The One Principle The Green New Deal is Missing
The GND offers a bold framework for the change we need to see. At the same time this progressive manifesto does not clearly define our expectations from companies on climate change. Adding one principle requiring compliance with the Paris Agreement goals can fix it, sending a strong message about the need for companies to start treating climate change as a crisis.
The Green New Deal (GND) that was presented last week by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the best things that happened here lately. It’s bold, visionary, progressive, holistic and isn’t afraid to push the envelope and offer exponential rather than an incremental roadmap for change.
What I found impressive in particular was the effort to mainstream a bold narrative that connects the dots between climate change and social justice. When was the last time you’ve seen this language in a Congress resolution?
“Whereas climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction have exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘systemic injustices’’)”
Yet, as much as I like the GND and find it pretty comprehensive as a progressive manifesto I still feel that something is missing there. The boldness of the vision behind it, as well as the fact that it is a resolution, purposely “putting forward a set of principles, not prescriptions” got me thinking about one more principle that would have made the GND more complete.
This principle is very simple: Companies need to comply with the Paris Agreement goals. That’s it. 9 words that can make a hell of a difference. Maybe (on the FAQ document) we can also add the Paris Agreement goals just as a reminder:
“The Paris Agreement central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.“
This principle is based first and foremost on the understanding that companies should be required to act on climate change, not according with what they want to do, but in accordance with what they need to do to help limit global warming to 1.5C. It is also more than just an iteration of the old ‘polluter pays’ principle, which “is the commonly accepted practice that those who produce pollution should bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health or the environment”.
While the ‘polluter pays’ principle focuses on internalization of environmental costs and is associated with different carbon pricing schemes, this new principle, which we can call the ‘new normal responsibility’ principle, is about adjusting business to a new reality, in which “climate change defines our existence”. It is about fundamentally transforming business’ level of commitment to fighting climate change and making corporates acknowledge that the age of ‘normal responsibility’ (CSR), or do-whatever-you-are-willing-to-do is over.
The framing here is important. While I know this resolution intentionally does not get into specifics, it could be useful to add a footnote saying: “this principle is about a green revolution, not carbon tax.” Using Thomas Friedman’s language is not about giving him some credit for using the term GNP a decade ago, but about considering the compliance with the Paris Agreement as a driver of innovation, not an accounting mechanism. This is not just a wishful thinking — just read the cases studies of companies who voluntarily choose to comply with the Paris Agreement, working with the Science-Based Targets initiative and see for yourself.
Moreover, if we’re looking to change a system we need to remember that in terms of leverage points, or places to intervene in the system, using carbon tax according to Donella Meadows’ framework will be far less effective than changing the rules of the system, not to mention changing “the mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, power structure, rules, its culture — arises.”
Talking about the responsibility of companies, it’s important to remember that a relatively small number of companies (mostly energy companies) is responsible for the majority of GHG emissions. According to one report (CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017) “25 corporate and state producing entities account for 51% of global industrial GHG emissions. All 100 producers account for 71% of global industrial GHG emissions”. Another paper suggests: “emissions traced to these 90 carbon producers contributed approximately “42–50% of the rise in global mean temperature” over the 1880–2010 period.”
At the same time, the ‘new normal responsibility’ principle goes beyond focusing just on making the top emitters accountable for their contribution to global change. It is about insuring that climate change becomes part of the DNA of every corporation, from Amazon to JPMorgan Chase. Some may argue that this is already the case, but as a recent CERES analysis of more than 600 of the largest public companies in the U.S. found out this is far from being true. While 64 percent of the companies have pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, only 36% have set deadlines for action, and just 9% have set science-based targets in line with the Paris climate agreement goals. In other words, most companies may talk about fighting climate change, but only a few actually do what they need to do about it. This type of insufficient response is a “luxury” we can no longer afford.
One possible counter-argument to this principle may be that we, the consumers, are the ones actually responsible for the climate impacts of these companies. After all, as Richard Heede, the co-founder and co-director of the Climate Accountability Institute points out: “the emissions directly produced by oil, gas, and coal companies amount to about 10 percent of fossil fuel emissions. Ninety percent are from their products.”
My reply is that the GND is about rewriting the contract between government, business and people, and the new contract puts more responsibility on the two more powerful parts in this triangle — government and business. They have the power to lead this change and the responsibility to do so, especially corporations that dragged their feet on climate change for so long, just because it was worthwhile and possible to do so.
The GND offers more than just a blueprint for a better future — it offers a new human-based operating system for society. This new operating system, however, cannot offer to connect the dots between environmental policy and economic policy without redefining our expectations from companies on climate change. Framing these expectations around compliance with the Paris Agreement goals will send a strong message about the need for companies to start treating climate change as a crisis.
As Greta Thunberg noted in her speech at Davos, “it seems money and growth are our only main concerns” — the GND is already a big step towards changing this paradigm. However, as Thunberg suggested: “The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility.” That critical part is still missing from the GND. Adding the suggested “new normal responsibility’ principle can fix it.
