Climate sustainability- what our nation must (and therefore will not) do

Now as we enter a year dominated by concerns for the appeasement of the Capitalist rulers, environmental policy seems poised for a massive rollback, or failure, depending on one’s point of view.   Under the present administration, oil extraction has reached new peaks, and unsafe new mining techniques poison dozens of communities in a pyrrhic quest for „clean burning“ Natural Gas.  We are entering a December that behaves like September, and erratic rainstorms follow an unseasonably severe hurricane, with no glimpse of the redeeming snow.

Global warming is ravaging our planet, permitted to run rampant by human excess, and we are doing precious little to address it.  We are going to lose a LOT of land over the next few decades, and the land we don’t lose will be blighted with chronic drought and wildfires, making the maintenance of adequate food supplies increasingly expensive- strengthening the corporations which own the very genomes of our crops- and driving many species to extinction.  While it is too late to prevent this, we still need to act quickly to reduce the damage.  to that end, I state my support of the following.  (Yes, I know that numbers 5 and 6 are impossible at the moment).

1.          Prohibition of new coal-fired power plants- we need to streamline our existing power grid to minimize power consumption, not generate more power.  The 4 billion of stimulus money towards a smart grid is a good beginning, but merely that, a beginning.  Sadly, this is one of only two environmentally meaningful actions taken by the administration in the last 4 years.

2.           Ban fracking- natural gas burns cleaner that coal or oil, but its extraction from rock reservoirs at present necessitates the injection of noxious chemicals into freshwater reservoirs, massive venting of methane, which is worse than any amount of CO2, and the fracking process seems to correlate with increased earthquakes.  Stop it, with EPA regulation if nothing else.

3.          Restore public transit- General Motors bought up and destroyed most of the nation’s streetcar systems in the early twentieth century.  This public transit system needs restoration.  Intercity rail is important, and the construction of such a system in California ia great, but what we need even more dearly is a convenient alternative to commuting by car- my hometown of St. Louis has the metro, which runs in a very limited fork, rather than a complete circuit of the metropolitan area.  Every major city needs a massive rail system like that in D.C., to better enable and encourage workers to make environmentally conscious choices.  that said, an inter-city rail project between St. Louis and Beloit would be pretty cool for me.

4.         Improve automobile mileage- some people ar ejust not going to be willing or able to use public transit, especially in more rural areas, but also for certain occasions.  The administration has introduced new mileage standards, to its credit, but they will not take full effect until 2020, barring Republican repeal of the policy, and even then will only determine new vehicle standards.  What we need is a way to get more fuel-efficient cars onto the market at affordable rates.  I confess to being VERY jealous of the Indian state car company Tata’s Nano- this is a two-door hatchback, on the Indian market for the equivalent of 2,500 dollars, which seats four, can maintain speeds of approximately sixty miles an hour, and gets 55 miles per gallon.  Assuming significantly higher prices, reflecting our labor, environmental, and safety standards does put something of a damper on it, but I think the idea is sound in principle.  The Department of Energy invites bids to develop a four-seater car with efficiency of at least 60 miles per gallon, and possessed of relative safety.  The winner would be subsidized by the government with the goal of reducing automobile inefficiency with greater haste than waiting for gas guzzlers to die natural deaths.  If we could put an affordable, efficient car on the market for between 5 and 10 thousand dollars, possibly with a generous subsidy, we could really reduce our impact even without making the (needed) changes in lifestyle.

5.         Nationalize, nationalize, nationalize!  I’m not saying the government manages things perfectly, but taking away the profit motive for maximum consumption is practically a necessity to any realistic address of the problem.  We need to build wind farms asap, install solar panels on every roof, and drill, baby drill-for geothermal climate control systems, not fossil fuels!  This is hard to do with the upfront cost- tax credits are a good idea, but to do this on a large enough scale (especially the macro-scale developments like Windfarms) we need centralized authority, and planned economic structure. 

6.         Centrally planned economy- this is hard to pull off, but if we could make a conscious leap from promoting maximum consumption towards providing adequacy for all, we could really reduce our impact.  Psychologically, I think this would also have a beneficial outcome for workers- as it is, people do whatever job the capitalists are willing to pay them for, beacuse it makes the corporations more money.  Under a planned system, labor would be treated as the single most valuable asset, and given meaningful tasks, because to do otherwise is to waste finite human resources.  All my time in the pharmacy, I knew my every act was, in the final sense, coordinated to bring profit to the drug companies.  Seeing people clean out savings accounts for one months supply of pills, the walking sick unable to afford profit-motivated medicine, and facing the shame of those unable to care for their children’s health left me with quite a feling of futility- what if every worker had the satisfaction of knowing that their job has been expressly calculated to be of service to the community, not the capitalist overlords?

7.         Tax carbon- even many Republicans (albeit those out of office) support this.  A tax of a few dollars per tonne of carbon burned will singlehandedly make going green the most profitable outcome.  As we’ve seen with the destruction of our infrastructure and the sabotage of the electric car, our corporate sector is very adept at changing the habits and culture of the country when its profits are on the line.  This tax can go towards funding new green installations, constructed by public workers, ameeliorating environmental damage, and paying down the deficit incurred by years of environmental and economic unsustainability.  Basically, this is Cap-and-Trade without the bugs or loopholes, but as the administration sold out even on cap-and-trade, it seems unlikely.

8.       Reforestation- we’re running out of the time window in which trees are net reducers of carbon emissions- we need to exploit this simplest of tools as much as possible.  China in particular has been a real leader here.

9.         Follow Europe’s lead- last summer, on good days, Germany got half its power from solar banks alone!  The largest sustainable western economy has gone VERY green indeed, and is still thriving, despite Merkel’s conservatism!  The solutions practiced are incentivizing sustainable behavior, taxing unsustainable behavior, decent public transit, stringent mileage (kilometerage?) standards, and building lots and lots of wind farms.  It CAN be done. 
  Solidarität, mein Genossen und Genossinnen