• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
  FEATURED
BREAKING: Don’t Attend COP 28 Unless You’re There to Help, Figueres Tells Oil and Gas September 21, 2023
Thorold Gas Peaker Plant Won’t Be Built After Unanimous City Council Vote September 20, 2023
Indoor Heat Leaves Canadians Unsafe with ‘No Escape’, CBC Investigation Finds September 20, 2023
Agrivoltaics a Win-Win for Farmers, Communities, Solar Developers, and Alberta’s UCP September 20, 2023
‘Beginning of the End’ for Oil and Gas as IEA Predicts Pre-2030 Peak September 19, 2023
Next
Prev

Green New Deal Brings Climate Transition to the Mainstream, Omits Key Issue of Urban Sprawl

February 11, 2019
Reading time: 5 minutes

Doc Searls/Twitter

Doc Searls/Twitter

4
SHARES
 

With supporters hailing U.S. Democrats’ Green New Deal resolution as a breakthrough and some of its predictable opponents declaring it wildly unrealistic, a handful of analysts are pointing to an important omission in the plan unveiled last week by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA).

“The proposal encapsulates the liberal delusion on climate change: that technology and spending can spare us the hard work of reform,” contends Cleveland-based writer and Strong Towns member Alex Baca. Her post on Slate points to land use and sprawl as a crucial issue that leaves the Green New Deal with “a big blind spot: It doesn’t address the places Americans live. And our physical geography—where we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places—is more foundational to a green, fair future than just about anything else.”

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
Subscribe

That’s because “America is a nation of sprawl,” Baca writes. “More Americans live in suburbs than in cities,” and “the places in which we live are generally dispersed, inefficient, and impossible to navigate without a car.”

Sprawl, in turn, is enabled by highways that cost the country more than $1 trillion per year in reduced business activity, environmental damage, consumer expenses, and other costs, according to a 2015 analysis by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. “Leaving aside the emissions from the 1.1 billion trips Americans take per day (87% of which are taken in personal vehicles), spreading everything out has eaten up an enormous amount of natural land.”

That kind of thinking makes transportation an elephant in the room for U.S. environmentalists, Baca says, and shifting to electric vehicles won’t be enough on its own to solve the problem if Americans don’t bring down their per capita vehicle miles travelled. “Sprawl requires us to spend more time and more money to reach the places we need to go,” she notes, and the distance from home to work is a particular problem for the communities of interest the Green New Deal sets out to empower and support.

“Sprawl costs us all, but it disproportionately racks up costs for poor people, non-white people, and women,” Baca writes. “All that is a result of a federal stimulus for a disconnected pattern of development that imposes an enormous burden on our finances, our environment, and our pursuit of equity.”

On Vox, veteran climate analyst David Roberts digs into the details and potential stumbling blocks in the Green New Deal resolution. “There are a few items down in the requirements that might raise red flags,” he writes, “but given the long road ahead, there will be plenty of time to sort them out. Overall, this is about as strong an opening bid as anyone could have asked for.”

The plan moves beyond the climate movement’s more traditional and limited focus on technologies and markets, with its emphasis on environmental justice and community resilience and its support for “old-fashioned public investment” that has been “something of a taboo” in neoliberal circles. “Public investment with the returns going back to the public—it’s not a GND without that,” he writes.

Roberts also credits the drafters of the resolution for sidestepping some of the arguments that will come up in the course of the coming debate on the Green New Deal—like how to pay for the program, whether “clean” energy includes technologies like nuclear and carbon sequestration, carbon pricing, and supply-side policy. Strategies to limit fossil fuel supplies, rather than just ramping down demand, “are “the leading edge of the climate fight, out ahead of where labour and most moderates are. Including it in the GND probably would have sparked some defections,” he notes. So “the GND resolution doesn’t touch the subject, other than calling for transition assistance for communities losing fossil fuel jobs.”

On the whole, he writes, those four omissions—or fights postponed—“signal, to me, a movement that is capable of reining in its more vigorous ideological impulses in the name of building the broadest possible left coalition behind an ambitious climate solution. That bodes well.”

But he also points to two gaps: An early draft of the resolution left out any reference to the rapid electrification that will be needed to decarbonize the U.S. economy. And the final version makes only passing, incomplete reference to urban density and public space.

“Creating dense urban areas with ample public spaces and multimodal transportation options—deprioritizing private automobiles and reducing overall automobile traffic—serves multiple progressive goals,” Roberts notes. It deals with cars as the next big climate challenge, reduces urban air pollution and noise, tackles urban heat islands, increases physical activity and social contact, and addresses a looming affordable housing crisis across the U.S. “And, if you will forgive some dreamy speculation, a little more public space might just generate a sense of community and social solidarity to counteract the segregation, atomization, isolation, and mutual distrust that cars and suburbs have exacerbated.”

