Understanding the Green New Deal and its impact on Southwest Florida

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addresses demonstrators sitting in at Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office on Nov. 13.

Feb. 19, 2019 by David Silverberg

In this article:

What constitutes the Green New Deal
Its origins and history
How it affects Southwest Florida
What happens next and why it’s important
What’s at stake

The Green New Deal now proposed in Congress stands to substantially benefit Southwest Florida—if the proposal can make it past the lies, hysteria and vilification being thrown at it by opponents.

What it is

The Green New Deal is a comprehensive program of environmental and social reform that aims to:

achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions;
establish millions of high-wage jobs and ensure economic security for all;
invest in infrastructure and industry;
secure clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthful food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all; and
promote justice and equality.

It intends to do this through a 10-year national mobilization effort that will:

build smart power grids (i.e., power grids that enable customers to reduce their power use during peak demand periods);
upgrade all existing buildings and construct new buildings to achieve maximum energy and water efficiency;
remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation and agricultural sectors;
clean up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites;
ensure businesspersons are free from unfair competition; and
provide higher education, high-quality health care, and affordable, safe, and adequate housing to all.

Origins

The idea of a Green New Deal and the term to describe it first appeared in 2007 in the writing of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He was describing an effort to end fossil fuel subsidies, tax carbon dioxide emissions, and create lasting incentives for wind and solar energy.

The idea and its title made it into official usage, becoming part of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign platform and serving as the title of a United Nations report on renewable energy. Its essence was embodied in legislation in the 2010 American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as cap-and-trade bill), which died that year in the US Senate.

Though the idea waxed and waned in popularity, it appeared in the campaigns of some Democrats running in last year’s midterm elections. Once Democrats won the House of Representatives, environmental activists decided to make a major push for its passage, with the goal of ending all carbon emissions in ten years. The leading Green New Deal organization was the Sunrise Movement of mainly young, grassroots activists.

On Nov. 13, those activists demonstrated in Washington, DC and about 150 sat in at the offices of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-12-Calif.), soon to be Speaker of the House, demanding the Deal’s immediate implementation.

Enter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-14-NY) has become the face of the Green New Deal. She’s an insurgent Democrat who defeated 10-term Democratic congressman Joe Crowley in her district’s 2018 primary and then won the general election.

Passionate, articulate, telegenic and at 29 the youngest member ever elected to Congress, Ocasio-Cortez was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and like him, calls herself a Democratic Socialist.

Ocasio-Cortez addressed the demonstrators at Pelosi’s office. She demanded creation of a Green New Deal select committee in the House. Pelosi didn’t support that demand, instead creating a new Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, headed by Rep. Kathy Castor (D-14-Fla.), a longtime environmental activist representing the Tampa area.

Though thwarted in her initial aim, Ocasio-Cortez proceeded to pull all the ideas swirling around the Green New Deal and put them into coherent, legislative form. On Feb. 7 she introduced House Resolution (HR) 109, “Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” (The Senate version of the bill was introduced by Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) as Senate Resolution 59.)

The introduction of HR 109 takes the Green New Deal from possibility to proposal. It now has specific provisions and actions and delineates a specific path to implementation.

The Green New Deal and Southwest Florida

HR 109 does not mention Florida by name and there are no provisions specific to the state or to its southwest region. Nonetheless, it has broad implications given Southwest Florida’s environmental sensitivity and past disasters.

The Everglades

Although the Everglades are never mentioned, Everglades restoration could receive a major boost from the Green New Deal program.

The bill calls for “mitigating and managing the long-term adverse health, economic, and other effects of pollution and climate change, including by providing funding for community-defined projects and strategies” and among these are “restoring and protecting threatened, endangered, and fragile ecosystems through locally appropriate and science-based projects that enhance biodiversity and support climate resiliency.”

This precisely describes current Everglades restoration projects including the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan and the “wetlaculture” concept put forward by Prof. Bill Mitsch of Florida Gulf Coast University. These ideas stand to get a major boost if the bill passes and the Florida congressional delegation aggressively pursues the resulting benefits.

Resilience

The bill calls for “building resiliency against climate change-related disasters, such as extreme weather, including by leveraging funding and providing investments for community-defined projects and strategies” and “reducing the risks posed by climate impacts.”

