Designing a Green New Deal

climate friendly zone

dly farming ustrial beef

Chicago

DESIGNING A GREEN NEW DEAL apalachia regional rail line

pumped hydro

room for the mississippi river

Charleston

remediated coal mines

rice farms converted to less climate intensive production

offshore wind & converted oil platforms

major destinations for climate migrants

Leila Bahrami, Chelsea Beroza, Allison Carr, Yvette Chen, Zachery Hammaker, Sara Harmon, Tiffany Hudson, Katie Lample, John Michael LaSalle, Rob Levinthal, Katie Pitstick, Joshua Reaves, Will Smith, Jesse Weiss, Rosa Zedek

DESIGNING A GREEN NEW DEAL

“The two options are, either we’re going to intentionally do the big things we want, or big things we don’t want will happen to us.”

— Saikat Chakrabarti The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on a Global Warming of 1.5°C, is widely cited as saying, “We have 12 years before we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, if we fail to act now.” An important point of clarification is that the report actually states that global warming has already reached 1 degree Celsis, with a two-tenths of a degree margin of error. This means we might already have reachced 1.2 degrees. Based on projections of future increases, it’s entirely possible that we might reach the 1.5 degree tipping point as early as 2030. On the more conservative side of estimations, we might have until 2050 continuing with business as usual.1 Regardless of which timeline we’re tracking more closely to, we don’t have a lot of time to make the radical investements needed to decarbonize the United States. While the future scenarios might seem grim, we remain hopeful in the ability of a Green New Deal to tranform our economy and meet the demands of curbing the impending climate crisis.

GREEN NEW DEAL BACKGROUND On February 7, 2019, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey (MA-07) and New York Representative Alexandria OcasioCortez (NY-14) introduced a House Resolution detailing a sweeping plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 and achieve a goal of becoming carbonneutral by 2050. Commonly referred to as a Green New Deal, the 14-page non-binding resolution lays out the goals and aspirations of the program, upgrading efficiency and sustainability for national infrastructure and creating millions of jobs in the process. The resolution boasts 98 cosponsors, including Representatives Tlaib (MI-13) and Pressley (MA07), as well as Representatives Cooper (TN-05), Adams (NC-12), Clay (MO-01), Grijalva (AZ-03), Boyle (PA-02), and Fudge (OH-11).2 H.Res.109, “recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal,” calls for a 10-year national mobilization plan to achieve the five overarching goals it sets forth: (i) to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible; (ii) to guarantee universal access to clean air and water and healthy food; (iii) to reduce the risks posed by climate impacts; (iv) to ensure that any industry or infrastructure bill considered by Congress addresses climate change; and (v) to promote justice and equity, prioritizing what the document refers to as “frontline and vulnerable communities.”3 As of December 2019, two Green New Deal public housing bills have been introduced. The first, Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Sanders’s Green New Deal for Public Housing Act (H.R.5185) calls for investing up to $189 billion in deep energy retrofits to the 1.3 million existing units of public housing in the United States. The bill calls for closing the deferred maintenance gap in public housing communities, putting public housing residents to work on the construction, and treating this investment as the first strategic lever to pull in the path towards a national rollout of the Green New NATIONAL FRAMEWORK 4

Deal.4 The second, Representative Omar’s Homes for All Act (H.R.5244) calls for building 12 million new units of low-carbon public housing over the next ten years. The bill is directly tied to the work of People’s Action Homes Guarantee campaign and argues that a massive expansion of the nation’s public housing stock is the only path towards realizing a Green New Deal.5 Together, the bills and H.Res.109 argue that public housing is infrastructure, and that this infrastructure belongs at the front of the queue if the climate-jobs-justice aims of the Green New Deal have a hope of being realized.

A Green New Deal will be understood by most people not through the policies that come from the resolution, but rather through the infrastructure, buildings, public works, and landscapes it inspires. However, the resolution as it stands offers little insight into how transformative such an ambitious program would be in communities, the built environment, and in how and where we all live. Buildings will need to be retrofitted, the agricultural sector’s processes and land use policies will need to be overhauled, the current configuration transportation systems reimagined, brownfield sites remediated, and so much more. The resolution itself is best understood more as a request for proposals of how this mobilization to decarbonize equitably might play out.

To actualize the policies of a Green New Deal, designers will need to play a central role in the large-scale implementation of a national plan.

CLIMATE, JOBS, AND JUSTICE FRAMEWORK The Green New Deal is structured around three pillars: decarbonization, justice, and jobs. While the focus of the resolution is to address the global climate emergency, its primary contribution to the climate conversation in its framing: that we can only address the climate crisis by

simultaneously advancing economic and social equity. We cannot have one without the others, it argues. Inspired by the New Deal’s ability to achieve massive physical, social, and economic transformation across every sector and community of American society, this new effort also refuses to reproduce the same racial inequality generated by its predecessor. For planners and designers, it represents the best opportunity in a generation to offer an alternative to our models of practice that are complicit in the construction of this country’s colonial and racist legacies.6

The Green New Deal also acknowledges that many of the frontline communities most affected by climate change have contributed the least to cthe problem. For example, states in the South with large Black and Latinx populations have been living with environmental injustices related to the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries for centuries. As Mary Heglar recently argued, climate change “ain’t the first existential threat” for these communities.7 Meanwhile, the gentrifying, wealthy, dense communities—such as those in Seattle and New York—have some of the highest carbon footprints.8

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveils the Green New Deal platform as a way to combat climate change as a nation. Source: Pete Marovich/The New York Times.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 5

GREEN NEW DEAL BACKGROUND There are several non-spatial quality-of-life promises included in the Green New Deal, as well. In the process of this studio, we have imagined that by 2050 the Green New Deal will deliver on many of those promises: a jobs guarantee, a 4-day work week, large increases of public housing at all income levels, an increase in the federal minimum wage adjusted for cost-of-living, the widespread growth of worker-owned co-operatives and publicly-owned enterprises, improved attitudes towards public jobs, and stronger government accountability. We have also assumed the introduction of a carbon tax. However, rather than treating a carbon tax as necessary and sufficient on its own in the nation’s response to the climate crisis, we have treated it as simply one tool in a much larger suite of interventions. As Jason Hickel and others have noted, we felt this was particularly important given the disastrous consequences of relying upon economists like William Nordhaus who have pushed a carbon-tax-only argument that scientists now believe is leading us towards a 4.5 degree Celsius world.9

GUIDING PRINCIPLES The policy and project proposals presented in this report are predicated on dramatic interventions that are beyond the expertise of the studio. We are a collective of city planners and landscape architects and not lawyers, economists, climate scientists, or ecologists. We assume as a starting point that the United States reaches carbon neutrality in 2050—that our net carbon footprint is zero. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve reached zero emissions, but rather through carbon sequestration we’re removing more than we’re emitting. Not every community, region, or state will need to be carbon-neutral. It is likely that certain regions with strong state-level climate policies—such as California, Oregon, and Washington—will achieve net-zero emissions the quickest. Other regions—especially those with highcarbon legacies like Appalachia and the Gulf Coast—will likely NATIONAL FRAMEWORK 6

act as carbon sinks for much of the nation, with wetland restoration along the coast and land reclamation in the mountains sequestering massive volumes of carbon. Put another way, some communities will be carbon-neutral, some carbon-negative, and some carbon-positive in the march towards a net-zero nation.

Much like the original New Deal, the Green New Deal does not describe a single piece or set of legislation. Instead, it calls for a generational shift in policy-making, made manifest through a wave of smaller bills pushed through by a progressive majority in the House, court rulings, executive actions, and state and local initiatives. While federal investment and national industrial policy and priority setting will be critical, the success of a Green New Deal is dependent upon the grassroots efforts of local communities in laying the groundwork for new approaches to governance, physical projects, and spatial strategies tailored to specific regions.

We do not expect the approach to decarbonization, clean energy economic development, and climate justice to look the same in Charleston, West Virgina, as it might look in San Francisco, California.

An outstanding question of any proposal at this scale is, “How will it be funded?” While determining the costs and funding mechanisms for the proposed interventions is outside of the scope of this studio, we have assumptions about potential sources of dollars. We’re imagining this as a massive climate stimulus. Rolling back tax cuts from the Trump Administration, shifting the country’s industrial policy, deficit spending, and new carbon taxes could be potential funding mechanisms.10 Much of the work proposed in this studio relies on restructuring priorities, which in turn would restructure budgets. Additionally, ensuring that all Americans earn a living wage, have secure housing, and guaranteed healthcare will be a boost to the economy that will have multiplied effects. We also feel compelled to note that the

Sources: 1 IPCC. Special Report on a Global Warming of 1.5°C. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/download/ 2 H.Res.109 - Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal. https:// www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/houseresolution/109/text 3 ibid.

only sectors that are ever forced to answer questions like these are tied to healthcare, education, and the environment.

It is not that we believe the financial dimensions of a Green New Deal are unimportant. We simply believe that it should not be held to a standard that defense, large private corporations, and the fossil fuel industry are never asked to meet.

Another assumption in this studio is how mobility will affect and will be affected by a Green New Deal. A central critique of H.Res.109 and the various 2020 Presidential climate plans from this studio is that they rely far too heavily (and in some cases, solely) on high-speed rail and electric vehicles in their proposals. Though we believe both of these investments are critical to the realization of a Green New Deal, they belong on the edge of any major transportation program, not at the center. We propose investments in bus rapid transit, improved operations along existing passenger railways, and a moratorium on new highway construction belong at the core of a Green New Deal. And with large numbers of people being displaced as the climate changes, options to move and the availability of adequate housing, coupled with transportation investments, will be critical. While we do not support forced removal of communities under the guide of ‘managed retreat’, our intentions articulate a broader program of adaptation measures that includes property-, community-, and regional-level investments in measures like freeboarding, infrastructural armoring, and resettlement. A revitalized Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could produce millions of public housing units in climate-friendly zones in the Pacific Northwest and UpperPeninsula for those needing to relocate due to drought, wildfires, flooding, or other climate-related impacts.

4 H.R.5185 - Green New Deal for Public Housing Act https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/housebill/5185/text 5 H.R.5244 - Homes for All Act of 2019. https://www. congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5244/text 6 Design and the Green New Deal. Places Journal. https://placesjournal.org/article/design-and-the-greennew-deal/ 7 Heglar, Mary. Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat. Medium. https://medium.com/s/story/sorryyall-but-climate-change-ain-t-the-first-existential-threatb3c999267aa0 8 Rice, Jennifer and Daniel Aldana Cohen.

Contradictions of the Climate-Friendly City: New Perspectives on Eco-Gentrification and Housing Justice.

