Global Climate Solutions

By Ryan Hottle

When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, “Long live gravity! Long live
Stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces
Of fantasy capitalism!” I think
An economy should be based on thrift,
On taking care of things, not on theft,
Usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.

From “Some Further Words”
Wendell Berry

The bailout plan that went before Congress failed yesterday, but congressional leaders are scrambling to draft backup plans to rescue the ailing American economy. The most egregious aspect of the 700 billion dollar “bipartisan” plan—and the reason I was glad to see it fail—was that it focused almost entirely on bailing out the corporate miscreants who have been looting money from the American people, instead of focusing on the root causes of the problem or on helping the general public at large. (See the list of economists against the bailout plan.)

I draw four important conclusions from the current economic situation. First, a system based on endless greed was always bound to fail. It shouldn’t be so surprising. A worthy anology might be the fact that selfish people who act only out of self-interest usually end up unhappy and self-defeated.

Second, a system based on extraction of resources from far-away lands (whether oil from the Middle East or borrowed money from China) is an inherently unwise and vulnerable economic pollicy.  And we need only to look at history to tell us the fate of civilizations that became dependent on expansion and imperialism as a modus operandi for continued growth.

Third, a system based on exploitation of the environment and of people is necessarily unsustainable. In the long term, you simply can’t keep people down forever and you can’t go on destroying your land-base forever. Eventually the people rise up and eventually your land-base will no longer support you.

Fourth, a system of exponential growth simply doesn’t work on a finite planet.

The single question going through my mind is, “To what extent should we try to salvage this economic system when we can easily see that it is inherently unsustainable and unjust?”

I think the US economy is worth salvaging if for only two reasons: to prevent widespread chaos and violence, and to help solve the grave and growing threat of climate change.

If it is able to be salvaged, the abovementioned problems must be addressed: radical reform is needed. Internalize the externalities. Value communities, health, ecosystems, and happiness over greed for monetary wealth and material possession. Create an economic system that is based on equilibrium and balance instead of infinite growth.

The following is my idea of a bailout plan that would actually start addressing some of the core issues affecting the economy, that would simultaneously help the country prepare for the coming challenges of global climate change and peak oil, and that would focus on helping the American public at large instead of solely focusing on bailing out the corporations.

1) Stabilize the Economy but Not at the Taxpayers Expense
Some sort of government intervention in the form of spending taxpayer dollars to stabilize the economy seems almost inevitable at this point. However, we should be as prudent as possible in the ways that we spend this money. Investors who took risk to make profits should not be bailed out at the public’s expense.

Mechanisms to recoup every single penny spent by taxpayers to bailout companies in a certain period of time should be included in the legislation. CEO salaries of companies participating in the bailout should be limited to the average U.S. per capita income: $44,000. Equity shares should be distributed to every America taxpayer who helps these companies get bailed out. The Fed should explore options of insuring bonds and assets instead of simply buying without knowing their true value.  

Let’s find out what these companies owe, how much bad debt they have, and if private companies will buy them out before we step in to bail them out with taxpayer’s dollars. If we are much more cautious and deliberate about how we go about this, we may be able to limit the amount spent to somewhere around $100 to $200 billion dollars.

2) Make an Investment in Something that Pays Back Big Time: Conservation and Efficiency
If we truly want to make an investment in the future that will stimulate the economy and protect the American public we should start developing programs to increasing household energy conservation and efficiency. It would put a yearly paycheck in the hands of every American homeowner for the next thirty years (with increasing payouts every year due to rising energy costs) with a single one-time investment that would conservatively payback in roughly 5 to 10 year–at current rates. 

Spend $200 billion on a program to increase efficiency and conservation in U.S. homes by providing matching funds for up to $5,000 in total money paid-out for Energy Audits and Weatherization work for U.S. households. The money could be recouped by charging citizens who took advantage of the program $250 dollars per year (which would likely be half the amount saved each year) until the household paid back the original amount borrowed. This revolving borrowing program would allow the program to generate significant savings with no taxpayer money being spent in the long run.

US households, on the other hand, would be saving significantly. There are 130 million homes in the US with an average use of 10,700 kWh per year (or roughly $1300 spent on electric per year per household) and, roughly, $1000 on heating costs per year per household. The average household could likely save 20 to 30 percent of this money after having an Energy Audit and Weatherization and Efficiency work completed on their home.

At a 20 percent savings on electricity and heating fuel, we could expect to see US households save $450 per year. At 30 percent savings this number jumps to $680 per year. The total savings generated from 130 million US households saving 20 percent on heat and electric over a 10-year period would come out to $592 billion dollars!

