Green New Deal for Cities Act can’t be dismissed as radical
Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Organizers and Candidates, n°80 | 7 May 2021
If you find these notes useful, you can support this newsletter here and SPRI, here. Sharing these newsletters also helps. Thank you!
Situation
The Green New Deal for Cities Act was introduced by Reps. Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a couple weeks ago. In the spirit of the Green New Deal itself, the bill’s all about marrying the stuff of immediate working-class concern (employment, access to basic necessities like housing and clean water) with what’s required to address a scientifically-declared climate emergency (decarbonization on a massive scale).
Far as I can tell, the bill works by providing federal funding to state/local governments who’ll then contract work out for GND-eligible projects. Dig around in the bill text for a bit and you’ll see there’s lots of initiatives eligible for federal funding, or at least considerably more than the listed prohibitions (restrictions include funding for police and carceral programs as well as bullshit climate mitigation initiatives like carbon markets and highway expansion).
Total cost is $1 trillion, spread out over 4 years ($400bn in FY2022; $300bn in FY23; $200bn in ‘24; $100bn in ‘25).
The GND for Cities Act is not radical
There’s nothing radical or un-American or weird about billions in federal funds being redistributed across the US for specific projects. The US military does that with over half its annual budget.
Matter of fact, the cost of the GND for Cities Act is actually pretty modest compared to the average amount the Pentagon shells out to arms industry firms every year:
It’s also a far more efficient job creator. Here’s a labor output comparison between investing $250 billion (average annual cost of the GND for Cities Act) in clean energy or infrastructure vs. giving it to the Pentagon:
Thanks for your time,
Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)
Find this note useful? Please consider becoming a supporter of SPRI. Unlike establishment think tanks, we rely exclusively on small donations.