18 The Nation.
1,1999
GOVERNMENT CAN DO A LOT TO SAVE THE PLANET, FROM ALTERING TAX POLICIES TO
AIDING NASCENT INDUSTRIES. THE MONEY IS THERE; ALL ITTAKES NOW IS THE WILL.
A Global Green Deal
1 1
c an the human species bring its economic behavior into
balance with the systems of nature that make our lives on
earth possible? The answer to that question may well decide
our fate in the century to come, and there is ample reason
for pessimism. After all, our economic systems are predi-
cated on continual growth, and traditionally, growth has meant
ecological destruction and decline. People seem addicted to
forever wanting more of everything, and billions still lack basic
necessities. Political leaders talk about changing course, but they
rarely do so, partly for fear of retribution from voters, corpora-
tions and others who might be discomforted in the process.
I spent much of the nineties traveling around the world,
speakingwith starvingpeasants in war-torn Sudan,working men
and women on the streets of Beijing, Istanbul and Bangkok, and
students in Prague, Moscow and Thessaloniki yearning for a
better hture. Even in remote areas most people recognized the
urgency of the environmental crisis and took for granted that it
had to be vigorously countered. But always a caveat was added:
First, bread must be put on the table; one cannot starve today to
preserve the environment for tomorrow.
Environmentalismhas been one of the ascendant social forces
of the twentieth century, but it will not succeedin the twenty-first
centuy if it does not deliver economicwell-being as well as eco-
system salvation.To many, ths seems an impossibletask. Average
people the world over assume that environmentalprotection must
cost jobs and bring lower profits, and they are joined in this be-
lief by most corporate and government officials. Who can blame
them? Mainstreamjournalists and economistshave been droning
on gloomily this way for decades. Thus, in analyzing the eco-
Mark Hertsgaard, the author of On Bended IQiee: The Press and the
Reagan Presidency, is a longtime contributor to The Nation This article
is adaptedfiom Earth Odyssey: Around the World iii Search of Our
Environmental Future, just pziblished by Bvoadwzv Books.
5
5
E
8
!!
nomic effects of carbon dioxide reductions proposed during the
Kyoto climate-change negotiations of 1997,
But the truth is, economic and environmental health can
asserted,
“No one knows how to lower emissions adequately without ulti-
mately crushing the world economy.”
reinforce one another. In fact, repairing our ravaged environ-
ment could become one of the biggest economic enterprises of
the coming century, a huge source of jobs, profits and general
economic well-being.
Americans would likely welcome such an initiative.After all,
there is strongbipartisan support for environmentalprotection, as
Republicans discoveredto their cost when they tried to gut the na-
tion’s environmentallaws after the 1994elections.Newt Gingrich
and his fellow ‘‘revo1utionaries” failed in their quest for a simple
reason: Two-thirds of the American public, including a majority
of Republican voters, opposed what they were doing. Now, with
the 2000 presidential race shaping up, it is time for environmen-
talists to take the initiative.A political candidate who showed the
Americanpeople how cleaningup the environment would be good
both for their pocketbooks and the planet their kids will inherit
could well attract a sizablefollowing.He or she would have to face
down the Exxons and Tom DeLays of the world when they squawk
that global warming is a liberal hoax and government regulation
of the economy equals socialism. But the naysayers-ompanies
that make up but a small fraction of the economy, along with
their political allies-are outnumbered by the many individuals
and corporations that stand to gain from a program that links
enviromnental and economic health. The political challenge is
to mobilize these forces to fight for their common interest: a
green and prosperous kture.
The current battle over global warming is a textbook example
of how economic fear stalls environmental progress. A majority
of Republican and Democratic senators, mouthing the mantra of
fossil fuel companies, have vowed to defeat the climate change
February 1,1999 The Kation. 19

treaty signed in Kyoto because the (very minor) reductions in

greenhouse gas emissions the treaty requires will supposedly
lower the American standard of living. But the corporations’scare
tactics have little basis in fact. Not only do numerous companies
and nations around the world laow how to lower carbon @oxide
emissions without economic pain, they are already doing so-
at a profit.

