Live From Main Street
What Will the Green Economy Look Like? - Part 2
by addiestan, The Media Consortium: Thu., Aug 21, 2008
Filed under: Media Consortium: journalism project • Uncategorized
[Continued from previous page]
Models used by today’s economists, Jones explains, are based on notions developed in the 19th century. “Whether left or right,” Jones says, “[these models] had one almost unspoken assumption, which is that you’re going to have an awful lot of nature and very few people. So you find these weird terms, like ‘inexhaustible resources’… Now you’re living in a world where you have an awful lot of people and shockingly little nature left.”
You can’t tinker with the equation to fix the flaw in that model, he says. “If you … have to break up with oil and coal, you may as well break up with poverty and a bunch of other stuff, anyway,” insists Jones, whose book, The Green-Collar Economy, is due from HarperCollins in October.
Economist James K. Galbraith is frustrated by the lack of attention to the climate crisis by his colleagues. “Where is the economic school of thought that addresses the impact of climate change?” he asks. Except for the work of one or two economists, he says, “it doesn’t exist.” Galbraith, a professor at University of Texas (Austin), says solving the crisis will require a complete reordering of universities to foster collaboration across disciplines.
In his recently released book, The Predator State, Galbraith pleads a case for Democrats to abandon the so-called free market system, since Republicans have clearly done so over the last eight years, as demonstrated by a series of bailouts, manipulations and deficit spending. Galbraith suggests, the challenge of heading off the perils of global climate change offers a jumping-off point from which to launch a new, more beneficial economic system. “It’s a sensible application,” he says. That new system will feature of hybrid of government planning, regulated markets and institutions that foster innovation.
Like Jones, Galbraith sees in the current economic and ecological crises the potential to reinvent decaying societal structures and create entirely new ones. But when asked if it is time for a new New Deal, Galbraith offers a caution against “reaching back to a glorious moment and calling for the revival of an old solution.” One thing the next president and Congress should do, Galbraith says, is to create national-level institutions on the order of our great national laboratories, like the National Institutes of Health or NASA, designed to address the climate crisis.
Nothing less than the sort of effort the U.S. mounted when mobilizing for World War II will create the enterprise needed to address climate change and energy independence in ways that will restructure the economy for the better, Galbraith adds. Folded into that enterprise, he says, should be a goal for universal broadband access (”It’s carbon-neutral”) and a national infrastructure project that does not simply repair decaying structures, but completely redesigns roads, bridges and transportation in ways that are energy-efficient and create sustainable communities.
For his part, Jones sees more creative energy for reinventing the economy coming from the human heart and mind — what he calls “the revolution within” — than from existing institutions. “Why be stuck with these little single-issue not-for-profits and broken-up academic departments trying to solve this thing from inside of it?” he asks. Thinking about this crisis needs to be simplified, not made more complex, he explains. “You know, the reason that Green For All has the name it has is ’cause it’s what a child would say… You gotta get back to the complete innocence of childhood.”
Where Jones calls for a return to innocence, Thorne calls for simplification of our lives, a goal Galbraith also seeks through his economist’s lens, noting, for instance, the efficiency of shortening the food chain.
But Thorne’s philosophy, the “deep ecology” first proposed by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, hangs on more than simplicity; it urges humility in human interaction with the rest of creation. “This integral consciousness is the next step… Out of the consciousness will come the cultural change. Consciousness is always ahead of culture.”
Yet even within the green economy movement, consciousness has its limits. Where thinkers like Jones and Galbraith see a sort of creative destruction in allowing the structures of yesterday fall away to make room for the new, pragmatists like Din and Plant have high hopes for greening the industrial model. Conflicts inherent in these two visions could be the next big test of the progressive movement.
This article is part of The Media Consortium’s Live From Main Street series, and is published in conjunction with the next Live From Main Street program, “So You Say You Want Change? Exploring the Conflicts and Opportunities Ahead.” Hosted by Laura Flanders of GRITtv, the town hall will feature Van Jones of Green For All, who is interviewed in the article, and a number of other progressive leaders, including Rep. Donna Edwards, Polly Baca, David Sirota, Faye Wattleton, Andre Banks and Lee Camp of Laughing Liberally. This edition of Live From Main Street will tape on Sunday, August 24 at 4:00 p.m. MST in Denver. The town hall will be streamed live and can be viewed at www.livefrommainstreet.org.
The taping is open to the public: click here for more details; Click here to RSVP to this event.
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