This could very directly benefit Southwest Florida in its efforts to fortify itself against hurricanes, wildfires and sea level rise. The region would be in line to receive extensive federal support for infrastructure and protection improvements. If Everglades restoration can be presented as a climate change mitigating initiative, Florida would have a significant claim on federal support. Federal funding might even benefit individual homeowners in the form of tax credits and incentives to strengthen their houses.

Renewable energy

The bill aims to meet 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including renewable energy and new capacity.

For Florida that means a big boost for solar power. The Sunshine State is already taking the initiative to increase solar capacity but passage of the Green New Deal would result in significant federal support for these efforts.

Agriculture

The bill calls for the federal government to work collaboratively with farmers and ranchers to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. Given Southwest Florida’s extensive agricultural sector, farmers could see grants and incentives to make their operations more energy efficient.

Beyond these very specific local benefits the bill’s support for the renewable energy industry, housing, health and employment would affect every American. And, of course, protecting the environment, keeping it livable and preventing catastrophic climate change affects all life on the planet.

Analysis: What happens next

Controversy and unanswered questions are swirling around the Green New Deal and the bill that embodies it.

The biggest of these is how it will be funded. Ocasio-Cortez has dodged the question, saying that the United States found a way to fund the original New Deal, World War II and the space program and will find a way to do it this time. It’s a blithe but unsatisfying answer—there were extensive debates about paying for those initiatives at the time.

The proposal’s scope and ambition is breathtaking. As written it would really mean a reordering of society and a complete re-fit of the nation’s built environment, energy and transportation. Its practicality within a ten-year time frame is questionable, to say the least. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has avoided endorsing it, as demonstrated by her refusal to appoint a select committee on that specific topic.

Predictably, the conservative and Republican reaction has varied from hysteria and paranoia to scorn and dismissal, starting with President Donald Trump.

“I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called ‘Carbon Footprint’ to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military – even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!” he tweeted on Feb. 9.

Locally, on Feb. 12, the Naples Daily News reprinted whole an essay from the Cato Institute, the arch-conservative, Koch brothers-funded think tank, as its editorial on the newspaper’s position. Titled, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Is a Radical Front for Nationalizing Our Economy,” by the Cato Institute, the Naples Daily News gave it a partisan twist with the headline “Green New Deal is a front for the Democrats.”

From a purely legislative standpoint HR 109 has a long way to go. It started out strong, with 68 cosponsors, which means there’s hefty support for it in the House. However, it has been referred to 11 different committees and making its way through all those committees will take time. While any one committee could derail it, the numerous referrals also mean it will get broad consideration throughout the House. Still, it seems unlikely to reach the floor during the two-year span of the 116th Congress.

If events take their normal course, the proposal will be steadily whittled down and delayed during the legislative process. If it even makes it to a vote by the full House and passes, it is highly unlikely to pass in the Senate. If by some miracle it passed both houses and landed on the president’s desk, it seems extremely improbable—one never wants to use the word “impossible” but this is close—that Trump would sign it into law.

But despite its radical solutions, unanswered questions and the improbability of its enactment, the Green New Deal should not be dismissed.

The political importance of the Green New Deal

Protesters seen holding placards during the Sunrise Movement

Some of the demonstrators protesting in front of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office on Nov. 13.

The Green New Deal is important as an aspiration, a rallying cry and a set of principles that can inspire Democrats, progressives and environmentalists. It gives coherence to progressive principles and cements those principles in a foundation of environmentalism. It far outshines the weak and anemic proposals on any subject made to date by the current Democratic leadership.

Further, the Green New Deal is likely to stand as a goal and aspiration that may last for decades, rather like the abolition of slavery or pursuit of women’s suffrage. It is not merely a proposal, it is now a movement and movements have their own dynamics.

The Green New Deal could provide common principles to Democratic candidates and the party as it begins pulling together its platform for the 2020 presidential race.

Equal and opposite reaction

The Green New Deal also has to be understood as an equal and opposite reaction to Donald Trump’s brute anti-environmentalism.

The Paris Climate Agreement represents the moderate course in climate change response. It was a phased, consensus approach to combating climate change where everyone shared the pain of restraint but gained the benefit of a livable planet and pledged to take reasonable steps to pursue reasonable goals. It was painstakingly negotiated and at the time of its signing included all the nations of the world but two—Nicaragua (which felt it didn’t go far enough) and Syria (which was in the midst of a civil war).

