Calling for a Green New Deal at National Climate Mobilization Rally

Greens at National Climate Mobilization
Photo by Erik McGregor

What will be our “Climate Pearl Harbor?” Has it come and gone, ignored, or will we ever recognize such an event in time to make a difference? The Climate Mobilization believes that it is up to us to motivate America to throw the full might of its industrial and technological capacity to fight climate change, much as the entire USA mobilized to fight WWII.

To that end, they are calling on Americans to sign a pledge that demands bold and massive government action to get us to 100% clean energy by 2025, while promising to vote for and support candidates who campaign for the same. The pledge drive kicked off this past Sunday at events across the country, including one at the Financial District of Manhattan where speakers addressed the gathered and pedestrians on the need for immediate action to avert runaway global warming.

I had the opportunity to speak at the rally, representing the Green Party of New York State as co-chair. Mark Dunlea spoke as President of the Green Education and Legal Fund (GELF), and Dunlea is a longtime member of the GPNYS State Committee.

GPNYS is a co-signer on GELF’s Campaign for 100% Clean Energy which uses the Stanford Jacobson plan as a template for how to reach that goal using existing technology by 2030. GPNYS has also run candidates who have campaigned for a Green New Deal to get to 100% clean energy by 2030, such as Howie Hawkins’ 2014 bid for governor.

I used my time to speak on the power we must build through organizing to make a Green New Deal a reality. We cannot rely on the better angels of those who have been elected though the two-party, corporate parties controlled by the 1% and Wall Street. As a massive public jobs program, the Green New Deal will be a job-creator and a planet-saver. But fossil-fuel capitalism has everything to lose by guaranteeing living wage jobs that will create distributed, clean renewable energy sources across the land.

A New Deal-scale national public works project also affords us an immense opportunity to implement needed measures such as free, quality public education from pre-k to undergrad, and a single payer healthcare system such as medicare for all. Another “green” aspect of the Green New Deal would be cleaning up the waste and toxins already in our environment.

The highest aim of a national climate mobilization like the Green New Deal would be Energy Democracy, but to have that you need political democracy and we have a lot of work to do in order to secure either. Even the original New Deal was administered undemocratically, with African Americans and millions of others having to fight though institutionalized oppression to obtain their due jobs and benefits.

So we can have a massive public works program that, in the aggregate, is creating the jobs and infrastructure we need to defuse the climate time bomb, if we don’t have true Grassroots Democracy (one of the Key Values of the Green Party), then the program will inevitably exclude, exploit or marginalize broad swaths of the population based on race, class, gender or by other criteria.

We need a Green New Deal because the “free market” has proved to be utterly ineffective at mobilizing the changes we need, and is arguably working against that end. Renewable energy is growing within the market but it is not displacing fossil fuel use. Renewables are simply adding to the fossil fuel energy supply, which is itself expanding (for instance, in the US where we have been ramping up natural gas extraction for domestic use and export).

The profit motive will continue sabotaging any largely market-based approach to climate mobilization. Our fossil fuel-economy under capitalism has every reason to keep selling dirty energy and delay investment in renewable, distributed energy. The dirty energy sector doesn’t want every home, office building and factory producing electricity through solar – they want all of those sites to keep consuming. Radical conservation measures run contrary to energy companies’ interests because they mean cutting down demand for the product they sell.

That is why we need to re-municipalize of for-profit energy utilities while we are building renewable energy infrastructure. Energy is a human right and delivery of power should be part of a democratically controlled, public commons. Take the profit motive out of the energy sector and the changes needed to avert climate catastrophe become a whole lot easier. The good news is we can do this now on a city-by-city, town-by-town basis. Everyone hates for-profit utility companies. (We call National Grid “National Greed, right?”)

Mark Dunlea’s speech provided some telling figures about where we are and where we need to go.

  • The recent G7 conference pledged to reach 100% clean energy by 2100. That is a plan for climate disaster, despite the approval of some “green” organizations.
  • The pledge for an 80% reduction of carbon output by 2050 is also entirely insufficient for the task.
  • Richard L. Kauffman, Andrew Cuomo’ NY energy czar, told Dunlea that the state has allocated $5 billion over ten years for renewables.
  • But the Jacobson Plan for NY state calls for $460 billion over 15 years.
  • The state is providing a $100 million to a new coal plant outside of Buffalo.
  • Meanwhile, NYC Comptroller is doing nothing to move New York City pension funds toward fossil fuel divestment (nor Eric DiNapoli at the state level).

GELF is currently supporting a bill requiring New York’s transition to 100% clean energy by 2030, which currently has 11 co-sponsors in the NY Assembly.

A Green New Deal will undoubtedly have to be paid for. The Green Party calls for cutting the military budget at least by half, taxing Wall Street and the 1% and taxing carbon to reflect its true cost. Those measures will run against the most power elements of American oligarchy – so how do we win them?

To answer that, we should look to the first New Deal, or rather what came right before it. When we’re talking about FDR creating jobs and public works, we’re really talking about the “Second New Deal” that began in 1935. It followed a massive wave worker strikes in 1934 in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Toledo that were scaring American business and government to death.

And that all followed decades of radical organizing and leadership from the likes Big Bill Haywood, Euege V. Debs and nationwide radical newspapers with paid circulation in the hundreds of thousands. Communities were creating a crisis for the 1% and the ruling elite. And so FDR went to the corporate elite at the time and said “look, we’re going to tax and borrow from you to pay for these public services, because if we don’t do this, we’re looking at a possible overthrow of American capitalism.” It’s not because FDR was a nice guy. It’s because the ruling class was terrified.

And so if we want clean, renewable power, then we must build real community power in the streets, at the ballot box and on the job site. We need to identify, train and struggle alongside hundreds of thousands of people who are leaders in their communities, and we must develop the capacity to create real crises for the 1% and the corporate two-party system. Whether it’s a political crisis that kicks elected officials out of office, or we simply bring society to a screeching halt with our bodies in the streets. It’s as Frederick Douglas said: power concedes nothing without a demand.

Getting a Green New Deal today means we need everyone to struggle fiercely and collectively, to get it.

Author: Michael O'Neil