A 12-Step Program for a Conservative Green New Deal with Zero Spending
Mark Cramer (author of Old Man on a Green Bike: Chronicles of a Self-Serving Environmentalist)
Here’s a Green New Deal that deficit hawks who squawk at big government spending will rejoice in defending. As with the original addiction-recovery methods, this 12-step program would detox our society from
- Facile fuels
- Colossal sprawl
- Docile conformity
- Factory-farm enormity
- Dietary calamity
- Sedentary infirmity
- Never-ending spending
The Conservative Green New Deal will not require, it will inspire.
The Conservative Green New Deal is multidisciplinary, involving macro-economy, micro-agronomy, commuter bio-autonomy, liberation cardiology and an extrication of big-box pathology, with no apology. The CGND is conservative in that it
- minimizes government involvement
- maximizes fiscal responsibility
- conserves biodiversity with help from American visionaries Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson
Big-spending Dems will be embarrassed to see how easy it is to defend the environment without throwing money at the problem, while Republicans who proclaim fiscal responsibility will be hard pressed to oppose this 12-step policy.
Collectively the 12 steps focus on the five overlapping sectors that EPA statistics point to as causing the highest proportion of greenhouse gas emissions:
- Transportation, 28%
- Electricity, 27%
- Industry, 22%
- Commercial and residential, 12%
- Agriculture, 10% (probably an underestimate)
As with the original anti-addiction programs, these 12 interactive steps involve learning to live a new life with noncompulsive behavior. This approach is contrary to liberal GNDs, which primarily replace the most harmful energies with less harmful ones while maintaining the same levels of compulsive energy consumption.
Here are the 12 steps that can keep civilization from hitting rock bottom:
1. Phase out fossil fuel subsidies.
Part of this 20-billion-dollar annual subsidy should be redirected to fund nonmotorized transportation for bicycles and active transportation (public transit), replacing gas guzzling and simultaneously improving public health. Collateral savings may be used to trim the national debt. (See “Everything You Need to Know About Fossil Fuel Subsidies.”)
2. Eliminate country club subsidies, so called “scenic easing” tax breaks for wealthy country clubs, and redirect some of that money to urban and peri-urban agriculture.
This step would have the effect of cutting food-supply distances and thus reduce fossil fuel transport. Scenic easing provides manicured nature for the 1%. Local agriculture eases the scenery in a productive way, directly benefitting the citizenry. Part of these savings will trim local government debt. (See “It’s Time to End Public Subsidies to Private Golf Courses.”)
3. Redirect agriculture subsidies toward humane farming that avoids herbicides, pesticides and hormones, while reducing “food miles.”
A tomato that travels 1,369 miles from farm to market should not receive a greater subsidy than one that travels 50 miles. No one is saying to leave farmers high and dry. But subsidies should not be weighted to favor long-distance food miles or high-input produce. Not coincidentally, low-impact and localized agriculture provides more jobs than industrial farms. Rebalanced subsidies mean job creation.
4. De-zone (deregulate) new housing so that it may set aside space for walkable commerce (main-street conservatism), especially for necessities such as food shops and pharmacies.
Pre-existing unwalkable neighborhoods can also be re-fit to provide for local commerce, with the incentive that real estate prices rise in walkable communities. (See “Zoning Reform Is Not Leftism” in The American Conservative.)
Hidden income will emerge with the health benefits of utilitarian walking and cycling. Mindless sprawl largely comes from car-lobby zoning regulations and is a grinding assault against biodiversity. De-zoning will liberate pent-up market demands for walkable communities, thereby reducing the carbon emissions that come with car-centric places where one is forced to use a car to buy a loaf of bread. The EPA documents enormous benefits to health and reductions in carbon emissions if we keep our cars parked for trips of less than a mile. (See “What If We Kept Our Cars Parked for Trips of Less Than One Mile.”)
5. Establish walk-to-school and bike-to-school programs, self-financed by parent volunteers for walk- and bike “trains.”
Every school day, America is the scene of traffic jams infesting the streets around schools with parent-chauffeurs. Result? Two daily spikes in carbon emissions and poor health for children deprived of the useful exercise that allowed our species to dynamically evolve. A few extra crossing guards cost nothing in comparison to the savings we get with healthy and mentally alert children.