IJURR. https://doi.org/10.1111/14 9 Hickel, Jason. The Nobel Prize for Climate Catastrophe. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy. com/2018/12/06/the-nobel-prize-for-climatecatastrophe/10 10 Cohen, Daniel Aldana. The Last Stimulus. Jacobin. https://jacobinmag.com/2017/08/the-last-stimulus/

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 7

NEW DEAL PRECEDENTS

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

—President Franklin D. Roosevelt In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the most ambitious economic recovery plan the country has ever seen: the New Deal. The programs and policies pursued by the federal government throughout the 1930s and 1940s included the establishment of Social Security and the development of more than 55,000 built environment projects in nearly every community in the United States.11 The New Deal itself was the product of three converging ecological, economic, and political crises at the time of Roosevelt’s election: the Dust Bowl, or forced migration of more than 3 million Midwestern farmers as the agricultural landscape of the nation’s food bowl collapsed; the Great Depression, which included more than 20% unemployment; and the rise global fascism.12 With a population of around 125 million people, the New Deal invested more than $750 billion in adjusted dollars over the course of 10 years to build new federal and regional agencies.13 The New Deal itself describes a political strategy, rather than a cohesive program being systematically pursued by Roosevelt and his colleagues—a set of improvisations held together by shared national goals, rather than specific policy instruments or agencies. While many of the New Deal’s early experiments quickly folded, the agencies that persisted tended to be those that offered massive infusions of federal resources to locally and co-operatively owned or run initiatives. Agencies such as the Works Progress Administration, Public Works Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Rural Electrification Administration built public works, carried out financial reforms, and generally responded to the needs of those affected by the problems of the day–particularly in economically distrressed communities. There are several key takeaways from the New Deal that are helpful in informing speculative proposals for comparable modern-day efforts to curb a new set of converging political, economic, and ecological crises.

LEARNING FROM THE NEW DEAL LESSON 1: THE UNITED STATES CAN DO BIG THINGS QUICKLY Within a month of the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) assuming office in 1938, the Washington National Airport designs were completed, and financing secured. $315 million in today’s dollars were transferred to the Authority for construction, and the building was completed in 1941. Over a billion dollars was invested in that same timeframe for modernizing existing airports.14

States. The CCC focused on more than land conservation.

It coupled that work with the replanting of national forests, the development of leisure landscapes like the Appalachian Trail, and the restoration of farmland in the Midwest, put more than three million young men to work during the Great Depression.20 The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) took a comprehensive approach to a failing housing market, reviving new construction and repairing existing homes, flowing capital into the housing market, reforming the

Similarly, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) successfully funded 417 rural electricity cooperatives by 1939. By 1945, around $500 million had been loaned through the administration and 380,000 miles of transmission lines had been constructed. With these significant investments, the Administration raised the rate of rural electrification to 97% by 1960.15 Other organizations like the Public Works Administration (PWA) budgeted billions to construct more than 34,000 projects16 and the Federal Highway Administration (FWA) built over 50,000 miles of new highway systems in just five years.17 The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built local schools, libraries, campus facilities at land grant universities.18 Additionally, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built more than 800 state parks and planted over two billion trees—half of all the trees ever planted in this country.19

LESSON 2: GOOD PROGRAMS ARE MULTIFACETED The most successful programs weren’t single-minded—they combined both hard infrastructure and social infrastructure, creating jobs alongside major upgrades in quality-of-life and economic well-being in communities across the United NEW DEAL PRECEDENTS 10

When I Think Back, REA. 1939. Artist Lester Beall designed three series of posters for the REA. Source: MoMA.

LESSON 3: REGIONAL COORDINATION WORKS (WHEN FUNDED)

mortgage market, and overall improved housing standards for about 12 million people.21 Due to general unrest from the Great Depression and damage from hurricanes, the Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Agency (PRERA) was formed under the Federal Emergency Relief Agency. The Agency was tasked with not only storm restoration, but also, finding permanent solutions to the economic plights of the island, creating electricity infrastructure on the island, investing in housing, providing jobs, building schools, and replanting forests.22

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) successfully combined public utility regulation, land conservation, agricultural and industrial development, and regional planning to achieve economic prosperity across an entire megaregion. The creation of the TVA provided new employment opportunities by constructing one of the largest hydropower construction

" "

" " "

"

" "

"

"

" "

"

" "

" "

"

" "

"

" " "

"

" "

" "

" "

"

"

"

" " "

" "

"

" " "

" "

"

"

" " "

"

TVA-OWNED POWER PLANTS 2 - 44 MW PRODUCED

44 - 222 MW PRODUCED "

223 - 878 MW PRODUCED

878 - 3775 MW PRODUCED

"

"

"

NON TVA-OWNED LINES TVA-OWNED LINES

TVA HISTORIC BOUNDARY

CURRENT TVA SERVICE AREA The Tennessee Valley Authority has been a fundamental force in the prosperity of the region since 1933.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 11

LEARNING FROM THE NEW DEAL programs in the United States to an area whose economy had previously been built on raw material supply that stripped the lands, mines, and forests.23 While the Appalachian Regional Commission was established years after the New Deal era, it was another attempt at the United States working regionally to address workforce development, critical infrastructure, and economic opportunities. However, unlike the TVA, the organization has been underfunded and unsuccessful in bringing economic development throughout the entire region with limited spatial impacts.24

LESSON 4: DISCRIMINATION AND RACISM WERE RAMPANY IN DECISIONMAKING While there are many successes of the New Deal to be celebrated, the government played an active role in maintaining and furthering discrimination on the basis of race and gender. Roosevelt famously refused to pass or support any anti-lynching, and the New Deal agencies fostered this same racist sentiment: • The Farm Security Administration (FSA) segregated newly constructed resettlements, often times displacing black farmers in the process.25

NEW DEAL PRECEDENTS 12

• The Federal Housing Administration fostered racial discrimination in housing lending.26 • The Army Corps of Engineers has purposefully flooded native lands for dams and approved the Dakota Access Pipeline to reroute through Standing Rock.27

LESSON 5: POLITICAL BUY-IN IS CRITICAL FOR SUCCESS President Roosevelt proposed the most ambitious economic recovery plan the country has ever seen. While imperfect, the New Deal successes were because Roosevelt focused on placing projects where he lacked buy in, especially by providing infrastructure, electricity, and jobs to rural residents. Put another way, the New Deal’s priority sites were those deemed necessary to achieving the ecological and economic goals of the program as well as those that that were not yet part of its political coalition. The risky decision to make the first major investments in the places where he was the most hated helped hold the fragile coalition together long enough to realize most of the program’s aims. A Green New Deal must be at least as comprehensive at its predecessor, focusing on the regions where necessary infrastructure investments are the least likely to happen without significant federal intervention.

Sources: 11 What was the New Deal? The Living New Deal. https://livingnewdeal.org/what-was-the-new-deal/ 12 ibid.

13 ibid.

14 A Brief Hitsory of the FFA. Federal Aviation Administration. https://www.faa.gov/about/history/ brief_history/ 15 Rural Electrification Administration (REA) (1935). The Living New Deal. https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/ rural-electrification-administration-rea-1935/ 16 Public Works Administration (PWA). The Living New Deal. https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/public-worksadministration-pwa-1933-1943/ 17 Sky, Theodore. The National Road and the Difficult Path to Sustainable National Investment.

18 Works Progress Administration (WPA) (1935). The Living New Deal. https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/ works-progress-administration-wpa-1935/ 19 Barnett, James, and Anna Burns. The Work of the Civilian Conservation Corps: Pioneering Conservation in Louisiana. Asheville, North Carolina: U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Southern Research Station.

20 ibid.

21 Bartke, Richard. The Federal Housing Administration: Its History and Operations. Wayne Law Review13 (1966–1967): 660.

22 Rodríguez, Manuel. A New Deal for the Tropics.

23 About the TVA. Tennessee Valley Authority. https:// www.tva.gov/About-TVA 24 About ARC. Appalachian Regional Commission. https://www.arc.gov/about/index.asp 25 Roberts, Charles Kenneth. Client Failures and Supervised Credit in the Farm Security Administration.

Agricultural HistoryVol. 87, N (2013): 368–90 26 Bartke, Richard.

27 Dakota Access Pipeline. US Army Corps of Engineers. https://www.usace.army.mil/DakotaAccess-Pipeline/

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 13

GLOBAL PROTOTYPES

“The climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.”

—Greta Thunberg Since at least the 19th century, development in the Unites States focused primarily on economic growth. Environmental concerns did not receive serious national attention until 1970, with the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act. Since then, countries around the world have invested in infrastructure, communities, and the environment in ways that have much to offer to the Green New Dealers. These projects cross a variety of sectors and while many are not at the same scale as the United States, they can provide valuable insights in developing interventions to equitably decarbonize and provide jobs.

INSPIRATION FROM ABROAD ENERGY As countries plan to decarbonize their energy sectors, Costa Rica stands apart as a leader in the field. It is one of the few countries already relying primarily on renewable energy, and it recently adopted plans to phase out fossil fuels entirely.

Cost Rica plans to decarbonize by 2050, making it the first country other than the Marshall Islands to make such a pledge. Notably, the country is small in size and its largest renewable source is currently hydropower from dams, which present their own environmental challenges.28 In Germany’s Ruhr Valley, decarbonization is well underway on a regional scale. Once the center of coal, iron, and steel production, the Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park is now an ecological destination, promoting new forms of economic development in a transformed former industrial area. It came to fruition through a decade-long national investment program, one that delivered more than 400 individual landscape remediation, economic development,

and other infrastructural investments in a region once akin to Appalachia in its industrial economy, educational infrastructure, and ecological challenges. Though Emscher Park is relatively small in scale and still largely reliant on personal vehicles, it serves as a prototype for governments looking for creative ways to couple decarbonization, economic, and environmental justice concerns through a single coordinated program.29

TRANSPORTATION Spain’s central government built its first high-speed rail line in 1992. Today, the Alta Velocidad Española system is the largest high-speed rail network per capita in the world and the largest network in Europe. Although the primary driver of this massive expansion was economic development, not reduction of transportation-related carbon emissions, the high-speed rail has produced significant carbon reductions.

It is roughly the same size as the Great Lakes HSR network proposed by the Obama Administration.30

The Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park was a program for structural changes in the German Ruhr region from 1989 to 1999 in order to show new concepts in terms of social, cultural and ecologic ideas. Source: Latz + Partner.

GLOBAL PROTOTYPES 16

FOOD & AGRICULTURE

LAND AND WATER

China’s Grain for Green program and Africa’s Great Green Wall are large-scale afforestation efforts with a focus on erosion control and desertification, respectively. China’s program compensates individual farmers with cash, grain, and saplings to convert farmland into shrubland or forest, all aimed at slowing the southern expansion of the Gobi Desert.