T
he key is to improve energy efficiency: not to do without but
to do more with less. Germany and Japan use half as much
energy per dollar of GNP as the United States, not because
their citizens suffer lower standards of living but because their
economies use energy more efficiently. Even in the wasteful
United States, GNP grew by an average of 2.5 percent a year from
1973to 1986while energy use grew not at all, thanks to increased
efficiency.And efficiency technologieshave improved consider-
ably since 1986 in a wide range of fields, from lighting and elec-
tric motors to construction and irrigation.
So-called super-refngerators, for example, use 86 percent less
MS For love or money,
electricitythan standardbrands while costing the same or less to nowhere better than Beacon Hill to learn the ins and
build and delivering superior performance. In Amsterdam, the iuts of professional politics firsthand. Everything from fund-
headquarters of ING Bank, the Netherlands’ third-largest bank, .aising and campaigning to speech writing and lobbying,
uses one-fifth as much energy per square foot as a bank across the the only program of its kind in the Northeast.
3 Ashburton Place. Beacon Hill. Boston. MA 617-573-8302
street, even though the two buildings cost the same to construct.
But the ING headquartersboasts efficientwindows and insulation,
as well as a so-called passive design that enables solar energy
to provide much of the building’s needs, even in cloudy north-
ern Europe. In Sweden, electric utilities have reduced carbon
emissionsby one-third since 1989, largely through increased co-
generation-reusing the heat generated during electricityproduc-
tion instead of expelling it as waste. Back in the United States,
DuPont, the country’s largest chemical producer, claims that
improved efficiency will enable it to reduce its annual carbon
emissions worldwide to less than half of 1991 levels by 2000.
Examples like these lead energy specialistAmory Lovins to
declare that “climate change is actually a lucrative business op-
portunity disguised as an environmental problem.” A growing
minority of experts within corporate and government circles be- Bringing national and global events to life in
lieve that restoration of the environment could become a source the classroom isn’t easy. Textbooks are out of
of virtually limitlessprofit for consumers and companies alike in date. Mainstream periodicals supply only the
the coming century. In the words of an executive from AT&T, one conventional wisdom.
of the few American-based firms that recognize what is possible,
“We are talking about restructuringthe technological basis of our So how can you interest your students in cur-
entire economy. ..integrating environmental considerations into rent events and get them debating the topics of
all technology and economic behavior.” the day?
The idea is to renovate human civilization from top to bot-
tom-to redesign and retrofit everything from our farms to our Use
factories, our garages to our garbage dumps, our schools, shops,
houses, offices and everything inside them, and to do so in both Your students will Our Classroom
read provocative, Education
the rich nations of the North and the poor nations of the South. award-winning Program offers
The economic activity such renovation would generate is enor- articles covering semester-length
the latest in politics bulk subscriptions
mous. Better yet, given-thenearly 1billion people who lack gain- and the arts, at special student
ful employment throughout the world, that activity would be and they‘ll be rates to help you use
labor-intensive.Investments in energy efficiency and renewable exposed to the The Nabon wth
kind of alternabve your class.
energy, for example, yield two to ten times as many jobs as in- news and opinion
vestments in fossil fuel andnuclearpower. Building railroad tracks that will get them
talking.
generates 30 percent more jobs per dollar invested than build-
ing highways.
 20 The Nation.
So, how to turn these happy economicpossibilities into an ap-
pealing political program? One model worth emulating, it seems
to me, is the New Deal that President Franklin Roosevelt launched
in the thirties to propel the US economy out of depression.After
all, today’s economic problems are strikingly similar to those
of the thirties: instability, inequality, overcapacity-in short, too
much money at the top and too little at the bottom to generate
enough demand to keep the system churning forward. The basic
function of the New Deal was to restore demand to the economy
by, among other measures, guaranteeing workers a minimum
wage and putting the unemployed to work in government-funded
public works projects.
w
hy not revive those New Deal policies but apply them in a
green and global fashion?The program could be called the
Global Green Deal. It would begin with government estab-
lishing “rules of the road” that compel markets to respect
rather than harm the en-
vironment, and then rely on Rich will
the power of markets to pur-
sue the goal of environmental will
restoration. save
In particular, government
would reform skewed tax and subsidypolicies so that markets in-
ternalize environmentalvalues-making prices reflect the health
and other costs to society of polluting air and water. The basic
idea on taxes, as University of Maryland economist Herman
Daly puts it, is to “tax bads, not goods.” That is, raise taxes on
the things society wants to discourage-natural resource degrada-
tion and pollution-while lowering taxes an equivalent amount on
things society wants to encourage,like employment and business
investment. Because tax hikes on, say, coal burning and virgin
timber loggingwould be offset by cuts in payroll and profits taxes,
on the whole such reform would be revenue-neutral and thus
dehse the conservative argument about raising taxes.
