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THE GREEN NEW DEAL: FROM BELOW OR FROM ABOVE?  
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Jeremy Brecher
April 2, 2024
Labor Network for Sustainability
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_ The question, “should Green New Deal policies by implemented from
above or from below” is rather like the question, “Should I wash
my hands or my feet?” The obvious answer is, “both!” _

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The original Green New Deal resolution took as its models not only the
original New Deal but also the home front mobilization for World War
II. A fully developed Green New Deal will need both the kind of
federal initiative and strong federal agencies that transformed the
American economy during World War II and the popular participation and
decentralized creativity represented by the Green New Deal from Below.

The Green New Deal from Below can make a significant difference in
reducing greenhouse gas pollution, creating good jobs, and countering
injustice. It can help create the support and the building blocks for
a national and even a global Green New Deal. But the accumulation of
separate initiatives will not automatically culminate in adequate
solutions. Green New Deal projects in different localities and
different spheres need to hook up to strengthen each other to generate
more extensive projects; to win support from the federal government;
and ultimately to make the Green New Deal a national and global
reality. A federal Green New Deal is necessary to fill the gaps that
are difficult to close from below.

Cities and states are limited in their powers and resources.
Financially, the federal government can and normally does run budget
deficits; cities and states are in most cases constitutionally
required to balance their budgets. The federal government can spend
trillions of dollars annually and has almost unlimited capacity to
borrow trillions more. The federal government owns more than 30% of
the country’s land and has authority to use the power of eminent
domain on the rest. It can issue or deny permits for any kind of
fossil fuel extraction or infrastructure. The executive, legislative,
and Judicial branches can regulate almost any kind of economic
activity and can determine plans for transportation, energy, and other
basic economic systems.

Many of the policies and programs necessary for a full Green New Deal
require these federal powers. These include establishing financial
incentives and disincentives; raising capital; implementing labor
strategies; organizing funding for infrastructure such as transmission
lines, railways, and pipelines; funding R&D; setting and monitoring
energy efficiency standards for buildings, appliances, and equipment;
training and retraining professionals and trades people; and setting
industrial location policies.

Even with a full federal commitment to the Green New Deal, action
“from below” will continue to be essential. Community-based
renewables like rooftop solar collectors, energy use reduction like
residential weatherization, mobilization of finance like revolving
loan funds, and new patterns of consumption like shared bicycles can,
with federal support, expand to a still greater role. And they can
provide popular support for transition and a means to hold the
institutions of transition accountable.

Meanwhile, Green New Deals from Below are taking some initial steps
toward coordinating their programs on a larger scale. Programs for
energy development and transportation are transcending city and state
boundaries.  Examples include the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse
Gas Initiative and the Kansas-Missouri Infrastructure Investment and
Jobs Act for a regional rapid transit corridor integrated with
affordable housing, green infrastructure, and jobs programs. Regional
Green New Deals are being fought for by the Gulf States Green New Deal
and other such groups. As the Green New Deal from Below receives
greater recognition there will be increasing opportunities for
coalitions of Green New Deal cities and states to act in common –
and to demand that federal politicians and agencies support their
doing so.

Planning

Adobe Stock

Many political programs are reactive. One of the key features of the
Green New Deal is that it is proactive, and oriented toward the
future. The original Green New Deal proposal was based on a ten-year
mobilization to address long-festering problems in a way that would
start to put the future of the climate, the economy, and social
justice on a secure footing. The activities of the Green New Deal from
Below are inevitably piecemeal, but they are shaped by that long-term
vision.

Many aspects of the Green New Deal require national planning. The
overall development of managed decline of fossil fuel burning with
provision for a just transition will depend on national planning. So
will the development of an electrical grid that can allocate various
forms of renewable energy based on need and availability. Large-scale
transportation systems like railroads require national planning. And
such large-scale planning and investment requires national resource
allocation to determine the quantity, speed, and sequencing of
investment. That in turn requires agencies with the capacity for
planning and investment.

Meanwhile, Green New Deals from Below are developing their programs on
the basis of long-range planning in the public interest. This is most
evident in the targets and timetables for greenhouse gas reduction
that guide the great majority of Green New Deal programs. In few other
areas of American life are there plans based on 30-year targets with
short- and medium-term programs to reach them.

The approach to energy planning in cities like Los Angeles and states
like Illinois contrasts with the way things are usually done in
American politics. Much of US public policy at all levels is based in
effect on offering money to private entrepreneurs in the hope that
they will somehow do what is necessary for public benefit. The results
are often calamitous. Projects are designed to maximize profit rather
than the public good. And their results are often at cross-purposes
with other social objectives and programs.

A prime example is the history of urban renewal, in which the planning
power of cities was devolved to quasi-independent agencies often more
responsive to developers than to the people who lived in the affected
communities. The result was the destruction of urban neighborhoods;
the displacement of their residents; the enrichment of developers; and
the use of public money and legal powers to build luxury housing,
commercial towers, sports stadiums, and convention centers, rather
than the affordable housing, schools, and hospitals that ordinary
residents so desperately needed. The outcome was often summed up in
the phrase “Urban renewal means Negro renewal.”