While this program has produced some successes, many farmers intend to convert their land back once the payments stop.31 In contrast to China’s Grain for Green program, the Great Green Wall program has required multinational cooperation across the sub-Saharan zone of Africa both in terms of funding and implementation. Initially developed as a simple shelterbelt of trees—an idea that quickly dissolved as its pilot projects failed spectacularly—the Great Green Wall is now focused on community agro-forestry projects throughout the sub-Saharan zone. The continent-wide initiative strives to create a green landscape across North Africa—one that puts communities to work, conserves soil and water resources, and is attuned to local planting and land management cultures. It very much remains a work in-progress.32

As the climate crisis worsens, considerations for land and water should be integrated into any large-scale planning effort. Singapore’s real estate development has been largely influenced by its limited land mass; dense housing has allowed the city to preserve precious natural resources.

Water conservation efforts have been achieved by strong branding, sunlighting channeled waters, and creating closedloop water systems. In the Netherlands, the Room for the River initiative has linked critical infrastructure for defenses against natural disasters with desirable amenities to help reduce political backlash.35

HOUSING Despite decades of underinvestment in public housing in the United States, many forms of social housing have flourished in other parts of the world. In Singapore, public housing is not reserved for low-income; roughly 80% of the population lives in public housing.33 Vienna is another example of successful public housing investment. Internationally renowned for its attention to design and the robust connection to services and amenities, Vienna’s public housing has created healthy and stable communities for decades.34 The success of public housing is dependent on quality design and integration into the larger community.

In Red Vienna, the success of social housing for the working and middle classes shows how beautiful homes can coexist with urban housing for all..

Source: Dreizung / Wikimedia.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 17

FOCUS SECTORS

ENERGY

TRANSPORTATION

HOUSING

FOOD + AGRICULTURE

LAND + WATER

ENERGY SECTOR INTRODUCTION TO ENERGY Transitioning away from fossil fuels in favor of clean power is central to a Green New Deal, as the energy sector comprises 28 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Decarbonizing energy production by 2050 involves not only transferring the entire electric grid to renewable energy, but also, electrifying other sectors of energy so that they, too, can be on a renewable energy grid. As the country’s energy mix changes, there will be major implications for land use, employment, and energy affordability as this new grid is built. Every electric appliance or vehicle brought online will require a larger grid and the mining of more rare earth minerals used to construct solar and wind power. To achieve the goals of a Green New Deal, the U.S. must not only decarbonize its electricity sector, but also lower its demand for energy consumption.

CURRENT CHALLENGES Our current energy sector is the most significant contributor to climate change.

The emissions from burning fossil fuels is fundamentally changing the earth’s atmospheric and oceanic systems.

At the same time, the U.S. economy relies heavily on fossil fuels for energy generation. In 2018, 80% of the U.S.’s energy was produced by fossil fuels and only 11% was drawn from renewables. Wind and solar make up just 30% of the renewable energy mix. Most of the remaining renewable energy is drawn from biomass and hydroelectric sources.

Americans are energy insecure or energy burdened.

Many Americans are struggling economically, and energy costs are increasingly making up a larger share of their monthly expenses. Almost a quarter of all Americans are burdened by their energy expenses, meaning they pay more than 6% of their income on energy bills. This problem is even ENERGY SECTOR 20

more pronounced for low-income households. More than two-thirds of low-income households are considered energy cost-burdened.36 Income spent on energy represents money that is not spent on other necessities, such as housing, healthcare, food, transportation, and education.

Fossil fuel extraction and production is a land-intensive activity.

Currently, roughly 7,800 square miles of land is used for coal extraction and production and roughly 39,000 square miles is used for oil production. As a point of comparison, these two uses combine to take up the size of entire states of New Jersey and Kansas. There is another 755,000 square miles reserved for fossil fuel energy expansion nation-wide.37 The production of solar panels and wind turbines will require resource extraction across the world on a currently unprecedented scale.

Renewable energy technologies right now require lithium, neodynium, silver, and other materials mined across the global South to power it. The mines where these minerals are found are not only environmentally damaging, they also terribly abuse their workers in pursuit of profit for largely western companies.38 This will be a continuing challenge, as current events across the world indicate that this material necessity leads to imperial forms of mineral extraction, or business as usual.39 If a Green New Deal wants to challenge the legacy of the New Deal on its militarism and social inequality, addressing this fundamental problem to powering these politics is essential.

RECOMMENDED INTERVENTIONS Investments must be made in R&D and deployment of renewable energy production.

https://www.ul.com/offerings/wind-energy-technical-advisory-services

These maps show the proposed changes from clean energy sources between 2020 and and 2050, moving away from hydroelectic energy and increasing investment in wind and solar.

ENERGY SECTOR 22

Under a Green New Deal, renewable energy production would scale up rapidly and eliminate the need for fossil fuels.

This requires rapidly transitioning away from a reliance on carbon-emitting energy sources, such as petroleum, natural gas, and coal, and towards renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. The proposed strategy for transitioning the energy sector to renewable energy is two-fold: (i) shift as much of our energy uses onto the electricity grid while (ii) increasing the supply of renewable energy powering the electricity grid. Additionally, any decreases in demand on the consumer-side will decrease the need for transitioning the supply-side of the sector. Like the public power advocacy community, we believe that as much of the energy and electricity sectors should be governed through democratic means as possible.

This rapid deployment of renewable energy would require significant public and private investment. One approach to channeling public investment and encouraging private investment is through a National Climate Bank. Modelled after green banks in New York and Connecticut, a National Climate Bank would provide low-cost capital to projects that build out new renewable energy production capacity. This funding could support private projects and a share of the funding would be dedicated to funding public or nonprofitowned renewable energy. Energy cooperatives, already serving 13% of customers in the U.S., could be prioritized for funding their expansion of renewable energy. All of these funds should be tied to union labor guarantee, ensuring that the buildout of this new energy system is done by wellpaid workers and not the contingent labor force currently comprising the renewables industry.40 In addition to the environmental advantages of moving away from fossil fuels, the growth of renewable energy could bring important economic and social benefits. The fossil fuel industry currently employs millions of Americans. As these industries phase out, many of these high-wage jobs will be lost.41 A shift to renewable energy will require massive re-training program, one in which the national network of community colleges could play an active role.

It is important to acknowledge that renewable energy, such as solar and wind, requires a significant amount of land. A successful transition is dependent on promotion of mixed uses in areas where renewable energy production is located.

For example, in rural areas, large-scale wind turbines could be co-located with agricultural land or mixed with landscape to promote conservation. . Designers and planners will need to find creative ways to work with communities in the rollout of a clean energy program that avoids the typical conflicts over deploying renewables like wind and solar.

Land use must be replanned to halt extraction of fossil fuels and repurpose land for clean energy production.

The expansion of fossil fuel extraction on federal lands must be banned and damaged land remediated. Every oil and natural gas project developed today is tomorrow’s stranded asset—and we can’t afford to keep bailing the fossil fuel industry out for speculating on and exploiting the planet’s resources.42 As it stands, mining companies are legally required to ‘rehabilitate’ lands that are mined, but that rarely amounts to more than erosion control. If the US expanded these requirements to all energy producing sectors, expanded its definition of rehabilitation to better suit what ideal environmental reclamation looks like (including carbon sequestration), and provided the DOI with power through which it could force those who became rich from these polluting enterprises to clean up their messes, the US could begin to heal from the generations of damage inflicted by fossil fuels. Additionally, the Department of the Interior should be empowered to aggressively pursue oil, gas, and mining companies who have caused environmental damage through the judicial system.

Germany is converting old, coal-powered powerplants into lithium-ion battery storage, taking an environmentally damaging source of energy and transitioning it into a healthier one. Australia, similarly, is converting old gold mines into new pumped hydroelectric energy storage—providing a creative way to rehabilitate mines for new, renewable energy production. Further, rather than fully rehabilitating every site in the U.S., we could incentivize stable sites for healthier industrial uses, including renewable energy production.

We have a veritable wealth of infrastructure that we can repurpose for our energy transition, we just need to think of new, better uses for what we’ve already built.

The deep problem of imperialism in energy extraction must be addressed.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 23

The U.S. cannot achieve the Green New Deal’s vision of being socially just and righting historic wrongs while continuing its exploitative practices abroad. To this end, it is important to consider demilitarization as a potential set of policies for reducing the country’s negative influence abroad. Speaking specifically to the mining needs of energy production for the renewable future, there are two recommendations beyond this. As one of the problems of energy manufacturing is planned obsolescence in the electronics industry, where batteries are designed to degrade over time, the U.S. could follow the French example and force manufacturers to recycle their products.43 This would force manufacturers to develop differently cost-effective electronics for solar cells and batteries that could positively impact the lifespan of an individual product. It will, at the very least, force

manufacturers to reuse their materials, reducing the overall demand on mined goods across the world.

The U.S. could also impose standards for the purchasing of its materials. International cooperation around the purchasing of raw materials is a historically important task, and forms the basis for the modern UN and the European Union.44 Conducting diplomacy with the countries where mining is happening and offering trade regulations that affirm the dignity for the environment and workers that produce rare earth minerals is possible. Right now, Western companies dominate the mining of the world, as well. If U.S. companies, or any companies that purchase minerals from outside the U.S., were bound to the same standards for environmental remediation and labor rights outside the U.S.

Environmental experts are concerned with energy sprawl, which could have large impacts on our native habitats and on biodiversity. A successful transition is dependent on promotion of mixed uses in areas where renewable energy production is located, as well as reducing overall consumption of energy.Source: Wikimedia.

ENERGY SECTOR 24

as inside the U.S., this would reduce the gross hypocrisy of the current Green New Deal proposition.

Sources:

SUMMARY

37 https://www.climatecentral.org/news/fossil-fuelsproduction-public-lands-17747

Energy extraction and production lie at the heart of the Green New Deal, as carbon emissions are the leading cause of the current climate crisis. A massive climate stimulus can accelerate the transition from a reliance on fossil fuels to a society powered by renewable energy. This transition will inevitably disrupt industries that employ thousands of workers and contribute to the economic vitality of hundreds of communities, but it will also open the door for new industries and jobs. The current fossil fuel industry employs over 300,000 people across the country; however, the future clean energy industry will require massive amounts of research and development, new training opportunities, land remediation and reclamation, construction and maintenance jobs, and more.