Donald Trump didn’t just withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement and leave the US isolated and alone in the world. By his scorn and vitriol and sheer resistance to science and dismissal of environmentalism, he seems not to care about the fate of the planet or humanity—indeed, every day he proves that he truly does not care about anyone but himself. Given the powers invested in him, he truly could destroy the world.

This kind of attitude fuels the urgency of the Green New Deal’s advocates, especially the young ones. There’s a religious sense of imminent apocalypse, hence the Green New Deal’s short timelines and broad sweep.

Further fueling their urgency was the Fourth National Climate Assessment by the US Global Change Research Program, which warned of disastrous consequences if the causes of climate change weren’t addressed.

The battle to come

While the argument over the Green New Deal is intense now, it’s going to become exponentially more intense as the nation moves toward the 2020 presidential election. Already, Trump and his supporters are lumping the Green New Deal under a socialist label and starting to paint their campaign as a crusade against socialism.

On the other side, though, more extreme Green New Deal supporters see their cause as the only alternative to destruction of the planet.

Here in Southwest Florida the effects of climate change can be felt all around. Its presence should be undeniable, although the entire conservative, Republican establishment, following Trump’s line, continues to deny it—and will no doubt continue to deny it as the storms blow ashore and the water laps up to their chins.

The problem of climate change should be obvious to all. In the Green New Deal a solution has been proposed. Although imperfect it is now the only proposal on the table. Since Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, no other alternative has been offered.

Of course, there is always the option of doing nothing. In this case, that option could prove fatal.

Liberty lives in light

Analysis: Why Democrats are holding firm against Trump’s wall

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in the White House on Dec. 11, 2018.

Today is the 32nd day of Trump’s government shutdown

In this article:

Conflicting definitions of “border security”
Pelosi’s reasons for opposing the wall
Appeasing Trump and the potential for corruption
What’s at stake in the wall debate

Jan. 22, 2019 by David Silverberg

Why do congressional Democrats, led by House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-12-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), keep holding firm against a border wall despite President Donald Trump’s offers on Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the pain and damage caused by his shutdown of the federal government?

The longer the shutdown goes on, the more it will affect Southwest Florida. Already, government services are eroding and federal workers are suffering.

No part of the wall, as conceived to date, will apply directly to Southwest Florida. The only local “port of entry”—an authorized place where people and goods come into the country—is Southwest Florida International Airport. A wall will do nothing to stop unauthorized travelers or contraband from entering through there—notwithstanding the demand by Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) that a wall be built.

Still, it’s worthwhile to fully understand the issue and understanding must began with conflicting definitions of “border security.”

Border security

As traditionally defined, “border security” means securing a nation from all external threats entering its territory while facilitating legitimate trade, travel, commerce and migration.

Under this definition, agencies responsible for border security must secure all forms of entry whether by land, air or sea. Most of this interaction takes place at ports of entry—airports, seaports and land entry points.

Done right, traditional border security is a complex and nuanced form of national protection, requiring extensive intelligence collection, cooperation with neighboring countries, adherence to international agreements and active involvement by local, regional and national law enforcement. Border security agencies must maintain efficient entry for legal goods, services, trade and people who enrich the country and enhance its economy while weeding out threats and dangers.

Ever since the end of World War II, there has been a global movement to reduce national barriers to trade and travel and smooth the flow of goods and people. This received a big boost with the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union in 1991 and the founding of the European Union in 1992. Following this and the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995, for the first time the entire world was playing by the same set of border rules with only a few, isolated exceptions.

Trump’s border wall

Donald Trump keeps invoking “border security” as his rationale for keeping the government shut down but it is clear from his many statements that he defines border security in only one way: a physical barrier or wall running across the entire length of the US southwestern border.

There is no subtlety or subtext in his invocations of border security: It must be a wall of some kind. Having been a developer and builder, his thinking is very simplistic and—literally—concrete. While his descriptions of this wall have varied a great deal from time to time, he can only conceive of border security in terms of brick and mortar.

What is more, his definition of border security is aimed at only two threats—unauthorized migrants coming from Mexico or Central America and illegal drugs.

Analysis: Why are the Democrats holding firm?

Perhaps Pelosi’s most eloquent and complete explanation of her rejection of Trump’s demands came on Jan. 4, shortly after she was sworn in as Speaker.