Local Green New Deals offer a radically different approach to urban
planning. They aim to put human needs, rather than developer profit,
at the center of planning. They often shift control of
decision-making, giving representatives of poor and neglected
communities a voice and a vote. In the Boston Green New Deal this went
as far as shutting down the long-established urban renewal agency and
creating a new planning agency within city government. Transportation
planning often aims to increase transit and reduce the burden of
fossil fuel transportation emissions in low-income neighborhoods.
Zoning changes make it easier to build affordable housing. And
metropolitan planning seeks to regionally coordinate transportation,
housing, and work in a way that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and
local pollution while providing deprived people with access to jobs
and amenities, good housing, and healthy air to breathe.

Green New Deals plan rather than just passing out loot. Planning for
public purposes guides Green New Deal public investment. This is most
obvious in the case of energy. While conventional energy policies are
often based on issuing Requests for Proposals and seeing who bids,
Green New Deal programs have first set targets and timetables for the
transition away from fossil fuels, then designed concrete programs to
realize them, and then started to implement those programs. Planning
in the public interest is illustrated by the Illinois Climate and
Equitable Jobs Act, which channels green energy investment into
locations where fossil fuel facilities are being shut down. Public-
rather than developer-led planning helps ensure that investment
benefits the communities that need it most, rather than being steered
by profit maximization. This is illustrated by programs in California
and other states which are requiring 30 percent or more of their
investment go to environmental justice communities.

Green New Deal from Below planning is marked by an integration of
multiple objectives. For example, Good Food programs in California,
Massachusetts, and elsewhere are designed to provide school children
with healthy food, host communities with good jobs, local farmers with
a steady market, and with environmentally sound, climate-protecting
forms of agriculture. Similarly local green energy programs create
local jobs and support environmental justice. Urban projects seek to
combine transit, housing, and energy efficiency to meet community
needs and simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

Planning is also being used to protect workers and communities from
unwanted side effects of climate and other Green New Deal policies.
For example, the Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act created a
Displaced Energy Worker Bill of Rights with extended advance notice of
closures as well as incentives for clean energy facilities to locate
and invest where fossil fuel installations have shut down. That’s a
long way from a neoliberal, laissez-faire approach that, instead of
planning, abandons workers and communities to the tender mercies of
the market.

While planning is often thought of as a top-down process, Green New
Deal planning is highly participatory. Design of the Seattle Green New
Deal, for example, involved representatives from more than 200
organizations, including labor unions, advocates from low income and
communities of color, tribal nations, faith leaders, health care
providers, businesses, environmental advocates, and clean energy
experts. Frontline communities hold eight of the 19 seats on the
Oversight Board that runs the program and allocates city tax money for
Green New Deal projects. In Culver City, CA, planning for a bus and
bike mobility project started with design of a website by three public
commissions. A Community Project Advisory Committee solicited a wide
range of input through meetings, community workshops, and social media
– with 40,000 hits on its web and social media sites in three
months. The project design went through four different designs based
on public input before the final plan was determined.

Finding resources

Understand the Seattle JumpStart Tax | Credit: Topia
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It is often asked how Green New Deal programs will be paid for? The
money is already coming in from a variety of sources.

Some of the funding for Green New Deals from Below comes from what may
be called “Robin Hood strategies” – initiatives that take from
the haves to provide programs that benefit the have-nots. For example,
the Seattle Green New Deal is being paid for by a 2.4% “JumpStart
Seattle” tax on salaries of at least $400,000 at companies with at
least $1 billion in annual payroll (think Amazon). California’s 2022
climate legislation was paid for by the high tax rate on its
wealthiest residents; the top 1% of earners paid nearly half of
personal income-tax collections. State and municipal policy can also
shift budget priorities from the likes of sports stadiums and
amenities in wealthy neighborhoods to schools and affordable housing.
Green Banks can take investors’ cash and channel it to Green New
Deal-style projects.

Funding can also come from taxes and fees placed on fossil fuel
polluters. The program to support Tonawanda NY and other towns after
the closing of the Huntley power plant came from the Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which requires payments from polluting
utilities throughout the Northeast. A just transition initiative that
narrowly failed to pass in the State of Washington would have
established a fee on carbon emissions starting at $15 per ton and
increasing by $2 per year until the state’s greenhouse gas reduction
targets were met.

Federal programs like the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, the 2021
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the 2022 Inflation
Reduction Act are making substantial sums available that are being
captured for use in Green New Deal programs. For example, the city of
Boston is using $350 million in federal funding from the American
Rescue Plan Act “to accelerate a Green New Deal for Boston.”[1]
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Green New Deal Network has developed a program to help local
communities and unions access such funds. In April 2023 Sen. Ed Markey
and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez published a Green New
Deal _Implementation Guide_ to use these federal programs to
“bring the Green New Deal to life.”[2]
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Finally, Green New Deal programs are often paid for by the money saved
on extracting, purchasing, and burning fossil fuels. Renewable energy
is now in many instances far cheaper than fossil fuel energy even when
climate and social costs are disregarded. Shutting down a coal-fired
power plant and replacing it with solar and wind power often now
produces not a cost but a savings – witness the hundreds of coal
plants that have been shut down by their owners because they were
uncompetitive and therefore unprofitable. The Green New Deal energy
transition often is paying for itself; one Denver Housing Authority
solar garden reduced the electric bills of low-income residents by up
to 20%. Similarly, insulating schools, public housing, and municipal
buildings is likely to significantly lower their energy costs.

