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**JUNE 15, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

'Green' Is Inevitable. 'New Deal' Is Not.

The recent announcement by Cecil Roberts, the president of the United
Mine Workers, that his union understands that market forces and public
concern for the planet have combined to imperil what little is left of
the coal mining industry, and that his union seeks "just transition"
employment or retirement for its members, may enable advocates of a
Green New Deal (and I count myself one) to rethink just what they're
advocating.

The shift to "Green" is well under way. Oil and other fossil fuel
companies are investing in alternative energy development, electric cars
are coming, and the chief resistance to the change is coming from
Trumpified Republicans who've characterized the transformation as one
more element in the liberal elite's cultural war on American
tradition.

For these fact-resistant Trumpites, no arguments, no matter how grounded
in science and economics, will suffice. But for the workers who'll be
displaced by the change and will face a future of low-paying jobs (which
mining and oil refinery and pipeline work are not-they pay well), the
"New Deal" part of the transformation is the key to winning their
support.

Historically, workers in sectors that are going out of business have
been left to the mercies of indifferent markets. The agricultural
workers forced to work in Manchester's dark, satanic mills; the
unionized rail workers cast adrift when cars and planes supplanted
trains; the factory workers of the Midwest who faced employment at
Walmart when the factories moved to Mexico and China-there was no New
Deal for them.

Which means the message for those of us who support the Green New Deal
is that the workers who'll be cast adrift will either face those same
indifferent markets or get a lifeline from a New Deal that offers them
comparable if not better-paying employment.

I'm not suggesting that creating such policies and such jobs is easy.
It will require massive public investment to create jobs with pay and
benefits that don't lead to downward mobility for displaced workers.
For which reason we need more economists doing the kind of work that Bob
Pollin at the University of Massachusetts has been doing for
years-conceptualizing and pricing out the new jobs that could be
created as part of the transformation, as part of a new New Deal. We
need a government that will help employers provide those jobs and will
provide those jobs itself as well.

The Biden administration seems to understand that it needs to do just
that; the hope for such a New Deal suffuses its proposals now before
Congress. But displaced workers also will need the kind of specific
commitments that the administration isn't able to make until those
proposals become law, and need to hear even now from Biden and various
Cabinet secretaries what those jobs could offer.

More broadly, though, proponents of the GND need to reformulate the
terms of debate. It's not whether or not we'll go green. It's
whether we'll do it with the kind of economic casualties that have
accompanied all such previous transitions, or whether we'll do it with
a conscious job creation and job standards policy that would enable
workers to benefit from the transition. Green is coming. The only
question is whether or not it will come with a New Deal.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Congressmembers Roll Out an Anti-Big Tech Agenda

But its path to passage is muddled; states and the courts could lead the
way. BY DAVID DAYEN

Are Summer Food Benefits Here to Stay?

The Biden administration expanded summer meals for low-income kids.
Democrats want to make the program permanent, but most states haven't
started implementing it. BY KALENA THOMHAVE

Economic Nationalism Becomes Mainstream-and Sensible

At last: Biden proposes a common China policy for the West and
industrial policy at home. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

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