36 https://aceee.org/sites/default/files/energyaffordability.pdf

38 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/13/ guatemala-canada-indigenous-right-canadian-miningcompany 39 commondreams.org/views/2019/11/12/aftermorales-ousted-coup-lithium-question-looms-largebolivia 40 https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-factsheet/ 41 https://www.bls.gov/bls/wages.htm 42 https://www.americangeosciences.org/criticalissues/faq/can-we-mitigate-environmental-impactsmining 43 https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/franceplanned-obsolescence-law/ 44 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-19194812

A Green New Deal must not only look at the carbon emissions and new jobs brought about by an energy transition, though, and must also think about international cooperation. Investing in renewable energy infrastructure runs the risk of decimating communities and exploiting workers around the world that have the natural resources used in renewable technologies, such as lithium, platinum, cobalt, and copper. While this is a tension that cannot be solved in the scope of this studio, it is one worth noting. With continued research, strategic investments, and adequate transitional support, there is an opportunity to decarbonize the energy sector while also improving livelihoods and working conditions.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 25

TRANSPORTATION SECTOR INTRODUCTION TO TRANSPORTATION The Green New Deal calls for a sweeping overhaul of America’s transportation system, removing greenhouse gas emissions as much as technically feasible and reversing the trends of long commutes, congestion, and pollution.

Personal vehicles, heavy-duty trucks, and air travel together comprise nearly a third of all U.S. emissions. Much like the other sectors H.Res.109 addresses, the resolution states that transportation policies must not only address the climate impacts of transportation, but also address existing systemic injustices. By focusing on a combination of replacing cars with a zero-emission alternative, investing in public transit, and building a high-speed rail network, the Unites States should be able to create more livable, connected, and vibrant communities. The best path forward means making the cleanest, viable option the cheapest option in all cases.

sprawl—namely the real estate development, fossil fuels, and raw materials (gravel, concrete) industries. Each passenger vehicle in the United States produces on average 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2017, 272 million cars would have produced approximately 1.3 billion of the 1.9 billion metric tons of highway carbon dioxide emissions.45 Beyond personal vehicle car ownership, the lifestyle choice of vehicle type also has a large effect on emissions. The growing popularity of SUVs made them the second largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions globally between 2010 and 2018.46 Furthermore, the emissions generated manufacturing a car is about equal to lifetime exhaust pipe emissions. Together, personal vehicle manufacturing and use represents the largest contributor of GHG emissions in the transportation sector. America’s vehicle use is also deadly. Over 36,500 people were killed on roads and highways in 2018.

CURRENT CHALLENGES

Poor air quality caused by vehicle emissions is a public health crisis.

The transportation sector is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 29 percent of all U.S. emissions.

Air pollution caused by vehicles affects different racial and ethnic groups at unequal levels. Whites’ consumption leads to a disproportionate share of emissions while the harm from those emissions are suffered by other racial groups.

Health conditions associated with exposure to vehicle pollution, ranging from asthma to ovarian cancer, occur at higher rates for non-white Americans.47 This is due to due to the historic siting of highways and high-traffic roads in poorer, racialized neighborhoods that were intended to ease wealthy white suburbanites’ access to city centers.48

In recent years, transportation has surpassed power plants as the largest contributor to emissions. The sector emits 1.9 billion tons of CO2 annually from cars, trucks, planes, trains, and boats, with more than three quarters of these emissions coming from highway vehicles.

The carbon emissions from highway vehicles is largely driven by the winnowing of transportation options in the United States to personal vehicles-only for most people.

This is due in large part to the complex of interests invested in the continued expansion of highways and their resulting TRANSPORTATION SECTOR 26

The United States has one of the highest road deaths rate of any high-income country.

The United States’ roads are more dangerous than any

Creative Commons CC0

These maps illustrate proposed investments in Amtrak expansion and electrified road technology and compatible vehicles for freight and buses.

TRANSPORTATION SECTOR 28

other wealthy countries, leading to 36,560 people dying on Americans streets in 2018.49 The death rates for pedestrians and cyclists are still rising even though the rates for car occupants have begun to decline. Road deaths do not affect all groups equally. People of color, the elderly, and residents of poorer communities are disproportionately killed while walking.50 Higher driving speeds are one of the greatest contributors to road deaths, yet current design standards incentivize higher speeds.51 SUVs, which have been the most popular type of vehicles purchased since 2014 are more deadly than passenger cars. Children hit by SUVs are twice more likely to die than if they were hit by a sedan. Overall, the popularity of SUVs has been a major contributor the 49% increase in pedestrian deaths between 2009 and 2018.52

Northeast Corridor and Florida, I-5 in Southern California and Pacific Northwest, I-15 in Southern California, I-25 and I-70 in Colorado, I-94 in the Great Lakes.

One for one electrification of highway vehicles is not a serious solution because of the energy and materials that entails.

Modernizing the current rail system in the U.S. includes electrifying all rail, phasing out diesel locomotives by 2050, and installing positive train control on all mainline tracks.

Additionally, Amtrak service should be expanded and frequency increased using existing tracks, expanding and upgrading capacity as needed. All privately-owned track used by Amtrak should be purchased by the organization.

Amtrak should supplement conventional trains, which can reach speeds up to 90 MPH, with high speed service on high demand corridors.

Electrification alone of the U.S. highway vehicle fleet would be an inefficient and redundant approach to reducing transportation sector emissions. Today, electric highway vehicles consume around 1.5 TWh of electricity.53 By 2050, if population and car ownership trends continue, a completely electrified highway fleet would consume over 1,000 TWh of electricity. This represents around a quarter of today’s electric consumption and more than double the amount of today’s renewable resource energy production. Such increases in overall electricity consumption would further challenge the already momentous task of greening the US energy grid.

RECOMMENDED INTERVENTIONS Create a 21st Century Interstate system through highway electrification, rail modernization, Amtrak expansion, and the creation of a new national high-speed rail network.

The U.S. needs to invest in research and development for electrified road technology and compatible vehicles for freight and buses, working to commercialize and deploy the technology by 2050. Speed and reliability can be improved with electrified bus and lorry only lanes on congested interstate highways with 3+ lanes, such as I-95 in the

In the meantime, the country should invest in rapid deployment of an electric vehicle and charging station program that prioritizes no-carbon personal transportation and taking as many vehicles off the road as possible. This program should be structured so that purchasing an electric vehicle in a community that will never be well served by public transit is as easy and as generous as possible (e.g.

West Virginia)—and that owning a car in wealthy areas already well-connected by transit should be punitively expensive (e.g. Midtown Manhattan).

Where corridors of less than 1,000 km (620 miles) currently support high air travel demand, high-speed rail should be built to reduce short-haul flights.

Invest in local transportation through public transit service and transit-only corridors.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) should be the standard for bus service receiving federal funding. BRT includes exclusive lanes, level boarding, all door boarding, high frequency (every 15 minutes or better) all day every day. High-capacity transit streets should be converted to bus-only lanes as has been done with Toronto’s King Street, Denver’s 16th Street, and New York City’s 14th Avenue. BRT has been successful throughout the U.S. in cities as different as Los Angeles, Cleveland, Las Vegas, and Boston.

Develop urban smart growth plans driven by transportation investments.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 29

The U.S. should pass a national Complete Streets bill, requiring states and Metropolitan Planning Associations to adopt complete street design requirements that meet federal standards, set aside a certain percentage of federal transportation funding for non-motorized transportation facilities, and require all federally funded projects provide facilities for walking, biking, and transit. The bill should be modeled after Senator Edward Markey and Representative Steve Cohen’s Complete Streets Act.54 Additionally, coordination between municipalities and state DOTs should be increased to focus on Transit-Oriented Development to reduce travel demands though more compact, walkable, and bicycle-friendly streets. The goal should be to create a unique sense of community and place by expanding the range of transportation, employment, and housing options.

Safety should be prioritized over speed with a national vision zero framework for all transportation planning projects.

Place a moratorium on highway expansion and the removal of urban highways.

No more tax dollars should be spent expanding highway personal vehicle capacity, and, in urban cores, highways which bisect urban neighborhoods should be removed and replaced with a cooperatively owned urban development program. Highway removal is an opportunity to return urban land to its local economy and to revitalize the immediate commercial districts and residential neighborhoods.

The land uses that replaces urban highways should be determined by the local community but broadly serve to repair the urban fabric through public space, public transit, and the re-introduction of a street grid.

Urban highway construction also played a major role in the displacement of low-income communities and communities of color during Urban Renewal. Previous highway removal has shown massive economic development for areas.

Opportunities for affordable housing and the sharing of economic gains must be provided to individuals whose families were originally displaced, and to those working families currently present in the area.

Not all highways represent equal opportunity for removal.

TRANSPORTATION SECTOR 30

Highways which exist along current public transit lines should be prioritized for removal. Highways in suburban and rural settings should develop plans for incorporating public transit along the Right of Way. Establish a national congestion pricing framework and various taxes to disincentivize carbon-based travel and fund public transit.

Congestion pricing has been shown to be an effective way to reduce vehicle usage in cities, congestion, and delays, while simultaneously acting an additional revenue source to fund public transit.

A car mileage tax could replace the gas tax as cars electrify while incentivizing reductions in total vehicle miles traveled (VMT). The mileage tax would not be a punitive, but rather replace revenue lost as gasoline consumption declines.

Charging different rates based on vehicle weight and efficiency would help to reflect the public costs of the wear and tear on roadways from different vehicles. It would also make businesses that use heavy utility vehicles will pay a higher rate than families that choose a smaller, lighter vehicle.

Since taxes are effective at either raising taxes or curbing behavior, an additional low tax on carbon for transportation emissions could serve to fund sustainable transportation alternatives. As alternatives become more available and convenient, the carbon tax would increase in order to disincentivize fossil fuel-powered transportation. This tax would be placed on all carbon-based activities including fossil fuel-powered vehicles, flight travel, and e-commerce shipping.

As cleaner, more convenient modes for intercity travel are developed, the creation of punitive tax on short-haul flights that have clean alternatives could help to shift travel patterns to high-speed rail and other options. A carbon tax alone won’t discourage shifting short haul flights to cleaner modes. For example, a flight from Chicago to St. Louis would only cost an extra $12 each way with a carbon tax of $220 per ton.

This is an ideal route for highspeed or regional rail. In the short term, working professionals and businesspersons will still be willing to pay the tax, which in turn funds the development of clean, enjoyable intercity travel.

The world´s first electric road is being inaugurated near the city of Gävle in central Sweden, the result of a unique partnership demonstrating the path towards fossil-free transportation. Scania is supplying with the electrically-powered trucks, which will operate under real traffic conditions. Source: Scania.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 31

Areas whose air quality does not meet Clean Air Act standards due to transportation emissions also require special carbon-based financial incentives. Any county designated “nonattainment with the Clean Air Act should become an ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ). Phase 1 ULEZ would charge a once per day fee to every combustion powered vehicle that enters the public roadway within the ULEZ. Residents within ULEZ would be eligible for electric vehicle subsidies with trade in of combustion vehicle. The fees will be used to fund the EV subsidies, medical clinics that provide targeted treatment for air pollution related diseases, and HVAC improvements to reduce exposure to pollutants.