Countering False Solutions

Green New Deals from Below generally pursue the basic strategies laid
out by climate science for countering climate change: increase
climate-safe energy; reduce energy usage; and rapidly reduce the
burning of fossil fuels. These strategies are not only effective; they
are cost-effective.

Unfortunately, there are many other purported fixes that have the
effect and in some cases the intent of perpetuating rather than ending
the burning of fossil fuels. These include various ways of attempting
to capture greenhouse gasses after they have been produced; sucking
greenhouse gases out of the air after they have been released; adding
hydrogen to the fossil fuel mix; and expanding the use of nuclear
energy. While there is highly publicized speculation on the potentials
of these technologies, overwhelming evidence shows that none of them
are as effective or as cost effective for an emergency response to the
climate threat as renewable energy, energy efficiency, and managed
decline of fossil fuel burning.

While Green New Deals from Below have rarely pursued such dubious
programs, the proponents of such “greenwashing” programs have
often tried to incorporate them in climate legislation and policies,
especially at the state level. In California and Illinois, Green New
Deal legislation has been amended to slow the phaseout of nuclear
power plants. Extension of existing nuclear power plants, coupled with
serious efforts to reduce fossil fuel burning, was accepted in these
two cases as a means of maintaining existing energy supply during a
transition to climate-safe energy.

Capturing carbon, either from smokestacks after burning or by sucking
it out of the air, has been a highly touted but unproven method for
continuing to burn fossil fuels without aggravating climate change.[3]
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California there has been an unresolved struggle over including carbon
capture programs in climate legislation – resulting in legislation
assigning a state agency to evaluate and set standards for carbon
capture subsidies.

There are, on the other hand, natural forms of carbon capture that
have won overwhelming support among Green New Dealers – as well as
demonstrable effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere. These include forests, improved agricultural practices,
and cultivation of seaweed. Improving the urban forest has been a
special focus of local Green New Deals.

As the Biden administration has promoted the development of
“hydrogen hubs” around the country, local climate and Green New
Deal advocates are struggling with whether this represents genuine
climate protection and whether they should participate in such
efforts. In Connecticut, the Connecticut Green Bank initiated
exploration of a hydrogen hub, but the labor-climate coalition the
Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs passed a resolution to
support hydrogen development only in cases where it was demonstrably
not greenwashing, but beneficial for climate protection.

The opponents of the Green New Deal often talk the climate talk
without walking the climate walk. It is politically easy to advocate
for new clean energy projects or “clean” fossil fuels while
allowing the continuation or expansion of climate-and-health
destroying fossil fuel burning. The question of how to relate to such
efforts is increasingly pressing for Green New Deals.

Anything but rapid reduction of GHG emissions will continue to
accelerate climate destruction.

Green New Deals are providing a genuine and effective path for climate
protection and restoration. The Green New Deal from Below shows what
real climate protection looks like.

The question, “should Green New Deal policies by implemented from
above or from below” is rather like the question, “Should I wash
my hands or my feet?” The obvious answer is, “both!” And for
both it is essential that the Green New Deals implement planning,
resource mobilization, and genuine solutions.

[1]
[[link removed]] “Mayor
Wu Unveils First City Budget and $350 Million Federal Spending
Plan,” _Boston.gov_ April 13,
2022. [link removed]

[2]
[[link removed]] “Delivering
a Green New Deal: How the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law Help Bring the Green New Deal to Life,” from the
Offices of Senator Ed Markey & Congresswoman Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez [link removed]

[3]
[[link removed]] For
an evaluation of carbon capture technologies, see Jeremy Brecher,
“Can Carbon Capture Save Our Climate – and Our Jobs?” Background
Paper, Labor Network for Sustainability, June 8,
2021.  [link removed]

Is there a way to refer here to a credible source that debunks or at
least calls into question, this kind of “carbon capture”?

_JEREMY BRECHER is a writer, historian, and activist who is the
author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements.  His
book Strike! was described by Prof. Richard Flacks, UC Santa Barbara,
as “the single most important book about the history of the American
labor movement published in our time.”  He is LNS Co-Founder and
Senior Strategic Advisor._

_We formed the Labor Network for Sustainability as a vehicle through
which we could press for bold climate action in ways that address
labor concerns without sacrificing what science is telling us is
necessary, and what’s needed to address income inequality and worker
power. LNS was founded on the belief that the crises of income
inequality and climate change can and must be addressed at the same
time, and in so doing we will advance the goals of both movements and
offer the best hope for averting climate catastrophe.  DONATE ONLINE
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