“The fact is, a wall is an immorality. It’s not who we are as a nation,” she said in a press conference. “And this is not a wall between Mexico and the United States that the president is creating here. It’s a wall between reality and his constituents, his supporters. He does not want them to know what he’s doing to Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security in his budget proposal. He does not want them to know what he’s doing to clean air and clean water and the rest in his Department of Interior and EPA. He does not want them to know how he is hurting them so he keeps the subject on the wall, a master of diversion.”

She was equally emphatic in describing the wall’s shortcomings. “The president cannot hold public employees hostage because he wants to have a wall that is not effective in terms of its purpose, cost effective in terms of opportunity cost, in terms of federal dollars spent. The President has said Mexico is going to pay for this. Come on, let’s anchor ourselves into reality. Mexico is not going to pay for this wall.”

She rejected the idea that the impasse was merely political. “It has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with a wall, an immorality between countries. It’s an old way of thinking. It isn’t cost effective.”

Let’s look at each reason in turn:

It’s immoral.

While this was the first thing Pelosi mentioned, it’s perhaps the weakest argument because morality is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly, Trump’s proposed wall goes against all American precedent and the entire globalist movement of the last nearly 30 years. That movement was the result of the lessons learned from World War II and the dangers of hyper-nationalism. It was also the result of the relief at the end of the Cold War, which brought the world together for the first time. The Cold War in particular was symbolized by a stark and grotesque wall—the Berlin Wall. When it came down, the world united. Trump’s wall takes the world back to that dark and dangerous time. In that sense, it is indeed immoral.

“It’s a wall between reality and his constituents, his supporters.”

Indeed, Trump’s wall is a single, focused project that consumes all thoughts of other issues and problems, or as Pelosi put it, it walls his supporters off from the harm he’s otherwise doing to them.

Massive building projects have long been characteristic of despots. Those whom Trump most closely resembles—the Roman emperor Nero and Adolf Hitler—both had their grandiose building plans: Nero his Domus Aurea or Gold House, a mammoth palace that featured a 120-foot statue of Nero in the entrance, and Hitler his Germania, a complete reworking of Berlin into a monument of world domination that was never completed.

A single, simple project is useful for keeping simple minds distracted and as Pelosi pointed out, Trump is “a master of diversion.” His is a simple mind that appeals to similarly simple minds, of which, unfortunately, there are many.

As a result, he’s also a master at hammering home a few simple themes, as his presidential campaign showed. But what goes for his followers also goes for Trump himself. He’s not only attempting to build a wall between reality and his followers; he seems to be trying to wall out any threats, challenges or even insecurities to himself. And, of course, he’s walling out different races, different people and different cultures—in short, anything that isn’t Trump.

“It’s an old way of thinking. It isn’t cost effective.”

This is absolutely true. Until the impasse, members of Congress had gone through their normal budgeting exercise and appropriated $1.6 billion for border security as traditionally defined. That budget was ready for Trump’s signing. Stung by criticism from right-wing pundits, Trump rejected the budget and demanded $5 billion for his wall (later raised to $5.7 billion).

Border experts and members of the US Border Patrol itself had long argued that the varied terrain of the US southwestern border required a variety of barriers and obstacles to be secured. Post-2001 calls for a continuous wall (and there were some) were dismissed as too expensive and ineffective.

Between 2006 and 2011 the US Department of Homeland Security initiated a Strategic Border Initiative to tighten up US borders, particularly in the southwest. Part of that was the Strategic Border Initiative Network (SBInet), which attempted to create a “virtual wall” along the border using radars, sensors and electronic networking. But after five years of experimentation and a billion dollars spent, the program was canceled, never having achieved its aims.

The idea of a continuous, static barrier has also been criticized in the past as ineffective. In 2007 Janet Napolitano, then governor of Arizona and later to be Secretary of Homeland Security, told the National Press Club: “I’ve prosecuted the illegal immigrants and the smugglers; I have also vetoed eight bills from my state legislature that I deemed overly harsh and ineffective. I declared a state of emergency and was the first governor to openly advocate for the National Guard at the border; yet, I also have refused to agree that a wall by itself is an answer. As I often say, ‘You show me a 50-foot wall, and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder.’”

Napolitano didn’t just criticize wall ideas. She also had a prescription for a solution: “The first is the development of innovative, technology-driven border control between the ports of entry. Boots on the ground definitely help, but we can shore up our border gaps with ground-based sensors, radar, and unmanned aerial vehicles for wide-area intrusive-detection. Any combination of the above will work far better than any 10 or 20 or 50 miles of wall.”

