← Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer
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- [00:05]
A
Hi, I'm Annie Faidley. I am a senior policy associate at Civic Ventures and I'm here with Zach.
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B
Silk, president of Civic Ventures.
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A
Zach, let's talk about the Green New Deal.
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B
Okay, let's.
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A
Before we get into it, I heard this from the Washington Post and I think it does a really great job of explaining the bare points of the Green New Deal.
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C
It's called the Green New Deal, a platform pushed by some Democrats designed to tackle climate change while stimulating the economy. So what exactly is it? The term Green New Deal, a throwback to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal reforms and infrastructure programs, has been around for years. One of the earliest mentions was in 2007 in a column by the New York Times, Thomas Friedman. By 2008, the concept continued to evolve when then green job czar Van Jones used the phrase to describe a plan to increase medium skilled jobs in green sectors. The latest iteration, the one being championed most notably by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, is the one making waves.
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A
Because we don't have a choice. We do not have a choice. We have to get to 100% renewable energy in 10 years. There is no other option.
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C
Some of its aims include transitioning the country away from fossil fuels, decreasing the use of carbon in agriculture, transportation and infrastructure, and aiming to make the economy carbon free within 10 years. It also seeks to tackle income inequality through a federal jobs guarantee program that assures a, quote, living wage.
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A
What do you think?
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B
Well, part of the reason I want to talk about the Green New Deal is we spend a lot of time here at the pod Pitchfork economics talking about political economy. We talk about this idea of where politics meets economic policy. And honestly, the hottest topic right now of politics and economics is the Green New Deal. It's interesting. It's not actually a very well developed policy piece, which is one of the most interesting things about it. It has gotten arguably more attention than almost any other policy conversation, except for Medicare for all or maybe the tax cuts, than any other piece of policy. But it actually is not a really fully developed policy piece. It's a set of principles. The principles are extremely exciting. It is about tackling this incredible challenge of climate change in the most transformative way possible, while accounting for disruption in the economy and justice as a forward and explicit part of the policy making. I mean, at its core, if you had to understand it, for those who haven't really spent any time with it, it's the idea of transitioning the American economy away from carbon quickly and replacing that economy with new ways of Creating energy and empowering our economy, literally the power that drives the economy, and simultaneously doing it in a way that creates massive numbers of new jobs, new industries, and accounts for the. The impacts that we've had with a dirty economy up to now. And so it has a bunch of principles. It's a little bit complicated. There's some folks who aren't in full agreement on it. In this way, it reminds me a little bit of Medicare for all. Everybody wants it, but they don't quite know what it is. And that's okay. I think the thing about this moment in our policymaking is that we need to be dreaming really big. We have major problems in the world, we have major problems in the United States. And the most important thing is we start having the kinds of ambition to tackle those problems. We don't need to quibble around the details. That comes when we start to actually make policy. Right now, we're just setting goals and dreaming big.
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A
Yeah. And the guaranteed jobs that you're talking about, that's part of the economic Bill of Rights component.
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B
That's right.
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A
Why is it important that we have those economic bills of rights in concert with all of these big climate change policies?
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B
Yeah. The thing I love most about the Green New Deal is it's finally giving progressives ambition to tackle what is easily one one of the greatest threats to civilization, which is climate change. And we just have not had a plan on it. Barack Obama did a lot of amazing things to tackle carbon pollution. We've talked on and on about it. Al Gore, of course, had famously told the truth about it directly. And yet we haven't had a plan to deal with it in a comprehensive, clean way. And this way is that now its details are yet to be worked out. The thing I like second most about this thing is that it actually tries to tie this transformative thing we need to do, the environmental impacts and the clean energy and clean carbon with a new economy. And those two things should be interlinked. I mean, we are talking about how do you build a new economy based on a new energy source in a way that works for everyone? And that to me, ought to be the way that we're approaching all of these issues. One of the things that is a tragedy for people on the left is they frequently take these issues and they divorce, divorce them from the economy, they divorce them from kitchen table economic policies in people's lives. They make them sound abstract and distant from them. The thing I love about the Green New Deal is it takes this complex, abstract thing, climate change and it makes it real for you, which is to say you deserve a good job making the new economy. And that's what we used to do in America. When we saw a big problem, we said, you're going to be part of solving it. When we decided we were going to get out of the Great depression in the 1930s, we said, you, the average American, you're going to be part of solving this problem. We're going to build big things, we are going to work together and we're going to get out of this economic doldrums and we're going to create a new America. And that's the part of the Green New Deal that is so exciting. It taps into that spirit of America that we can do big things and you, as an average American can be part of it. And so to me, one of the most important parts of it actually is the jobs component, that we will find meaningful work in creating this new economy.
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A
Yeah, I agree. And I think it's so important that it's involved too, because you can't have the cooperation that's required on this scale if you don't have fairness and justice built into it directly to be growing alongside of it.
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B
Absolutely. So I wanted to ask you, Annie. So one of the things that's really clear was we're watching this debate play out is there is a generational divide. Some of the old septuagenarians in the Democratic Party, obviously in the Republican Party, have really just cast aspersions on this, talked about it as dreamy and far eyed, and yet it is being driven by a young new cohort that is really putting this out there. I'm kind of curious. When you look at this as a young person engaged in policy and politics, how do you see it?
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A
Yeah, I mean, my first reaction to it is that it's a solution that's scaled to the size of the problem that we know exists. And I don't have any patience for incremental solutions. I think that we have set this out as this is the only way that we can solve these problems that we know exist and that are going to screw us over. Life as we know it is going to change. And I think most people my age accept that and are even, I would say, fearful of that and are ready and willing to take these huge steps to solve that before it becomes irreversible. And as a millennial, I guess I could speak for all of them. I think that most of us are for this and that it's really who are stuck in some grading systems of making progress that are going to try and shoot it down.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But the other thing I'll say, too, is that it's not just young people who are in support of this. Right. I mean, we even have a presidential candidate from Washington, Governor Jay Inslee, who's running on a platform of climate change.
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D
We're the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we're the last that can do something about it. We went to the moon and created technologies that have changed the world. Our country's next mission must be to rise up to the most urgent challenge of our time, defeating climate change.
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A
So at least up here in the other Washington, we've got our heads screwed on straight and we're ready to do something about climate change. I honestly just hope that we can follow through on this in some form and that other countries will commit to equally ambitious plans. This is a global problem that will require a coordinated global solution. And we need to be super careful when we talk about the Green New Deal, that we remember that we're not the ones swooping in and carrying the world on our backs here. It's actually our moral imperative to do our part in concert with the rest of humanity, just like, to frame it super casually.
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B
Yeah. And the great thing about America is we have always been willing to do our part. And the tragedy of this particular issue is we have not. And we are really alone on the world stage, and this is an opportunity for us to do our part.
- [09:02]
A
Absolutely. If you want to understand more about who's behind the Green New Deal and what the path forward is, there are a couple great resources that we can point you towards. You can check out the Sunrise movement at www.sunrisemovement.org for information about the resolution and to see how you can get involved. And you can even add your organization to a list of groups in support of the deal if you want to. The Sunrise Movement is led by young people, and I think that's really cool. And if you're wondering how the Green New Deal fits into a Progressive Democratic Platform, www.justicedemocrats.com is the place for that. Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. The Magic happens in Seattle in partnership with large media. That's LARJ Media and the Young Turks Network. Find us on Twitter and Facebook at Civic Action and follow our writing on medium vickskunkworks. And you should also follow Nick Hanauer on Twitter ickhanauer. Thanks for listening.