Baca says the process of changing out the built environment can begin right away, and “the good news is that if we do account for land use, we will get much closer to a safe, sustainable, and resilient future.” With a national deficit of 7.2 million affordable, available rental units for U.S. families most in need, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the critical question is whether those units will be built near transit, or in inaccessible suburbs.

“The Green New Deal is ostensibly a jobs program, an environmental program, and a redistributive program,” Baca concludes. “If it’s a jobs program, it must wrangle with spatial mismatch. If it’s an environmental program, it must tackle the fact that an all-electric fleet of cars is functionally, at this time, a pipe dream. And if it’s a redistributive program, it must grapple with how roads paved into suburban and exurban greenfield developments deepen, expand, and exacerbate segregation.”

Which means a plan that already recognizes the need for building retrofits and upgrades should also look at where they’re located. And “reallocating what we spend on building new roads to paying for public transit instead would go a long way toward limiting sprawl.”

While that discussion unfolds, Roberts points to the distinct possibility that the Green New Deal will become a process of dreaming big and negotiating down.

“It is all to the good that a muscular progressive movement is rallying behind a program shaped by the problem at hand rather than speculation about what is politically possible,” he writes. “It is good to start from a position of strength.” But “given the two-year time window to get legislation ready and the 10-year time window to kick-start multiple decarbonization revolutions, the chances of pulling off a full-scale political revolution beforehand seem remote,” particularly given some of the broader social goals incorporated in the resolution.

“But take a step back and appreciate: The progressive movement has, in rather short order, thrust into mainstream U.S. politics a program to address climate change that is wildly more ambitious than anything the Democratic Party was talking about even two years ago. One hundred percent clean energy, investment in new jobs, and a just transition have gone from activist dreams to the core of the Democratic agenda in the blink of a political eye. There’s a long way to go, but the GND train has come farther, faster than anyone could have predicted.”

Which ultimately means that “the map has been drawn, the path laid out. Now it’s on.”



in Buildings & Infrastructure, Electric Mobility & Auto, Ending Emissions, Energy Politics, Environmental Justice, Heat & Power, Jobs & Training, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

UN Climate Change/flickr
COP Conferences

Don’t Attend COP 28 Unless You’re There to Help, Figueres Tells Oil and Gas

September 24, 2023
404
Jon Sullivan/flickr
Ontario

Thorold Gas Peaker Plant Won’t Be Built After Unanimous City Council Vote

September 21, 2023
592
Rewat Wannasuk/Pexels
Heat & Power

Virtual Power Plants Could Cut Peak Demand 20%, Save U.S. Grid $10B Per Year

September 20, 2023
95

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

UN Climate Change/flickr

BREAKING: Don’t Attend COP 28 Unless You’re There to Help, Figueres Tells Oil and Gas

September 21, 2023
404
Kristoferb/Wikimedia Commons

Canadians Could Save $10.4B, Cut Climate Pollution by Replacing Central Air with Heat Pumps

August 28, 2023
810
/Piqusels

‘Beginning of the End’ for Oil and Gas as IEA Predicts Pre-2030 Peak

September 19, 2023
469
Asurnipal/wikimedia commons

Agrivoltaics a Win-Win for Farmers, Communities, Solar Developers, and Alberta’s UCP

September 20, 2023
171
Jon Sullivan/flickr

Thorold Gas Peaker Plant Won’t Be Built After Unanimous City Council Vote

September 21, 2023
592
Rennett Stowe/flickr

‘I’ve Been Ghosted,’ Rural Mayor Says, as Alberta Towns Push Back on Renewables Moratorium

September 8, 2023
1.9k

Recent Posts

Rewat Wannasuk/Pexels

Virtual Power Plants Could Cut Peak Demand 20%, Save U.S. Grid $10B Per Year

September 20, 2023
95
Jeremy Bezanger/Unsplash

Indoor Heat Leaves Canadians Unsafe with ‘No Escape’, CBC Investigation Finds

September 20, 2023
62
Wesley Fryer/flickr

Smart Thermostats Boost Grid Stability Amid Intense Heat

September 20, 2023
45
Cullen328/wikimedia commons

Manufactured Housing Could Dent the Affordable Housing Crunch with Energy-Efficient Designs

September 20, 2023
120
Mr Renewables/Wikipedia

Californians Fight for New Community Solar Plan

September 20, 2023
106
Plug'n Drive/Wikimedia Commons

Rural Carshares Ensure EV Push Leaves No One Behind

September 20, 2023
39
Next Post
Landscape protected by the landmark court decision rejecting the Rocky Hill Coal Mine in New South Wales. Canterbury Greens/Twitter

Landmark Court Ruling Cites Climate Impact in Refusing New Australian Coal Mine

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
The Energy Mix - Energy Central
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}