Other considerations: Stopping appeasement

While Pelosi focused on moral and cost issues and denied that politics were involved, there is definitely a political dimension to the Democratic objection to the wall and it was best put by Sen. John Warner (D-Va.) in a Jan. 20 tweet: “We cannot reward hostage-taking. If the President can arbitrarily shut down the government now and get what he wants, he will do it time and again.”

Donald Trump has engendered such distrust and outrage and has shown so little moderation or maturity in his behavior that Democrats know that handing him anything he perceives as a “win” will only increase his appetite for new demands and power grabs. It is reminiscent of what Winston Churchill said after the appeasing Munich conference of 1938: Hitler, “instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.” Eighty years later, Democrats are determined not to serve Trump such victuals course by course—or in any other form.

Incompetence, waste and corruption

Ordinarily, government acquisitions and building projects are subject to exhaustive review before being initiated. They are then governed by myriad acquisition rules and regulations. Cost estimates are the result of a lengthy drafting process before even being submitted by a Cabinet department for review by the Office of Management and Budget. They are then submitted to Congress where they are examined, authorized and the money is appropriated by the House and Senate before going to the President for signature. Some projects have taken decades before being reaching the point where they are funded.

There is no indication that Trump’s initial $5 billion figure—subsequently raised to $5.7 billion—was in any way considered, reviewed or evaluated before he just demanded it. To put it in the vernacular, he seems to have pulled the number out of his butt. He could have used the money originally appropriated by Congress toward advancing a phase of the project—if there was an orderly, phased approach to the project at all.

In fact, the wall project has been a disorderly, chaotic and absurd charade from the beginning.

As USA Today reported as early as May, 2017: “‘From the beginning it’s not a serious process, it’s not going to get the wall built,’ Michael Hari said of the process. His Illinois-based company, Crisis Resolution Security Services, submitted a design inspired by the Great Wall of China. ‘Right from the get-go there were conflicts, there was not enough time given to it, to develop a reasonable process that would result in a wall getting built,’ he said.”

If Democrats accede to Trump’s $5 billion demand, the future holds further demands for unreviewed, unexamined and unexplained appropriations.

These kinds of disorderly demands hold the promise of vastly more waste, fraud and abuse than the highly structured and restricted projects that the government has traditionally pursued—and even then there have always been instances of waste, fraud and abuse. Ironically enough, it was usually a Republican mantra that vast savings could be found in government budgets by cutting waste, fraud and abuse, thereby eliminating the need to raise taxes. Trump’s $5.7 billion wall demand holds the promise of a bounty of corruption for unqualified contractors, fly-by-night grifters and the whole horde of greedy hangers-on who thrive in the dark cracks of government contracting.

In her rebuttal to Trump’s national address on the wall on Jan. 8, Pelosi put forward some solid border security proposals: “The fact is: We all agree that we need to secure our borders, while honoring our values: we can build the infrastructure and roads at our ports of entry; we can install new technology to scan cars and trucks for drugs coming into our nation; we can hire the personnel we need to facilitate trade and immigration at the border; and we can fund more innovation to detect unauthorized crossings.”

All of this could be done at a fraction of the cost of Trump’s wall.

Conclusion

This is not a negotiation any more than the Munich agreement was a negotiation with Adolf Hitler: he made a demand and offered vague promises in return. The West acceded and, as Winston Churchill put it to Neville Chamberlin: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

What is at stake here is not a war. But those firmly opposing Trump and his wall know that surrender on this wall means surrendering far more than $5.7 billion. It means far more than constructing an abomination across the southern US border. What is at stake is whether America will wall itself in and become a hermetic, static, racist state dominated by a despotic and bullying Donald Trump or remain an open, diverse, free and confident democracy.

Sadly, the casualty of this fight is the finest civil service in the world and everything it built over the last 240 years. It was work that made America prosperous, secure and free. It’s hard to imagine that the government and its employees can ever recover the stature and sense of service they are losing.

But by demanding a wall and demanding it so starkly and leaving no room for maneuver, Trump has drawn a line in the sand, so to speak.

Compromise requires the possibility of win-win outcomes. However, Trump insists on living in a win-lose universe. It’s the universe that he chose for himself and wants to impose on us all. Now, to maintain his dominance, he must win on the wall.

The wall must not be built. Unless he loses on this one, America will never be great “again.” And that’s why Democrats are fighting.