The Green New Deal and Beyond. Stan Cox

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Carter had declared in his 1979 speech that “beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977—never.” But the president did not reaffirm that pledge in his 1980 State of the Union address. Instead, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan two months before, he announced what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine. The United States would put the world on notice that it would use military force to protect its interests in Southwest Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and other oil-rich regions.

      After almost four subsequent decades of burning fossil fuels—and having seen the beginnings of the climatic impact of all those emissions—we can ask whether the energy conservation proposals of the 1970s could have evolved into a transition to independence from fossil fuels. To take one small example, if Congress’s standby gas-rationing plan had been triggered, and had per-capita consumption remained at the rationed amount until the present day (taking population increase into account), we could have saved 920 billion gallons, more than six years of today’s U.S. gasoline consumption.⁶⁶ That would have kept 9 billion tons of CO₂ out of the atmosphere. It wouldn’t have been enough to prevent the climate emergency, but perhaps forty years of living under such a limit could have set off a chain reaction of progressive moves throughout the economy aimed at dealing with energetic and ecological limits. Left unconstrained, however, the fossil fuel business, and the myriad commercial goods and services that extend from on it, continued to grow like unchecked tumors.

      One legacy of the 1970s did persist: the Carter Doctrine. Ensuring the flow of fossil energy became a top priority for the U.S. military, which, not coincidentally, has become one of the world’s largest petroleum consumers. Several wars later, much of our armed presence around the world remains dedicated to securing U.S. access to foreign oil, natural gas, and other mineral resources.

      MAKING FOSSIL AMERICA GREAT AGAIN—AGAIN

      Federal energy and environmental policy would suffer a severe case of whiplash following the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Toward the end of Reagan’s first term, James Everett Katz of the University of Texas wrote that the president had “returned the USA to an era when the energy industry and the government cooperated amiably with each other. Gone are the equity concerns that were an integral part of the Nixon, Ford and Carter Administrations’ energy policies. Instead, a minimum of governmental involvement in energy planning is advocated, and Reagan’s energy philosophy has backed free market forces instead.”⁶⁷

      Six months into that first term, Reagan’s team put out a National Energy Plan, which turned out to be a search-and-destroy mission against any of the even faintly green or humanitarian provisions that had been in previous energy plans under Carter.⁶⁸ All conservation and renewable energy policies were targeted for elimination. Consideration of social impacts? Gone. Price controls to keep fuel and utility bills within reach of low-income households? Out. Consumer protection? Sorry, no more of that. Katz noted, “The plan also offers little hope that the government will take an active role in handling energy shortages or emergencies.”