Under the Global Green Deal, govenlmentwould also increase
public investment to help nascent industries like solar power
achieve commercialtakeoff. Pentagon purchases in the sixties got
the computer industry up and running, and the Clinton Adminis-
tration did much the same in the nineties by having the federal
bureaucracy shift purchases from virgin to recycled paper. To-
day, by requiring that the 50,000 vehicles the government buys
each year be powered by fuel cells or gas-electrichybrids rather
than by traditional internal combustion engines, government
could help create demand for green cars-demand that private
Send both your old mailing If you have any problems or
label and your new address questions regarding your
subscription, please write to
us at the address to the left,
to: or call
~
Box 37072
50037 l(800) 333-8536
I
Monday to Friday
7:OO 11:oo
Please allow 4-6 weeks for Saturday & Sunday
processing. 8:OO to PM CDT
February 1.1999
corporations could then step forward and accommodate.
Government must also be prepared to aid those industries
bound to suffer from society’s transitionto more environmentally
responsible behavior. Environmental tax reform would benefit
society as a whole by encouragingjob creation and investment,
but costs would increase for sectors of the economy that produce
lots of pollution, such as oil, coal, chemicals, mining, steel and
aluminum. In the long run,companies engaged in such activities
may have to move on to other businesses. Governmentmust ease
this transition, most urgently by retraining workers for more
environmentally benign jobs.
The Global Green Deal is global for a reason: Saving the
planet will be impossible unless rich and poor countries alike
participate. China and India, with their gigantic populations
and ’ambitious developmentplans, could by themselves all but
doom the rest of the planet to severe global warming and
ozone depletion if alternative technologies are not made avail-
able to them; likewise, the
to lead. destruction of rainforests in
Brazil would eliminate many
of poor to ofthe world’s plant and an-
imal species.
Rich nations will have to
take the lead both logistically and financially. First they will
have to adopt environmental reforms at home before expecting
poor nations to follow suit. Energy planners in China, Brazil and
elsewhere have shown keen interest in solar and other environ-
mental technologies, but they are understandably unwilling to
act as guinea pigs while the rich continue their fossil-fuel ways.
Rich nations will also have to help pay for most of developing
nations’ environmental reforms. If they don’t, many of those
reforms simply will not happen, because poverty makes a more
urgent claim on limited public funds in those countries than
long-term environmental considerations do.
Rich nations need the cooperation of poor ones to save their
own environmental skins, but they should realize that Northern
companies could actually make money by transferring environ-
mentally benign technologies to the South. Installing available
energy-efficienttechnologies throughout China’s energy system,
for example, could reduce China’s energy consumption (and,
therefore, its greenhouse gas emissions) by nearly 50 percent.
American firms happen to be among the world’s leaders in energy
efficienttechnologies(though you’d never guess that from looking
at our national behavior’. If the White House and Congress were
smart, they would help China buy those technologies (instead
of computer and nuclear technology), giving a boost to both the
atmosphere and American companies and workers.
Will all this cost money? Without question. But there is lots
of money available; we’re just spending it foolishly now. In the
United Statesmilitary spendmg remains at bloated, cold war levels
nearly ten years after the Berlin wall fell, and the Clinton Ad-
ministration is requesting an additional $110 billion in military
spendingbetween now and 2005, including $7 billion for a missile
defense system. Amid such excess, even minor redeployment of
resources can yield large gains. “Take the price-tag for safeguard-
ing two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest: [an estimated] $3 bil-
lion,” climate scientist Jeremy Leggett has written. “Canceljust
six U.S. ‘Stealth’bombers and you have the cash to do it.”
 February 1,1999 The Nation.
If even half the estimated $500 billion-$900 billion in en-
vironmentally destructive subsidies now being doled out by
the world’s governments were pointed in the opposite direc-
tion, the Global Green Deal would be off to a roaring start.
