The Revenge of the Green New Deal

  

Sixty nations held an emergency conference in Colombia last month. The United States was not invited.

The attendee nations were in a dire predicament — entirely of Trump’s making — and they had no reason to listen to, take advice from, or trust this country in any way. Trump got them into this mess, and they could see he’s not getting them out of it any time soon.

So they came to Santa Marta, Colombia looking for a way out of the petroleum era. The phasing out of fossil fuels was something most of them had put off for too long, but further procrastination was clearly not an option. Action was required.

The closing of the Strait of Hormuz has been a global wakeup call. It’s become an existential crisis for many of these nations, and a clarifying moment for the rest. Their long dependence on foreign energy sources has suddenly been exposed as a national weakness, and now they’re scrambling to keep their lights on and their populations fed. They were in Santa Marta to signal their willingness to shift to renewables, and the sooner the better.

This was not about the perils of climate change, though the two crises are intertwined. It was rather about the economic consequences of the biggest oil shock in recorded history. The attendees were less concerned with the future of the planet than with the day-to-day management of their countries under worsening conditions. Happily, the solutions to the latter will do good things for the former.

Hastily organized by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands — think about those two bedfellows for a minute — the conference bypassed the United Nations altogether. They were in no mood to deal with the roadblocks that Russia, China, and, lately, the U.S. regularly throw up to impede progress on any global issue of substance.

This is a clear echo of the manifesto issued a few months ago by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who spoke of the need, going forward, for the “middle powers” to join together in mutually advantageous alliances that can work around those increasingly untrustworthy superpowers.

Which is exactly what the sixty nations — from literally all over the map — were doing. The conference was a harbinger of a dramatic re-shuffling of trade relationships all over the world.

It was also the starting point for what is already turning into a massive shift to renewable energy sources. This comes at a time when the cost of those sources has drawn roughly even with that of fossil fuels, at least in terms of generating electricity.

Let’s call it the revenge of the Green New Deal.

You remember, right? How it was vigorously promoted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she first came on the scene? Remember how the Fox propaganda machine quickly turned AOC into Satan’s daughter, and the Green New Deal into a vile pejorative, right up there with ‘socialism’ and ‘woke?’

What we may not remember was that the Green New Deal was a legitimate attempt to think outside the barrel. It was a totally reasonable, economically compelling argument for an orderly transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. Most of the energy initiatives Joe Biden included in the Inflation Reduction Act drew on the thinking that went into the Green New Deal, even though the three words themselves became politically toxic. It was another reminder of how easy it is for an oil company to buy a few six-packs of Republicans.

But even though it was doomed legislatively, the work that went into the Green New Deal surely made for required reading among those at the Santa Marta conference. Because now, thanks to Trump’s war, the rest of the world is now catching on to what AOC and other Democrats were getting at.

Which is why most of those attendees are changing their energy priorities on the fly. They’re cranking up their investments in renewables, while reducing reliance on petroleum. And they’re shopping for green technology wherever they can get it.

More and more, that means China, now the world’s dominant manufacturer of electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines, the three main ingredients of sustainable energy.

Of course, the U.S. might have been in that position, were Trump not so enamored of pollution in all its forms. His short-sighted hostility to sustainable energy isn’t just deeply stupid, it has also plainly backfired. He has inadvertently triggered an explosion in green investment all over the world. It would be just like him to take credit for it.

The closing of the Strait has already dealt a crippling blow to the fossil fuel industry, while simultaneously advancing the eco-friendly technologies that Trump’s oil-company buddies — and their Republican enablers — have tried for decades to suppress.

One of the many ironies is that Trump could have had both — fossil fuel supremacy and a robust renewables industry — but he insisted on stupidity instead.

As it happens, all is not lost. Despite Trump’s best efforts to sink it, a world-class renewables industry continues to thrive in this country. Yes, China owns the solar panel market, but all the hardware and software around those panels are still very much in play, and American companies remain serious players. They make the vital but unglamorous infrastructure components — transformers, substations, high-voltage transmission systems — that distribute the power generated from wind, hydro, and solar.

I was surprised to learn that, for electricity at least, the ability to transition to green resources is largely a done deal. There is no longer either a technological or cost barrier to generating much of the world’s electric power using mostly green resources.

Unfortunately, electricity by itself will not solve the world’s dependence on oil, coal, and gas.

The transportation industry can’t move that quickly. While a transition to electric cars is well under way, it will be a few decades before the substantial energy needs of trucks, ships, and airplanes can catch up.

The real barrier to full green, however, will be in heavy industry. Barring some major breakthrough in “green hydrogen” — don’t ask — it could take half a century to replace the hydrocarbons essential to their manufacturing processes.

Still, a green electric power grid is an excellent start, and if enough governments buy in, many of the Santa Marta nations could have one within ten years. All they need is the will and the financing.

Speaking of which, America is still a financial powerhouse, more than capable of structuring, funding, developing, and managing renewable energy projects anywhere in the world. Many of these projects are already underway in several of the Santa Marta countries. Almost like it’s behind Trump’s back.

The trouble is that not enough of this economic throw-weight is staying home. Oil-soaked Republicans have reflexively blocked any initiative that smacks of common sense. As a result, American companies are turning to markets abroad, which are more accommodating. This leaves the domestic market — us, in other words — to suck gas fumes.

The Santa Marta conference vividly illustrates how tarnished we now are in the eyes of the world. Once upon a time, we’d have been the ones organizing it. Now, we can’t even wangle an invitation.