6. Give tax deductions to supermarkets that provide perks to employees and shoppers who arrive on foot or by bike.
The most logical perk for the shopper is a shopping caddy with wheels, that might be provided for free by the supermarket. The caddies can sport the supermarket logo, allowing food markets to turn this into environmental public relations. Once again, savings in the form of lowering carbon emissions are accompanied by parallel savings in public health. Why not provide a free bicycle to employees who commit to commuting by bike?
7. Stop subsidizing red meat to the detriment of other foods.
According to the Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan, meats account for 56.6% of food greenhouse gas contribution. The nearest rival is dairy, at 18.3%.
Columbia University’s Journal of International Affairs asserts:
“The U.S. government spends up to $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, with less than one percent of that sum allocated to aiding the production of fruits and vegetables.”
In other words, government has been betting on one economic sector against another: a no-no for conservatives. Drastically reducing meat subsidies would be, simultaneously, good for public health, the environment and deficit reduction.
8. Teach philosophy in high school.
Deprived of philosophical tools, Americans are ill-equipped to confront the energy-squandering consumer society. Without philosophical know-how, the citizen-subject of democracy morphs into the consumer-object of advertising. How many Americans have not even studied our great environmental philosopher Henry David Thoreau? Instead of being a nation where celebrities become philosophers, we need philosophers to become celebrities. Find “Waldo” and make Ralph Waldo Emerson a celeb.
9. Change tax codes so they no longer reward companies that ship jobs overseas.
This no-brainer improves revenue while delivering jobs. (See “Shipping Jobs Overseas: How the Tax Code Subsidizes Foreign Investment and How to Fix It,” Harvard Law & Policy Review.)
Obscene tax loopholes have allowed wealthy corporations to pay no taxes. No deficit hawk can rationalize such loopholes.
10. Establish an eco-labeling system for tourism products, according to their carbon footprint, allowing consumers to identify low-impact touring.
Prior to the pandemic, tourism’s global carbon footprint accounted for 8% of global greenhouse emissions. (See this Nature.com piece.)
But tourism need not reboot into the same erosive disaster. In defense of quality of life, high-density tourism communities like Barcelona and Venice are preferring to cut off their own income to reduce the impact of selfie-snapping hordes. Some low-impact forms of tourism include hiking, bicycle touring, star-gazing, cooking and craft workshops, visiting nature centers and wild swimming. Volunteer aid programs and year-abroad sabbaticals mitigate the environmental cost of an air trip. Minimalist local treks are the haiku poetry of tourism, with less travel and more intimate contact with surroundings.
11. Rail subsidies should be increased while highway subsidies are decreased, in order to establish parity.
Government should not favor one sector over another. When all external costs and benefits are factored in, big government has unfairly favored highways over rail. In 2020 more than 42,000 people died in US motor vehicle crashes. In all of Europe, with a higher population than the USA and where rail is used as massively as cars in the USA, 802 rail fatalities were recorded in 2019. According to Bloomberg CityLab, Germany recouped its public investment in rail through environmental and public-health savings alone (See “The Economic Case for Rail Subsidies.”)
Local support for rail is documented with car-oriented Phoenix citizens voting in 2019 to expand their light rail, against massive anti-transit lobbying.
12. Cut the military budget. (See “US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries.”)
Conservatives hate “pork” spending, so just say no to this addiction. The USA has a higher military budget than the next nine countries combined!
A Republican president, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, famously warned us,
“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
Perhaps the best advice for the defense department comes from Muhammad Ali: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
Big-spending GNDs lead us to believe that by switching off one dirty energy and switching on other apparently cleaner ones, we can stop global heating. But they do little to confront our societal addiction to energy itself. (See this author’s “What If the Green New Deal Is Not as Good as It Sounds.”)
This conservative Green New Deal cuts big government spending and relies on market incentives, while directing the gained revenues to job-creating environmental initiatives and deficit reduction.
Under the Reagan, Bush II and Trump administrations, government deficit skyrocketed. Here’s a chance for conservatives to get beyond the pure rhetoric against deficit spending and come through with a bold measure that simultaneously trims big government and fights climate change.
You can purchase Mark Cramer’s book Old Man on a Green Bike: Chronicles of a Self-Serving Environmentalist at amazon.com.
