Green Jersey

The green deal

by William Owen

The poorly cooked “bailout” plan on the plate of the American people looks a lot less appetizing than the endangered Atlantic wolffish.

It’s a meal we are going to remember for some time, since the current fiscal crisis will have long-term effects on our economy. There is only one thing we can do to bring about a thorough recovery: reinvent the economic landscape in order to spur on Green Industrialization.

The bailout plan in general is rotten but necessary. Its one silver lining (more gray than silver) is the inclusion of $17 billion in renewable energy incentives. It is a paltry sum. Ten times as much would only begin to approach a solution to the problems we face, problems created when the fabled “free market” reigned. The Bush administration has been gung-ho about deregulating, allowing corporate interests to run roughshod over controls in nearly every sector — media ownership, the environment, and, of course, banking.

They have proven themselves unworthy stewards of our nation’s future. They have denounced learning and scholarship, prudence and measured action, and environmental sustainability, all as un-American. Now, we may suffer the doom of the mistakes they have repeated.

To correct these mistakes, we must re-enact the solutions of the past. The U.S. emerged from the depths of the Great Depression with two initiatives: the New Deal and the industrial ramp-up to World War II. The economic woes of the past echo with every bell on the trading floor. We too have found a great enemy to defeat — not a man, but oil.

Oil is the enemy. Oil and the belief that limited, hard-to-reach resources will sustain a technologically advanced society that seeks to grow.

Thomas Friedman writes in his latest book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”: “We can no longer expect to enjoy peace and security, economic growth, and human rights if we continue to ignore the key problems of the Energy-Climate Era: energy supply and demand, petrodictatorship, climate energy, energy poverty, and biodiversity loss.”

We cannot afford to remain blind to the reality that every problem we face is tied to our dependence on oil and fossil fuels. But as Adam Stein writes at Grist.org, the funding and credit available to clean energy industry initiatives is now threatened because of the fiscal crisis. The ability of the private sector to bring about change and market-driven growth for energy alternatives will be hobbled, if not crippled, by this economic climate.

Now, more than ever, the argument must be hammered home: that eliminating the use of fossil fuels and restructuring our energy network will generate tens of thousands of jobs, create a new industry providing broader tax revenue, bring in investment options for the financial sector, and provide increased security from terrorists by reducing their primary source of funding.

It falls to the next administration to own this issue, to make the tough decisions required to resuscitate the economy and provide a cleaner, safer world. Let’s hope they have something good cooking.

William Owen is a freelance writer.