3) End Giveaways of Public Money to Private Companies
Ending all subsidies to Oil, Gas, Coal and Ethanol Industries could save us somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 billion dollars plus per year. The Corn Ethanol Industry alone is subsidized at the tune of $11-12 billion dollars per year. After we do this, we can look into enacting serious windfall profit taxes.

4) Cleanup Wasteful Government Spending
The Bush Administration has presided over the greatest expansion of government spending since WWII. In the coming years of economic tightening, we simply cannot afford the costs of big, inefficient government with its high paid bureaucrats, consultants, and corporate welfare recipients. As a country, we’re going to have to find ways of growing strong on less. Highway expansion is a good place to start cutting money. We don’t need more roads. We can get people off of social services by providing good, meaningful jobs that grow the economy.

5) Start a Green New Deal
Cleaning up government waste is not in opposition to sound public investment. I truly believe we are going to need a new FDR and a new Green New Deal to pull us out of this economic chaos we find ourselves in. Imagine a new an improved Civilian Conservation Corp (we could call it the “Civilian Sustainability Corp”) providing jobs to the millions of unemployed (and soon to be unemployed) weatherizing homes, building community gardens, erecting wind turbines, planting groves of fruit and nut trees in every community, and mounting solar panels on rooftops by the millions.

We need to build and rebuild the US infrastructure including light-rail, a new Smart High Efficiency Smart Grid, and Carbon Negative Heat and Power Stations (i.e. Biochar Production) across the country.

6) Lower Taxes on the Working and Middle Class
It’s time to get rid of the income tax. Why should we be taxing people for working? It makes no sense. We should be placing taxes on things which we are trying to dissuade. We could shift our tax base from an income-based system to a Carbon-based Tax system so that we start putting a real cost on the most dangerous thing that has ever confronted humanity: global climate change as a result of anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases of which CO2 is the most important.  For more information on this see the work being done by the Carbon Tax Center.  

7) End the Foreign Policy of Invading Sovereign Countries
We’ve spent $558,000,000,000 plus on the war in Iraq (not including Afghanistan). That’s over $100 billion dollars per year. Whatever your politics, history teaches a clear lesson about military expansion, imperialism, and empire: it doesn’t work and it eventually leads to civilization collapse. Extracting ourselves from Iraq will not be easy because it’s a problem the Bush Administration created from which there is no good solution.  But, when it comes to the bottom line, it is clear that we need to figure a way to get out of there–the sooner the better.

8. Support Local Sustainable Agriculture through Sound Economic Policy
Local and sustainable agriculture is soon to become the most critical social, economic, and political activity as access to cheap fertilizers, cheap oil, and massive farm subsidies dry up and as the world’s climatic cycles begin to unpredictably change.  (Read Richard Heinberg’s essential discussion about the importance local, sustainable food production.) The sooner we invest in local sustainable agriculture, the safer, more self-reliant we will be. Require all public institutions (public schools, colleges, hospitals, jails, etc.) to source food locally from sustainable family farms. Create incentives to encourage young people to become farmers and to help them purchase land by taking money away from massive farm subsidies to enormous corporate conglomeration operations and wealthy people who get paid not to farm and who have never even farmed their land to begin with.

9) Universal Healthcare for All
Pass sweeping Universal Healthcare measures to alleviate businesses from the burden of providing healthcare to workers, while providing healthcare to the 50 million people who don’t have basic health insurance and the other 20 million who are under-insured. Combine this with aggressive programs of holistic and preventative care and treatment and we could lower health care costs astronomically in this country.

To most Washington politicians and to the average Wall Street Journal-subscribing reader, the above proposed bailout plan would seem like an odd assortment of radical and strange proposals contrived by some sort of hippy-enviro freak.

To those knowledgeable about the most significant underling forces driving the economy (energy, food, health and climate) this plan would seem the most rational course of action.  Passing a piece of legislation that would seek to reduce energy use, limit military expansionism, reduce atmospheric CO2, and focus on helping those out at the bottom rather than bailing those out on top–would merely represent the first step in addressing the long road of challenges that await us in the 21st century.

It’s unlikely Washington is going to adopt these sort of vital policies anytime soon.  It’s going to take a number of crises before the politicians, corporations, and the consumer culture realize that the utter mess they have created extends far past the so called “mortgage crisis.”   But that doesn’t stop caring, compassionate, and determined citizens from implementing these measures at the community and regional scale. Soon enough, when the realization hits them, the politicians will be asking us to explain these solutions to them.

We have but one beautiful planet to protect and but precious little time to do it in. What we choose to do—or not to do—in the next five to ten years will make all the difference. Be prepared to work hard and work together—that’s the only way we’re going to win!