It will be important to make these layered costs easy to understand and predict so that individuals are able to make informed decisions ahead of time and not be penalized for factors out of their control. This may mean sacrificing economic efficiency for predictability (i.e. fixed congestion prices for certain time periods rather than dynamic pricing).

SUMMARY 1.6 million workers will be affected by the transition away from combustion engines.55 Some of those jobs, such as the 900,000 gas station workers are unlikely to be completely lost since there will still be a need for corner stores and charging stations. Nevertheless, the electrification of the vehicle fleet will entail changing business models, uncertainty, and risk. Jobs will be created through the expansion of public transit, which creates almost two times more jobs per dollar than highway spending.56 While the jobs working directly in the transportation sector are an important consideration, the greatest overall impact on workers will be through improving access to jobs for the suburban poor through massively expanded public transit.57 Existing transport infrastructure, particularly the highway system was built in ways that caused both intentional and inadvertent harms to marginalized communities, particularly black urban neighborhoods. Some of those harms can be mitigated through cleaner transportation technology that will reduce pollution and noise that disproportionately affects poor and racialized communities. Other harms can only be addressed through the removal or reconstruction of the infrastructure itself. While highways have been the TRANSPORTATION SECTOR 32

most visible cause of harm, arterial roads, which have the highest death rates of any form carry wealthier and whiter commuters through poorer neighborhoods of color are a much more widespread source of disparate harm. Transit systems, particularly through the neglect of buses and funneling of resources to rail projects that benefit lowerridership suburbs or tourist destinations are an existing source of disparate benefits.

Rapid reductions in transportations emissions are possible using existing technology by reducing total VMT and increasing the share of trips made using public transport, walking, biking. Electrifying vehicles, particularly for rural areas that cannot be effectively served by transit will also contribute to reduced emissions, though electric vehicles are only as clean as the energy mix that powers them. Electric vehicle technology, especially trolleybuses are essential to move public transport from low to no emissions. There is still a need for R&D and technological development to make it possible to power aircraft through sources, making reduced use the only viable short-term approach.

The adoption of electric vehicle technology must be tempered by the impacts manufacturing batteries has on vulnerable communities and ecosystems around the world.

These impacts make it imperative the United States reduces private car usage to avoid shifting from one extractive source of transportation energy to another, and to avoid crowding out lower income countries from making their own energy transitions with disproportionate material consumption.

Sources: 45 https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhousegas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle 46 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/nginteractive/2019/oct/25/suvs-second-biggest-causeof-emissions-rise-figures-reveal 47 Changes in Transportation-Related Air Pollution Exposures by Race-Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status: Outdoor Nitrogen Dioxide in the United States in 2000 and 2010, Asthma Morbidity and Ambient Air Pollution: Effect Modification by Residential TrafficRelated Air Pollution 48 At the Intersection of Race, Class, Gender, and Highway Politics 49 https://www.bts.gov/content/transportationfatalities-mode 50 0https://smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-bydesign/ 51 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rYYJlhJwzNcoTG67tjEYG09uRZ67pFK/view 52 https://www.freep.com/story/money/ cars/2018/06/28/suvs-killing-americaspedestrians/646139002/ 53 Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US Department of Energy) 54 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?LEXQBs 55 Census CBP 2017 56 https://smartgrowthamerica.org/the-recovery-actat-one-year-state-jobs-data-show-growing-advantagefrom-stimulus-investments-in-public-transportation/ 57 https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/thechanging-geography-of-us-poverty/

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 33

HOUSING SECTOR INTRODUCTION TO HOUSING A Green New Deal for housing is an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past, ongoing today, with policies to transform nation’s public-private housing system and into an egalitarian, luxurious home for everyone in this country. When the federal government embarked on its first major expansion of the nation’s housing stock following World War II, it produced a system of racial discrimination and segregation that still endures today. It is critical that the Green New Deal rectify these issues of housing inequality and the current shortage of affordable housing while also addressing the ways these issues intersect with climate change, particularly intensifying weather patterns and sea level rise. As the NAACP’s report on climate change adaptation states, “the root causes of the problems our communities face—like climate change, racism, and economic inequality—are all deeply connected,” and therefore must be addressed in tandem.58

than 50% of income on housing.59 The affordable housing shortage is straining the country’s subsidized housing stock, which has decreased by more than 100,000 units since 2010.60 More units are on track to expire due to affordability restrictions; by 2029, the Joint Center for Housing Studies estimates that the affordability restrictions for about 1.2 million rental units will expire. People and households that are cost-burdened delay or forgo expenses in other areas like healthcare and can quickly fall behind on unexpected costs. Without access to emergency funds, households face eviction.

Changing climates will lead to more intense weather patterns, threatening the livelihood and housing of communities across the country.

Housing unaffordability, a growing population, migration, energy dependence, and more frequent and severe weather events require a federal response that is commensurate with the scale of the problem. Together, the policies proposed for a Green New Deal for housing represent a massive mobilization that answers H.Res.109’s call to provide all people with safe and affordable housing.

By 2030 as many as 311,000 homes are expected to flood every two weeks.61 Sea level rise will affect low-lying states like Florida, Texas, Louisiana, New Jersey, and New York.

The estimated half a million residents in these vulnerable properties will face a significant financial and emotional toll.

There are currently no proactive and adaptive federal policies to assist movement away from the coast to avoid disasters.

More immediate recovery policies for disaster victims do essentially nothing to help low-income families and our most marginalized communities.

CURRENT CHALLENGES

Household energy consumption and building materials are energy and carbon intensive.

There is an affordability crisis where rural, suburban, and urban, communities alike cannot afford their housing costs.

Existing households account for a substantial portion (22%) of all energy consumption in the United States. Heating and cooling systems are the largest drivers (51%) of electricity usage in the home, requiring solutions that better insulate homes.62 Low-income households carry the largest burden of the nation’s energy habits. The combination of poor insulation and energy inefficiency in low-income households

Over the past decade, median rents have increased while median income has stagnated. Almost 8 million extremely low-income renters are severely cost-burdened, paying more HOUSING SECTOR 34

Creative Commons CC0

Farming will change in a shifting climate. Increased water stress will impact the ability for the U.S. to grow various crops throughout the west and some areas of the Midwest.

results in a 4.6 times higher share of income spent on electricity bills for these households.63 While much has been written about household energy consumption, less attention has been paid to carbonintensive construction practices. The energy consumed in the production and shipping of construction materials can sometimes result in emissions equivalent to a building’s 10- to 15-year carbon footprint. Among the more carbonintensive materials prevalent in the construction industry are cement, iron, steel, and aluminum.64

around disaster recovery. The rule, issued in 2015, ensures that governments, states, and public housing agencies take “meaningful actions, in addition to combating discrimination, that overcome patterns of segregation and foster inclusive communities.”65 These rules apply for any community receiving funding from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Recovery and rebuilding processes must not further economic or racial inequality. And it should repeal the Faircloth Amendment immediately to allow new, ambitious housing programs like the Homes for All Act to be actualized.

RECOMMENDED INTERVENTIONS

Expand the National Housing Trust Fund (HTF) and rural tribal housing programs should in climate-safe areas of opportunity.

De-commodify housing and build social housing, specifically focusing on expanding access and choice for historically marginalized black communities.

Housing investments are long overdue. To achieve the massive construction of affordable housing stock, we must invest in the HTF, which focuses on addressing the affordable rental housing for the lowest-income individuals.

Furthermore, we need more funding to repair and rehabilitate existing public housing, including the Multifamily Preservation and Revitalization (MPR) Program. Existing

The U.S. should use the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule to eliminate exclusionary zoning, promote inclusionary zoning, and enforce fair housing standards HOUSING SECTOR 36

programs like the USDA Section 515 Program and the Indian Housing Block Grant Program target rural and tribal areas specifically.

Offer a “Discount for Buyouts” program to residents in areas impacted or threatened by natural disasters options to move, relocate, or adapt to climate change.

A national “Discounts for Buyouts” program would incentivize migration away from the coast by offering homeowners a discount on their flood insurance premiums if they agree to a buyout in the event that their home is substantially damaged by flooding.66 At the core of this policy is the homeowner’s

right to advance planning and their right to choose where to live. If there is adequate infrastructure, homeowners should have the opportunity to remain in their neighborhood to avoid further trauma caused by displacement.

Affected households should be provided with active case management and generous relocation assistance to ease the transition to a new home.

For the program to be successful, the community must play an integral role in its design and implementation. In addition, a “Discounts for Buyouts’ program should be accompanied by a coordinated plan to convert remaining land to new uses such as conservation areas, sites of clean energy production, or spaces of memory.

Create a new arm under HUD focused on addressing low-income needs in climate migration and enforce fair housing laws in disaster recovery and preparedness.

The potential relocation of low-income households away from coastal areas needs to be handled sensitively and supported by ample resources. A new arm under HUD to help families transition to new homes would bring greater oversight to the process, while connecting households to social services and job opportunities upon relocating.

Whether these households are moving into social or private housing, fair housing laws must be fully enforced to avoid continued patterns of segregation and housing inequality.

The ability of the government to ensure greater civil rights protections in public developments makes a compelling case for significantly expanding the nation’s social housing stock.

Require states to develop climate adaption plans and land conservation in exchange for federal funding .

Farming will change in a shifting climate. Increased water stress will impact the ability for the U.S. to grow various crops throughout the west and some areas of the Midwest.

States should be required to develop a climate adaptation plan in exchange for federal funding to incentivize comprehensive planning for climate change. Federal oversight of the state planning process can ensure consistency with national policy and the Green New Deal’s emphasis on social justice, climate, and jobs.

In addition to a climate adaptation plan, each state must create a land conservation plan that promotes infill development and reduces sprawling land use patterns.

The unique conditions of each region will require tailored DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 37

interventions that come in a variety of forms, including: • The rehabilitation and occupancy of formerly vacant residential buildings • Infill development on surface parking lots and vacant parcels • Adaptive reuse of abandoned factory buildings, retail stores, and other building types • Incentives for accessory dwelling units and garage conversions • The conversion of single to multifamily housing units • The introduction of greenbelts around suburban and urban areas

on low-income homeowners, whose population should continue to be prioritized in the first phase of the Green New Deal due to the energy cost burden placed on these households.