The most straightforward way to increase the funds available
to poor nations is through debt relief. “In Africa,” Oxfam Inter-
national has reported, “where one out of every two children
v’
doesn’t go to school, governments transfer four times more
\ [money]to northern creditors in debt payments than they spend
on the health and education of their citizens.” If Africa’s pop-
ulation growth is to be brought under control, health and edu-
GEORGIA’S CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS AFB TAKING THE ‘WEALTH PRIMARY’ TO COURT
The Col
[ 1
his may be the biggest fight we ever had.”
Spealung softly and slowly, Charles Sher-
rod tapped his fingertips under his chin.
“Because this is about money, it’s about
power, it’s about who gets to sun the com-
try for the next fifty years.” A leader of anti-
segregation fights in the sixties, Sherrod is
describing a new civil sights movement to re-
form the campaign finance system in Georgia.
Compared with the momentous battles of
his youth, campaign finance reform may sound
tame, but Shei-sod-whom Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Nor-
ton once called one of the “platoon leaders in the minefields of
Deep South voter registration”-is busy training new troops. In
the course of his work as a prison chaplain, social worker and
youth counselor, the 6 1-year-old Sherrod preaches widely about
the power of the vote, which he believes has become diluted in a
money-soaked system.
“I tell the young folk that politics is going to affect every bit
of their lives, every day of their lives, everything they do, every-
thing they don’t do,” Sherrod says. “Fact is, it’s no longer just a
race thing. The vote lcnows nothing but green. That’s the color
that we’ve got to concentrate on.”
This latter-day civil rights movement has coalesced in a
unique lawsuit known as Georgia State Conference of NAACP
Branches v. Massey, which seeks a federaljudge’s order mandat-
ing the creation ofpublicly financed campaigns for State Senate
elections. The Massey case is the first such constitutional chal-
lenge to a state legislative campaign finance system. With the
NAACP joined by a coalition of grassroots organizations and
civil rights veterans like Sherrod as co-plaintiffs, the suit con-
tends that wealth plays such a great role in deciding who gets
elected that it violates the equal protection and First Amendment
Shavon Basco is communications director of the Boston-based National
VbtingRights Institute, which serves as lead counselfor theplaintij$
in the Massey case.
21
cation spending is essential. So, therefore, is debt relief.
A Global Green Deal that put people to work restoring ous
ravaged environment would yield enormous economic and so-
cial benefits to the vast majoi-ity of the earth’s current inhabi-
tants, to say nothing of their descendants. Such a fundamental
shift in direction will not happen by itself, however. Politics must
be committed. FDR pushed the New Deal because millions of
unemployed people were in the streets,just as Richard Nixon got
out of Vietnam because Americans of all stripes were opposing
the war. It’s time to confront our next President with similar
pressure on behalf of a Global Green Deal.
sights of lower-income voters and candidates.
It argues that a new exclusionaryprocess known
as the “wealth primary” now controls who par-
ticipates in, and almost always who wins, elec-
tions. This system insures that the wealthy, by
means of their campaign contsibutions, pre-
select the candidates who almost invariably
2 go on to govern. Opponents ofreform point to
the 1976 Supreme Court decision known as
2 Buckley v. Valeo-which struck down Congres-
sional campaign spending limits-to argue that
the First Amendment guarantees unlimited spending. But the
Massey case can potentially do what the Buckley case did not:
address the constitutional rights of those who lack access to
wealth and influence.
After the Massey lawsuit was filed in August 1997,the federal
district court in Atlanta issued a ruling denying th6 plaintiff-
voters the right to present their case, on the grounds that they
are not harmed by the wealth primary system. The plaintiffs
have appealed the decision to the US Court of Appeals for the
11th Circuit.
The stoiy behind the Massq case offers a clear illustration of
the wealth primary in action. John White, an African-American
who was then a twenty-two-year veteran of the Georgia House,
ran in the Democratic primary for State Senate in 1996. Out-
spent by his creepy white opponent, MarkTaylor, seventeentimes
over cyyllte’s campaign budget was $16,000;Taylor’s, $270,000),
White lost, and he believes lack of money was the reason. “It
used to be, you couldn’t vote if you couldn’t pay the poll tax,”
says White. “Now you can’t be a [state] senator if you can’t
raise $2OO,OOO.”
White’s contentions were bolstered by a study that found
money to be apsime determining factor in winning Georgia State
Senate elections.Analyzing all contestantsfor seats in the Georgia
State Senate fkom 1992 through 1996, the report, conducted by
the National Institute on Money in State Politics, concluded that
money’wasone of the strongest indicators of success, with the