Can We Reduce Greenhouse Gases And Increase The Economy?

Reducing GHG while creating GDP

Photo by Evangeline Shaw on Unsplash

There have been floods of Federal agencies facing reductions, firings, and defunding. There are so many acronyms from A to Z among these agencies that we can’t name them all. But, let’s being with Aid as in US AID, and know there are a lot more before we get to Zoonotic illness research as done by NIH.

Of course GDP is more than just the sum of products and services that gross domestic product implies. When we have trade, commerce, jobs, international migration and travel, we also impact the Earth and accrue externalized costs. That’s why so many economists today would rather we begin to measure well being, and human, as well as environmental health.

The Green New Deal, was an optimistic hope for reviving the economy with a green version of FDR’s New Deal. Using threats of job loss and sacrifice that emphasizes scarcity, many vesting interests found ways to suggest it would cost more than it would supply.

But, as the world heats to record levels each year, it is evident that some kind of Green Deal or Climate Force that deploys and employs will be needed to protect our environments and governments worldwide.

We can turn our attention to abundance rather than scarcity, because we have an abundance of opportunities, and plenty of diversity among people to invest in rather than zero sum games that benefit an elite few.

The good news is that while costs of using fossil fuels continue to rise, the costs of using alternative energy continues to go down.

The world needs millions of new jobs to facilitate a sustainable world. From food workers, to sustainable logging, from engineers in high tech industries to find real efficiency, to alternate protein source companies, from battery storage improvement techs to healthcare industries and workers implementing public transport and community garden cities.

We need workers to help in every stage of fire management, recycling, cooling centers, developing biodegradable packaging, fungi and materials replacement investments. And more.

Firing federal workers means fewer eyes on the prize of a clean planet.