Sincere planet savers see what works; we show a way to get there.
What activists want -- shared land and clear skies -- geoists can deliver.
| We abridge and comment upon two 2007 articles on solutions to poverty and e-collape. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility argue that scaring people with bad news is no way to get them to change in “American Power: The Case for an Energetic New Progressive Politics” posted on AlterNet Independent Oct 8. Yifat Susskind, communications director of MADRE (an international women's human rights organization) lists “11 Solutions to Halting the Environmental Crisis” posted on AlterNet Oct 31. |
by Jeffery J. Smith
November, 2007
Susskind: Why not focus on solutions? None are perfect or complete, but each offers a model of positive change that is more than theoretically possible -- it is already happening.
2. What if poor rural families were given land so that they could grow their own food?
Through mass civil disobedience and political organizing, the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil succeeded in overturning government policy and securing 15 million acres of farmland for 250,000 families. The families' average income is now four times the minimum wage. Infant mortality is half the national average and many MST settlements are models of sustainable agriculture.
JJS: MST once was gracious enough to listen to our talk on achieving the redistribution of land by having society recover ground rent. Having to pay rent, owners no longer hoard land, since being a middleman landlord is not worth the bother. Every place that taxed land spurred owners to sell their excess to former tenants. Yet this argument based on logic and supported by results does not captivate political activists in either the South or North as does a political demand, such urging government to buy our way out of ecological catastrophe.
Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger: Cautionary tales and narratives of eco-apocalypse provoke fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism among voters -- not the rational embrace of environmental policies. Extensive social-science research strongly correlates fear, rising insecurity, and pessimism about the future with resistance to change.
American greatness is capable of challenging the (neo)conservative story of American power as unilateral military force waging "war on terror". A new story of American Power emphasizes our imagining, experimenting, and ingenuity. Oil-funded terrorism, global warming, economic insecurity -- these are challenges that America will overcome through our capacity to reinvent ourselves every fifty years.
We propose a major investment in clean-energy jobs, research and development, infrastructure, and transit, with the goal of achieving energy independence. A nationwide poll found global warming ranks dead last as a concern for voters. Investment in ways to get free of oil is more popular with voters than talk of global warming, clean air, and regulation.
To the extent that the battle against global warming is fought in terms of ecological limits rather than economic possibility, there's little doubt which path China and India will take. Yet if the price of clean energy and carbon capture technologies come down, China and India could substantially reduce their emissions.
Just as the Department of Defense guaranteed the nascent market for silicon microchips in the 1960s, bringing the price down from $1,000 to $20 per chip in just a few years, the Pentagon could do the same with silicon solar panels. The price of solar comes down roughly 20% every time production capacity is doubled. For $50 to $200 billion, we could bring solar panels down to the price of natural gas or even goal.
JJS: OPM (pronounced opium -- Other People’s Money) is so easy to spend. Who’d pay for a massive public investment? Under the present tax structure, it’d come from the middle class.
Who decides who gets it? Usually, it goes to insiders while inventors in a garage -- womb of the original Apple computer, for example -- languish. And is centralized, coercive public spending correct? Sure, Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Before spending a cent on green technology, let’s quit subsidizing the gray way. No more tax dollars and tax breaks for big oil, big autos, big utilities, and developers of suburban sprawl.
Could an “open source” approach work better? What if everyone, basement tinkers included, got a Citizens Dividend?
If you got the funds from the value of land and resources, then you’d spur both producers and consumers to cut back on extracting and burning fossil fuels. You’d motivate owners to use land efficiently; that would in-fill cities and reduce fuel consumption.
Big problems do need big solutions -- and wide open minds that take in the big picture.
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Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
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Also see: In Bolivia, Land Reform Moves Forward
Hoping for Better Coordination, Bigger Markets
New U.S. House Bill Aims to Lower Subsidies to Oil and Gas Sector |
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