The inevitable densification of cities and towns must be met with proactive policies that ensure equitable access to green space. One possible solution is the adoption of Green Area Ratios (GAR) into local zoning regulations. GAR assigns a weighted score to development sites based on its landscape elements and lot coverage with the goal of promoting greater livability and ecological functionality. GAR policies have been adapted in Berlin (1994), Germany, Malmö, Sweden (2001), Seattle (2006), and Washington D.C. (2013).67

The replacement of appliances with American-made, energy efficient models can either be integrated into the weatherization program or treated separately to expedite the initiative. Public procurement of energy efficient appliances can reduce retail costs up to 20%.69 Investment in research and development is needed to determine how to properly recycle or dispose of vast quantities of inefficient appliances.

Programs such as the EPA’s Responsible Appliance Disposal, the E.U. Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Drive, and Germany and the Netherlands’ adoption of Extended Producer Responsibility agreements may provide some guidance to policymakers.

Establish federal construction and consumption guidelines for building regulations that lessen emissions and energy consumption.

Federal guidelines that mandate energy efficient building practices and materials would effectively decarbonize the construction industry. Simultaneously, the federal government can bolster new markets by investing in low or negative carbon construction materials when developing new social housing. Investing in alternative building materials that could greatly reduce the carbon footprint of housing production. Whenever possible, materials should either be sourced locally or recycled. The deconstruction of housing in coastal and other at-risk areas provides an opportunity for repurposing existing materials in new construction.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program can be scaled up to improve the energy efficiency of existing housing units.68 The program defines weatherization in broad terms, providing customized solutions to address a building’s mechanical measures, building shell, health and safety, and energy and water efficiency. This weatherization initiative currently focuses HOUSING SECTOR 38

The program has proven to be a successful job creator that provides a pipeline for training and certification that is rooted in skill building. Weatherization solutions are tailored to the unique conditions of each household at an average cost of $4,695 per unit. When multiplied by the number of housing units not in the floodplain, the total cost for scaling up the program is approximately $603 billion.

SUMMARY The construction of millions of social housing units, an expansion of the Weatherization Assistance Program, and policies to roll out energy efficient appliances and lowcarbon building materials are needed to remedy a housing emergency that’s disproportionately affecting black and brown communities while simultaneously creating millions of high-paying jobs. By mobilizing a green housing workforce, household energy consumption will decrease, and the harmful auto-dependent lifestyles of sprawling communities transformed. A Green New Deal for housing embodies a just transition by investing in the livelihoods of low-income households, reforming discriminatory housing practices, and guaranteeing every individual the right to affordable, safe, and adequate housing.

Sources: 58 AACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, “Our Communities, Our Power: Advancing Resistance and Resilience in Climate Change Adaptation,” 2019, accessed November 21, 2019, https://toolkit.climate. gov/reports/our-communities-our-power-advancingresistance-and-resilience-climate-change-adaptation 59 Aurand, Andrew. “The Gap, A Shortage of Affordable Homes,” 2019,National Low Income Housing Coalition. https://reports.nlihc.org/sites/default/files/gap/GapReport_2019.pdf 60 Airgood-Obryck, Whitney, Matthew Arck, Kermit Baker, et al, “The State of the Nations Housing 2019,” 2019, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/ Harvard_JCHS_State_of_the_Nations_Housing_2019. pdf 61 Oliver Milman, “Flooding from sea level rise threatens over 300,000 US coastal homes,” 2018, accessed November 21, 2019, https://www. theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/17/sea-levelrise-impact-us-coastal-homes-study-climate-change 62 “Use of Energy in Homes -U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA),” accessed November 21, 2019, https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/ homes.php.

63 Joel F Eisenberg, “Weatherization Assistance Program Technical Memorandum Background Data and Statistics On Low-Income Energy Use and Burdens,” 2014, http://www.osti.gov/scitech/.

64 Energy Technology Systems Analysis Programme, “Aluminium Production Technology Brief,” 2012, www. etsap.org.

65 24 CFR § 5.150 66 Dena Adler et al., “Changing the National Flood Insurance Program for a Changing Climate,” 2019, https://www.fema.gov/significant-flood-.

67 District Department of the Environment Office of Planning and the Office of Zoning and (DDOE), “Green Area Ratio Guidebook,” 2014, http:// understandtheplan.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ GARGuidebook_03_13_2014.pdf.

68 “Weatherization Assistance Program | Department of Energy,” accessed November 21, 2019, https://www. energy.gov/eere/wipo/weatherization-assistanceprogram.

69 Cohen, DanielAldana. “A Green New Deal for Housing” Lecture. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, September 30, 2019.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 39

FOOD & AGRICULTURE SECTOR INTRODUCTION TO FOOD & AGRICULTURE The agricultural sector is responsible for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, and it will also be significantly impacted and dislocated by the effects of climate change. Agriculture needs to both decarbonize and diversify to address existing food insecurity, the growing demand for food, and provide adequate transitions for farmers currently growing corn for ethanol and livestock feed grain. Agriculture, food, and related industries contribute over $1 trillion to U.S. GDP annually, playing a significant role in the economy. However, farm debt is the highest it’s been in forty years, the majority of farmers are operating at a deficit, and these stressful and strenuous conditions have caused the suicide rate for farmworkers to surpass the national average five-fold. Farmers are in crisis and one of the Green New Deal’s frontline communities.

by nearly half. Certain crops are large contributors as well, such as rice. U.S.fertilizer application is another significant source of agricultural emissions, accounting for about 80% of global nitrous oxide emissions.71

H.Res.109 calls for decarbonizing the sector, removing the pollution current practices causes, and ensuring universal access to healthy food for all Americans. It proposes we achieve these goals through supporting family farming; investing in regenerative land management; and building a more sustainable food system.

CURRENT CHALLENGES Current agricultural practices are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

The typical American diet is one aspect of food and agriculture that contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.

Replacing beef and lamb with another meat can greatly reduce impact, as 30% of methane emissions come from the digestive tracts of ruminant livestock, such as cows, sheep, and goats.70 Switching to a vegan diet cuts emission FOOD & AGRICULTURE SECTOR 40

16% 33% 7% 9% 22% 13%

RICE METHANE RUMINANT DIGESTION UNMANAGED RUMINANT MANURE MANURE MANAGEMENT ENERGY FERTILIZER

Emissions by category........... rest of caption goes here.

https://share.america.gov/u-s-farmers-feed-world/

Farming will change in a shifting climate. Increased water stress will impact the ability for the U.S. to grow various crops throughout the west and some areas of the Midwest.

Climate change will negatively impact the agricultural sector.

It is not surprising that an environmentally-dependent industry such as agriculture will undergo major changes as the climate continues to shift. Movement of growing ranges will have serious implications on crop yields, as is evident from hardiness zone projections looking towards 2099.

Highly reliant on water as well, increased water stress from drought and depleted aquifers will also impact crop yields.

Demand for food will increase with a growing population.

An increase in demand for food is primarily the result of standard projected population growth but is also due to the likelihood of increased number of climate refugees settling in the United States. This increase in population will further compound existing food insecurities. Currently 23 million Americans lack food security, in a country where less than FOOD & AGRICULTURE SECTOR 42

20% of our cropland is used for food production. These serve as obstacles in meeting the projected global food gap--meaning the difference between the amount of food we currently produce, and the amount needed to meet future demand. Projections estimate this gap to be a total of 7400 trillion calories needed by 2050.

Further contributing to inefficiencies in our food network is the massive total of food waste in the United States. Our country wastes 40% of the food we produce, the equivalent of 150 billion wasted calories a year. This primarily comes from the consumer stage but is sizable additionally is generated through production and distribution.

RECOMMENDED INTERVENTIONS Restructure land use in the sector with strategic shifts in subsidy structures, investment in clean energy production,

and changing zoning to support urban and peri-urban agriculture.

Much of the risk associated with specialty crops comes from weather, but many private weather insurance products available aren’t subsidized. Shifting subsidies away from corn and soybean production towards specialty crops like fruits and vegetables allows for the protection of farmers while increasing food supply and diversifying crops. A 1 percent decrease in the 160 million acres of corn and soy translates to an 11 percent increase in the 14 million acres of fruits and vegetables.72 If climate change renders the land less productive for crop yields, monoculture land and ruminant ranchland should be converted to either clean energy production or a mix of clean energy production with restorative agricultural practices. A large portion of farmland already goes towards producing renewable energy with corn grown for ethanol.

Harvesting wind and solar instead can provide additional revenue sources for farmers that would allow a transition away from unsustainable farming practices. Wind turbines uses less than half an acre, so farmers can plant crops and graze livestock right to the turbine’s base. Solar power can power farm operations less expensively, through solar heat collectors to dry crops and warm homes, solar water heaters for pen cleaning and dairy operations, and solar panels to power farm operations.73 In order to reduce the reliance on long-distance food transportation and the accompanying environmental impact, food for densely populated areas should be grown as close to its consumers as possible. City governments and nearby municipalities should update their zoning codes to enable and encourage local food growing operations; this can be achieved through overlays and the inclusion of appropriate permitted uses in particular zones.74 This can also be complemented with land trusts and political infrastructure to support urban and peri-urban farmers.

Ownership in the sector should be redistributed by investing in community land trusts and cooperative ownership models, providing reparations for Black farmers and indigenous people, providing pathways to citizenship, and breaking up monopolies.

Removing barriers to accessing land and capital are

imperative in a Green New Deal for agriculture. One strategy to achieve this is through land trusts and cooperative ownership models. Increasingly community land trusts are recognizing that people’s need for food is as fundamental as their need for shelter, and the work of providing both can provide jobs, sustenance, and self-esteem. Shifting away from private property to commonly owned land suggests a way out of land speculation, keeping property affordable.75 Profits earned from the leases go back into the trust to keep it functioning and to acquire more land for conservation.

Historically the agricultural sector has used deed of title and other mechanisms to dispossess 98% of America’s Black agricultural landowners. From the 1950s onward, this has disproportionately impacted Black and indigenous farmers; this injustice should be acknowledged through reparations in the form of first right of refusal of currently monopolized agricultural land, appropriate payouts based on inflation, and other wealth building resources. 76 Additionally, a heavily marginalized workforce should have clear and easy paths to citizenship. A national ‘Blue Card’ (such as California’s recent proposal) could revitalize the industry—anyone who has already been working in in the field for 100 days over the past two years would have the opportunity to apply for the program, entitling them, and members of their family, to a work permit and protection from deportation. After working in the fields for another 150 days a year over three years (or 100 days a year over five years), Blue Card holders would become eligible to apply for legal residency, and later citizenship. This would provide agricultural workers with the stable workforce they are looking for while eliminating the constant threat of being separated from families.

