow Less
The Abundance Movement’s Deregulatory Deceit
How Green Amendments, not rollbacks, can help usher in an era of true abundance.
Oct 15, 2025
The nation’s halting and uneven clean energy rollout—exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s hostility to anything green—threatens our prosperity, our climate, and our communities. Left unchecked, rising temperatures—driven largely by fossil fuels and the industries that burn them—will destroy ecosystems, disrupt our economy, and destabilize our society.
Some opportunistic politicians think they have a solution in the latest media fad, the so-called “Abundance” movement. They argue that the rules and regulations put in place to protect the environment are in fact obstacles impeding our ability to build the clean energy our climate needs. Their logic is nonsensical: Cut environmental regulations to protect the environment and unleash energy abundance.
But we’ve been down this path, and it leads not to abundance, but impoverishment. We’ve seen the havoc that unrestricted exploitation of nature brings to our health, our communities, and our environment: Barren hillsides. Air too dangerous to breathe. Workers’ lives devastated, and too often lost. Toxic rivers and underground fires.
In 1971, damage like this led Pennsylvanians to rise up and demand the passage of the state’s Green Amendment. Led by visionary State Sen. Franklin Kury, Pennsylvania became the first state in the nation to enshrine in its constitution a revolutionary recognition of the People’s right to pure water, clean air, and healthy environments, and to create a constitutional obligation for leaders to protect these rights. Pennsylvania’s Green Amendment is now being used to ensure that industry—including a vibrant clean energy sector—is able to advance while also protecting Pennsylvanian’s inalienable right to a clean, safe, and healthy environment, and all the economic benefits that flow therefrom.
Rather than regulatory rollbacks, we need a reorientation—one that advances clean energy abundance without empowering fossil fuels.
But in pushing a stale deregulatory agenda, the Abundance movement threatens to undo the balance healthy environments provide and open the door to a fossil fuel industry more focused on profits than people—an industry that has always overpromised on job creation and economic benefits, while consistently downplaying the harm it causes to our environment and our health.
And make no mistake, the harms are significant. Pollution and environmental degradation can impose debilitating costs through higher rates of childhood cancer, heart disease, asthma, and Alzheimer’s, on top of a broader economic burden and loss of personal well-being.
Moreover, regulatory rollbacks proposed under the false promise of “abundance” will let industry off the hook for its failures while doing nothing to stop companies from attempting to increase profits by foisting the costs of environmental abuses on to the communities they harm. Indeed, far from pushing these companies to meaningfully address project shortcomings, a deregulatory agenda allows them to continue blaming regulation for their failures, however specious the case.
Take for example, the PennEast pipeline, a proposed natural gas pipeline cancelled in 2021. Deregulation advocates blame the inability to secure permits for the project’s failure, but the real issue was a lack of demand. In the absence of genuine need, there was no way to justify the investment, seizure of private property, or harm the project would unleash on the community’s health, economy, or environment.
Faulting regulations that protect communities and prevent wasteful investment for the fossil fuel industry’s failure to deliver is misplaced. Reforming the way that environmental permitting works, even removing the requirement to secure these permits entirely, won’t solve the industry’s fundamental duplicity.
Indeed, in today’s environment—with a federal government that is actively hostile to clean energy, that believes climate change is a hoax, and is fully in thrall to monied interests bent on extracting every dollar possible from the natural world, whatever the consequences to our health, our communities, or our environments—advocating that states roll back environmental protections and shut communities out of the decision-making process is laughably naive at best, and complicit in the resulting harms at worst.
Removing the ability of communities to push back on these harms, and instead counting on the fossil fuel industry to police itself, will not result in abundance for all, but profits for a select few.
Rather than regulatory rollbacks, we need a reorientation—one that advances clean energy abundance without empowering fossil fuels. We must undergird our system with a recognition that all Americans have an inherent right to pure water, clean air, and a healthy environment. That is how Green Amendments will support economic progress while also protecting our environment.
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Musk's xAI Is Showing Us Exactly Why We Need Public Interest Lawsuits
When powerful corporations are able to completely circumvent basic democratic accountability, public interest lawsuits are a final backstop to protect the community’s well-being.
Oct 05, 2025
The NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center are moving to sue Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act. The company has been accused of illegally operating several dozen diesel-fueled turbines to power Musk’s “Colossus,” a massive data center located on an old industrial lot.
According to SELC, the company operated those generators to power Colossus—and released toxic pollutants—without even applying for a permit to use them.
This entire saga is an excellent example of why public interest lawsuits and strong environmental regulations are critically important. Unfortunately, both are under attack on multiple fronts. The Trump administration and the US Supreme Court have both moved to seriously weaken the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. The White House and the Roberts court, joined by many “supply-side liberals” and proponents of the “abundance agenda,” are also attempting to impeach environmental regulation and public interest lawsuits in the court of public opinion.
Musk’s Memphis misadventures are a case in point of why that’s so dangerous.
No prominent abundance proponent has even attempted to square Musk’s actions with their insistence that we need to remove opportunities to sue to block development.
Colossus went into operation while adroitly sidestepping the democratic process. By dangling promises of tax revenues and economic development, xAI was able to begin operating its massive data center with even some city officials totally oblivious to the process. A company representative who was supposed to speak at a public meeting with the county commission played hooky. Add it all up and it demonstrates how, especially at the local level, powerful corporations are able to completely circumvent basic democratic accountability. In those cases, public interest lawsuits are a final backstop to protect the community’s well-being.
When the government refuses to enforce the laws and allows corporations to run amok, it falls to activists and community groups to force its hand. This is the central premise of Public Citizen founder Ralph Nader’s decades of progressive politics, and something that many centrist Democratic pundits have begun to deride.
What such pundits invariably miss, however, is that despite Nader’s successes, there are still innumerable instances where governments fail to hold powerful corporate interests accountable. In an emblematic example, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue in their bestseller Abundance that, while Nader’s approach was important in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we are now at a juncture where such litigation serves mostly to delay important policy implementation and no longer serves a critical purpose. But for all too many disproportionately poor and majority-minority communities like South Memphis, a public interest lawsuit of the sort denigrated in sweeping fashion by pundits is their last, and honestly only, means of protecting themselves.
The framework deployed by the abundance movement, which is echoed by the Trump administration and the Supreme Court, assumes away instances like xAI in Memphis. Indeed, no prominent abundance proponent has even attempted to square Musk’s actions with their insistence that we need to remove opportunities to sue to block development.
Unfortunately, Musk’s machinations along the Mississippi are part of a longstanding pattern of the government ignoring, and sometimes engaging in, development that poses acute harms to vulnerable—disproportionately majority-minority and poor—communities. South Memphis has been repeatedly left exposed to toxic waste by exploitative industrial practices and government neglect. The Tennessee Valley Authority dumped its toxic coal ash waste there. The same exact site where Colossus now sits once hosted a polluting factory.
And it isn’t just South Memphis. Across the United States, there are abundant examples of communities hung out to dry. The corridor of petrochemical factories between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana, for example, has been dubbed “Cancer Alley” because its residents are subjected to such high levels of carcinogenic pollution. Other areas with heavy fossil fuel infrastructure are called “sacrifice zones” because of how much cancer and chronic disease residents endure.
Even now waste facilities are almost always sited in poor neighborhoods that don’t have the wealth and political capital to block them. Lawsuits are the final bulwark to defend those communities. Calling for them to taken off the table is dangerous, especially with the White House and Supreme Court eager to ape such talking points to justify removing any means of blockading the whims of the powerful.
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