Along with land ownership, the sector must address the agribusinesses that have become vertically integrated, controlling a significant share of the market. Consolidation within and outside of the agricultural sector has hurt rural America. Commodity checkoff programs run by organizations such as the Egg Board and National Pork Board, should be restricted in their engagement of anticompetitive practices.77 Regulations should be passed for both local procurement requirements and composting to reduce waste.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 43

Closing the global and national food gap is made more daunting given the fact that the U.S. currently wastes 40% of food. Waste happens at three levels: the production level, in transportation, and at the consumption level. Encouraging government and other institutions to purchase locally grown food can strengthen the local food system. It establishes new institutional markets for local producers, maximizes the freshness and quality of food served by these agencies, and can support improvements to local food infrastructure, such as distribution and processing facilities.

Food hubs are an important subset of food value chains in support of local procurement. To support smaller and mid-sized operations, we must build the capacity for farmers to access retail, intuitional, and commercial foodservice markets. By offering a combination of aggregation, distribution, and marketing services at an affordable price, food hubs make it possible for many producers to gain entry into larger-volume markets, boosting their income and providing opportunities for scaling up production.

In addition to investments in composting infrastructure and incentives for responsible food use, regulations should

FOOD & AGRICULTURE SECTOR 44

be enforced to ensure food that is produced does not end up in landfills and is instead utilized to feed the growing population. This can be done through banning of food waste disposal, including specific requirements for residents and businesses- as Vermont has done.78 Barriers for WIC and SNAP benefits need to be reduced in order to improve issues of food insecurity in communities.

Millions of eligible people aren’t signed up for WIC and SNAP benefits. Barriers such as misconceptions around eligibility, transportation costs to WIC clinics, and stigma around redeeming benefits prevent many from receiving assistance.

Cases often close at recertification or miss one or more months of benefits. Clients might return after missing recertification, but must re-enter as applicant, placing an additional burden on them.79

SUMMARY Issues within the food and agriculture sector are intertwined with climate, jobs and environmental justice. Not only is the

farm industry greatly impacted by the changing climate it, but it contributes as well in the form of greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of environmental degradation.

Changing the inputs used in our food production and improving upon farming practices will curb the sector’s contributions to climate change.

Sources:

Farm workers currently face harsh working conditions and lack financial security, which can be improved upon through restructuring federal support as suggested in this section.

Economic stability for the sector would not only imply better life conditions for farm workers but would help to remedy the existing food insecurity in our nation.

73 https://www.nlc.org/resource/promoting-urbanagriculture-through-zoning

An important aspect of a just transition is offering adequate resources and support as industries shift and change.

Moving towards a more sustainable farming model requires education and support for farmers.

70 http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_White_ Paper_Alternative_Proteins.pdf 71 Aleksandrowicz et al, PLoS OneSTANDARD 72 https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/ farm-bill-why-dont-taxpayers-subsidize-the-foods-thatare-better-for-us/2014/02/14/d7642a3c-9434-11e384e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

74 https://www.ecofarmingdaily.com/farmmanagement/transitioning-to-organic/communityland-trusts-gateway-to-farmland/ 75 https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/renewable-ener 76 https://www.thecalifornian.com/story/ news/2019/01/19/blue-card-bill-gives-agriculturalworkers-pathway-citizenship/2614489002/ 77 https://www.vox.com/policy-andpolitics/2019/3/28/18283868/elizabeth-warrenagriculture-farm-policy 78 https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/local-regional/ food-hubs 79 https://psmag.com/news/why-is-participation-infood-assistance-programs-like-wic-declining

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 45

LAND & WATER SECTOR INTRODUCTION TO LAND & WATER H.Res.109 recognizes that that health of land and water must be improved and maintained for all species to have a chance to adapt to climate change. Leading ecologists have warned that the Earth is experiencing a sixth extinction brought about by human actions. H.Res.109’s call to “restore and protect threatened, endangered and fragile ecosystems” is perhaps more urgent than lawmakers have realized, but the Green New Deal is an opportunity to reevaluate the existing policies that have made it difficult protect many of North America’s ecosystems.

The Green New Deal also presents an opportunity to renew the promise of environmental justice. H.Res.109’s call to “clean up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites” can go beyond remediation and ensure that frontline communities that have lived with such sites can received adequate support and compensation by listening to those communities and the advocates that have long demanded action on these lands. Finally, fulfilling H.Res.109’s goal of providing all Americans with access to clean water will require new technologies and management structures for the nation’s water supply.

CURRENT CHALLENGES Ecosystems’ resilience to climate change is put at risk by the loss of open space and habitat fragmentation.

Urban growth and land consumption are major threats to ecosystems, especially when that growth is fragmented and low density. These development patterns cut off vital migration paths and habitats for numerous species, and studies have suggested that those migration paths will be LAND & WATER SECTOR 46

critical to each species’ ability to deal with the impacts of climate change.80 Because urban land cover in the United States is expected to triple by 2050, it is imperative that ecosystem-based conservation planning has a place in the national planning framework.

Although the federal government currently owns more than half of the land in states like Alaska, Arizona, Utah, and Wyoming, the eastern U.S. has much lower levels of land conservation. This is increasingly troublesome as the southeastern United States has one of the nation’s leading biodiversity hotspots.81 The land management practices of the federal government itself have also been called into question as more federal lands have been open to oil and gas exploration and transfer pipelines. In 2018, approximately 26 million acres of Bureau of Land Management holdings were under lease to oil and gas developers, and projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline across Virginia and West Virginia continue to reinforce the legacy of oil and gas on federal lands.82 There are currently 5 million acres of brownfield and Superfund sites in the US, plus 35 million acres of land used for fossil fuel extraction and production that need to be remediated.

A significant portion of the nation’s contaminated land is located in frontline communities that have been promised relief since Superfund began cleanups in 1986. Although the program remains active, the time it takes to remediate a site has increased from an average of two years at the program’s inception to 10 years, due in part to underfunding. The failure to appropriate money for Superfund and other land remediation programs is a direct affront to environmental justice, and the situation will become more urgent as fossil fuel infrastructure is abandoned.

Creative Commons CC0

POPULATED AREAS CONSERVATION AREAS RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AREAS RECREATION AREAS HISTORIC + CULTURAL AREAS OTHER FEDERALLY OWNED AREAS

Farming will change in a shifting climate. Increased water stress will impact the ability for the U.S. to grow various crops throughout the west and some areas of the Midwest.

2019 14% 3% URBAN

FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL PROTECTED LANDS 2050 14%

9% URBAN

LAND & WATER SECTOR 48

Fossil fuel infrastructure and extractive sites will become obsolete as wind and solar become the most cost-efficient forms of energy generation. As these fossil fuel sites are abandoned, communities will lose their anchor employers, but many will also be free from industrial pollution for the first time in generations. However, the legacies of refining, mining, and fuel transport will be present on the landscape in the form of both built assets and persistent contaminants in soil and groundwater.

Not all Americans have access adequate to clean water supplies.

Between June 2016 and May 2019, approximately 44 million Americans were served by a community water system that had a health-based Safe Drinking Water Act violation.83 On the whole, people of color, low-income people, and nonnative English speakers are the Americans most likely to be impacted by the lack of access to clean water.84 Between discriminatory development practices and a decline in federal funding, many such communities are faced with

entrenched obstacles to improving their water infrastructure.

Climate change’s impact on this already faltering system will be severe.

The challenge to providing clean water for all Americans is also twofold in its spatial implications: on one side, surface water and groundwater are polluted by urban stormwater runoff, farming, and industry; nearly half of stream and rivers violate the existing federal water quality standards. On the other, the infrastructure that is available to provide clean drinking water is often inadequate. Many communities cannot rely on rates alone to keep their drinking water and sewer infrastructure up to standards, and households that rely on private wells and septic systems have few options for support.

RECOMMENDED INTERVENTIONS The U.S. should invest in a new strategic land conservation through a “30 by ’30” federal incentive program for state-level conservation planning while adding dedicated funding for existing conservation programs.

The U.S. benefits from federal, state, and local efforts to conserve land for habitats, recreation, natural resources, and historic preservation. These efforts could be enhanced by coordination between federal, state, and local leaders to protect land on the ecosystem scale.

Priority areas for conservation include source water areas, biodiversity hotspots, and corridors that have a high likelihood of being developed. These conservation areas will be defined by the Department of Interior, and higher value matching funds will be available to states that choose to conserve land in these areas, given the state has a statewide conservation land use planning scheme. The existing federal programs do not have dedicated funding, and much of the land conserved is chosen by states on an ad hoc basis that protects selected species or sites but fails to build larger networks of conserved land that can prevent leapfrogging development and keep larger ecosystems intact.

The Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture maintain several programs for endangered species,

invasive species, and habitat restoration via the Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Unfortunately, these programs lack dedicated funding, or in the case of the Forest Service, funding is frequently diverted for fighting wildfires. Programs like the NRCS Landscape Conservation Initiative and Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) have the expertise to make a meaningful difference in land conservation efforts, but they must be more strongly empowered by the federal government to do so.

The U.S. should establish a Decommissioned Infrastructure Service to manage abandoned sites, as well as a dedicated federal effort to remediate and re-purpose defunct sites with appropriate levels of funding.

In order to clean up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites and ensure economic development on those sites, a committed funding source for Superfund will be required. Corporations and polluters should be paying for the program instead of the communities that are living with the mess. In addition to leading site cleanups, the federal government should also ensure that communities have the opportunity to play a role in the way that sites are redeveloped.

Dedicated funding for Superfund is imperative for rectifying environmental racism. Prior to 1995, the Superfund program was paid for with taxes on crude oil and the corporations that created toxic waste sites.85 Now, the Superfund program is primarily paid for by taxpayers, with little support for the program coming from Congress. Dedicating funding for Superfund and correcting programmatic inefficiencies will be critical for cleaning up hazardous sites.

The infrastructure formerly used to support the fossil fuel industry will be repurposed with guidance from the Federal Decommissioned Infrastructure Service. In addition to overseeing site remediation, the Service will also prioritize site redevelopment that meets the needs of the surrounding community. In some cases, the Service and the community may determine that a site is too vulnerable to sea level rise to host a new use. In other cases, site redevelopment can be used as an engine of economic development that provides jobs and new opportunities for industry in communities that lose their anchor employers.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 49

The U.S. should create a new Department of Water to oversee all issues related to water, ensuring access to clean drinking water for all citizens and manage the amount consumed and protected.

jurisdictions have less capacity to plan for land conservation, protecting their source water will be a focus of the 30 by ‘30 program for land conservation.

Although the federal government has the authority to regulate the US water supply on a large scale, it has delegated most of its authority to state governments.86 As the effects of climate change begin to compound, this distributed form of water governance will become more untenable. Dealing with water supply in the Mississippi River alone requires the cooperation of at least 10 states. A new federal Department of Water will play an integral role in giving all American access to clean water by facilitating state cooperation and supporting local water suppliers with technical support and funding assistance to ensure that smaller public water systems can address the needs of their communities.

The U.S. should implement “Safe at the Source” and “Safe through the System” programs to protect major water sources from contamination through conservation and provide technical support for localities trying to manage their water infrastructure.

Land conservation is recognized as an effective way to Land conservation is recognized as an effective way to protect drinking water sources from contaminants before water reaches the treatment plant. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, states can use federal funds for land acquisition in order to protect drinking water sources. However, this program is not accessible for smaller drinking water jurisdictions. There are 45,000 community water systems that serve fewer than 3,000 people each, mostly in rural areas.87 Because these

BROWNFIELD SITES

OIL + GAS FACILITIES

Beyond source water protection, communities deal with aging infrastructure without enough support from state/ federal governments. Making sure water is “Safe Through the System” will require a federal commitment to replace and repair aging water infrastructure, particularly in communities that are unable to finance repair, replacement, and new construction on their own by raising water rates. Grants and interest-free loans will also be available to individual lowincome households that rely on a well or septic system. With the leadership of the Department of Water, it will be possible for the federal government to support community water governance and local public ownership so all citizens will have a stake in their water system.

The U.S. needs a federally led effort to clean up the nation’s largest river, the Mississippi.

Th mission of the Army Corps of Engineers needs to be revised.

The Mississippi River system is the largest river system in the United States, draining approximately 40% of the country’s land area. Unfortunately, unsustainable development and farming practices have severely degraded water quality in the river. In order to make the Mississippi “Safe at the Source,” the Department of Water will develop a program to promote wetland creation and enforce agricultural best practices throughout the Mississippi River watershed. The goal of this program is to eliminate the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone by 2035, thereby protecting

COAL EXTRACTION

5 MILLION + 25 MILLION + 5 MILLION =

35 MILLION = ACRES

Farming will change in a shifting climate. Increased water stress will impact the ability for the U.S. to grow various crops throughout the west and some areas of the Midwest.

LAND & WATER SECTOR 50

natural resources in the Gulf of Mexico and creating new opportunities for aquaculture in the Gulf Coast region.

For the Army Corps of Engineers to be effective under the new environmental conditions that will be brought about by climate change, the agency must move from grey to green solutions. For example, a “Space for the Sea” program in the Mississippi Delta will be able to create more resilient settlements than the existing scheme of pumps and levees.

Many green infrastructure solutions also offer greater benefits at a lower cost than grey solutions do. Overall, the new mission of the Army Corps will focus on resilience, the climate emergency and preserving the rights of the environment.

SUMMARY Environmental justice is central to the Green New Deal, and it is the centerpiece of efforts to restore land and water. By refocusing federal land and water management priorities from reactive practices to proactive and remedial work, frontline communities will no longer be living in the shadow of polluting industries. Increased land conservation will improve carbon sequestration potential, offsetting some of the carbon emitted by industries that will take more time to become carbon neutral. Remediation efforts will create jobs for former fossil fuel works and for workers with other skills. These efforts will be especially impactful in areas that previously relied on polluting industries for employment and economic development. New land uses in previously abandoned sites will also bring new job opportunities to communities that have struggled to grow economically in recent decades.

Sources: 80 Adam J. Terando et al., “The Southern Megalopolis: Using the Past to Predict the Future of Urban Sprawl in the Southeast U.S,” ed. Craig A. Layman, PLoS ONE9, no. 7 (July 23, 2014): e102261, https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0102261.

81 Clinton N. Jenkins et al., “US Protected Lands Mismatch Biodiversity Priorities,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences112, no. 16 (April 21, 2015): 5081–86, https://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.1418034112.

82 Bureau of Land Management, “About the BLM Oil and Gas Program,” accessed November 21, 2019, https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/ oil-and-gas/about.

83 Kristi Pullen Fedinick, Steve Taylor, and Michele Roberts, “Watered Down Justice” (Natural Resources Defense Council, Coming Clean, Environmental Health Justice Alliance, September 2019).

84 “Closing the Water Access Gap in the United States: A National Action Plan” (DigDeep Right to Water Project, US Water Alliance, 2019), http://agenciafelicidad.cl/ closethewatergap/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ Dig-Deep_Closing-the-Water-Access-Gap-in-the-UnitedStates_DIGITAL_compressed.pdf.

85 Joe Wertz, “Can the EPA Clean Up Superfund Sites Faster?,” NPR, October 6, 2017, https://www.npr. org/2017/10/06/556041266/epas-scott-pruitt-vowsto-speed-toxic-superfund-site-cleanup.

86 Robert Glennon, Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It(Island Press, 2009).

87 Caryn Ernst, “Protecting the Source: Land Conservation and the Future of America’s Drinking Water” (The Trust for Public Land, 2004), https://www. tpl.org/sites/default/files/cloud.tpl.org/pubs/waterprotecting_the_source_final.pdf.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 51

REGIONAL PROPOSITIONS

MIDWEST APPALACHIA

DELTA

Natural and economic systems do not stop at political boundaries, therefore neither should plans for large-scale infrastructure investments or improvements to natural systems. A regional planning approach creates an opportinuty to build new political coalitions—from small towns to big cities—which is especially important given current political divides.

We propose a regional approach for these reasons, and to ensure that implementation is informed by local knowledge and culture, rather than top down planning from the federal government.

These three regions—the Midwest, Applachia, and the Gulf Coast—are major contributors to carbon emissions through industry, agriculture, and transportation. We cannot decarbonize our country without them. These regions are also home to many frontline and vulnerable communities: people who have been excluded from the American dream, people who are impacted the most by climate change, and people currently dependent on fossil-fuel-related industries.

In order for investment in a Green New Deal to scale up and garner popularity, these regions must be prioritized in the process.

THE APPALACHIA For over 100 years, Appalachia has been the battery of America. We imagine the future of Appalachia as a region that continues to be a stronghold of energy production, but one that is powered by the people through cooperative ownership of clean energy. While the history of Appalachia is one of exploitation of resource-rich land, leaving behind its people, the future of Appalachia is one that puts its people first.

The changes in Appalachia go beyond economic revitalization. Its urban areas are growing. In the mountains, smaller towns have lost population after decades of out-migration and disinvestment.

Appalachia continues to become more diverse, as well: the Latinx and Black communities of Appalachia are its fastest growing. With the policies promised by the Green New Deal, the future of Appalachia will offer more stability for people and the environment: no more schools will close from under enrollment, no more mountaintops removed for coal mining, no more forests will be paved for roadways. By leaning on strong community ties as Appalachia’s richest resource, a new path forward emerges.

We imagine abandoned coal mines repurposed for healthy food and clean energy production. Flattened mountaintops become productive and recreational spaces. New construction is carbon-neutral, while older buildings are retrofitted for maximum efficiency. New opportunities for employment, better options for transportation, and more places for communities to connect make the region one of the most desirable in the nation. In this Appalachian future, we are investing in its greatest resource: its people.

REGIONAL PROPOSITIONS 54

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 55

REGIONAL PROPOSITIONS 56

The Appalachian Regional Rail connects 1,800 miles of rail north to south - only 98 miles is constructed new

Growth Nodes [by size] Education Nodes [Land Grant Universities] ARR [Appalachia Regional Rail] Major E-W Connections Appalachian Trail Road + Rail Networks

40 mi

Left top: Cross-laminated timber (CLT) processing plant in Appalachia, Virgina.

Left middle: Construction of social housing built with CLT in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Left bottom: Series of propoganda poster for co-operative ownership.

Above: Regional diagram of proposed Appalachia Regional Rail line.

Right: Land reclamation options for existing coal mines.

Below: Proposed co-operative market in Appalachia, Virginia.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 57

THE MIDWEST Implementing Green New Deal policies in the Midwest has the potential to change how Americans eat, work, and play. With the U.S. population estimated to increase another 17% by 2050, “America’s breadbasket” will become even more crucial for feeding a growing nation. But to ensure a green transition, the agriculture sector must significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Green New Deal can be a catalyst for sustainable growing practices and for reviving the Midwest’s industrial legacy by boosting the production of new technologies that make decarbonization possible. It also creates an opportunity to restore the natural beauty of one of America’s most precious resources: the Mississippi River.

This section presents a vision of the Midwest after decades of public investment. With the introduction of high-tech, restorative agriculture, the population is fueled by a mostly vegetarian diet. The expansion of electric vehicle and wind turbine manufacturing has enabled the decarbonization of the transportation and energy sectors. Work opportunities in these industries and the remediation of degraded sites has created millions of jobs whose benefits accrue back to the American people. Frontline and immigrant communities play an important role in this new economy and acts of reparations are offered to indigenous groups to begin a process of healing.

We invite you to follow the lives of three friends as they traverse this new landscape. You will learn how they have been impacted by Green New Deal policies and join them as they take a low-carbon cruise down the Mississippi.

REGIONAL PROPOSITIONS 58

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 59

REGIONAL PROPOSITIONS 60

Left top: Graphic novel narrative of pre-Green New Deal.

Left bottom: Graphic novel narrative of post-Green New Deal.

Left: Map of regional transportation along the Mississippi River.

Top: Regional diagram of proposed Appalachia Regional Rail line.

Above: Series of propoganda posters highlighting the graphic novel narrative.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 61

THE DELTA For far too long, the United States has exploited the people and natural resources of the Delta region for the benefit of big business and industry. This legacy of dispossession and extraction is the starting point for our vision of the Green New Deal in the Delta, which builds upon the foundation of organizing and resistance in the South. A Green New Deal addresses these interlocking injustices and strengthens communities with generous support and funding. The implementation of a Green New Deal in the Delta is informed by the experiences and opinions of communities that have suffered the worst of the region’s history of genocide, enslavement, and environmental racism.

This section demonstrates the work of an empowered Delta Regional Authority, the main implementation arm fora Green New Deal in the region. Coastal marshes and restored wetlands sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Oil rigs are decommissioned and replaced by wind turbines, which support new coral reef growth. These remediation efforts create opportunities for high-wage jobs while building ecological buffers against future storms. A massive public investment in housing offers people living in vulnerable areas the opportunity to live in safe and connected communities. A restored coast gives rebirth to a once-thriving fishing industry.

We invite you to explore three transects — offshore, coastal, and land — which each demonstrate the economic, social, and environmental changes in the Delta. Our ultimate goal is to establish care for the region’s people, ecology, and ways of life.

REGIONAL PROPOSITIONS 62

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 63

REGIONAL PROPOSITIONS 64

Left: The Delta region through the years showing impacts of Green New Deal policies.

Bottom: Carbon flow diagram Right: Series of propoganda posters by the Delta Regional Authority.

DESIGNING THE GREEN NEW DEAL 65