Green Economics

I have spent more time over the past eighteen months than I should have had to spend just to try to ascertain exactly what Green Economics is all about and why the Green Party has seemed so un-articulate when challenged with economic problems that demand immediate solutions. As I have been going through the economics sections of some of the various incarnations of a Green Party platform, I think I finally figured out why I was having such a problem.

The Platform of the Green Party of the United States (GPUS) arrives at its economic policies from a very different starting point than that used by the Green Party of California (GPCA) and that difference makes it difficult to articulate a coherent set of policies.

The GPUS platform is clearly founded on ecological understanding.

No economic system is sustainable unless it accommodates the ecosystems on which it depends. Our current system - based on the notion of perpetual economic expansion on a finite planet - is seriously flawed.

The GPCA Platform presents a solution, that of community based economics, but there is no underlying set of principles from which the need for community based economics is developed. Even considered as the solution to a problem, the problem is not mentioned. Rather, the GPCA states that "Economic value should reflect our social values." This is not the basis for a theory of economics but rather a standard by which to judge the policies that result.

I am reminded of a statement from Buckminster Fuller.

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

Ecology provides us with the tools to properly structure an economy, our social values determines whether we got it right or not.

It looks like the task is really to synthesize these divergent views. If anyone has some ideas about how to do it, I would love to hear them.

What does sustainable mean?

I have a column that should run in tomorrow morning's home town newspaper, the Morgan Hill Times.  In that bit of Green Talk, I take a stab at convincing my readers that nothing made of material is truly sustainable, or at least not in the way that we think about it, manufacture it, use it and dispose of it.

This Green Talk column is not yet online, is sometimes delayed for days, and most won't see it in a small home town paper.  So, if you click Read more! you have a chance to read it now.


It has almost become impossible to read a story about energy without finding the word “sustainable” used at some point. We all have some basic understanding of what is meant. The current supplies of oil and natural gas are limited and those new fields being found are increasingly expensive to maintain. Therefore, our current pace of using up the supply of fossil fuels in not sustainable, or will not be for very long. That discussion is generally focused on peak oil.

Often, this basic definition is followed by someone's favorite solution for maintaining economic growth in the face of such diminished supply of energy. Sometimes, these solutions are reasonable, like an increased use of wind and solar. Sometimes they pose a technological challenge with promise of a future energy supply, such as biofuels from algae. Others so defy rational analysis and that they could exist only in a bad sci-fi movie.

The focus on energy, as important and immediate as that is, allows us to ignore the very basic notion of what it would take to be truly sustainable. Some of have tried to explain this with the analogy of a spaceship. We all know that space ships have to carry everything needed to sustain life along with them. That includes the atmosphere people breath and the food they eat as well as the means of reacting to any problem that might arise. We see an example of this every time a shuttle visits the International Space Station with a load of supplies and returns with a load of waste.

So consider that the Earth is like a space ship. We have a fixed set of material resources. There is no way to add anything. There is no /Enterprise /that will arrive with new supplies. We have what we have and that is that. This fact should make all of the difference in how we think about the future, but sadly, it does not. Allow me to give a few examples.

There are those who see the future of energy as coming from nuclear power. Even if we assume that we could adequately protect people from the dangers of radiation along the entire production chain, from extraction of uranium to disposal or re-processing of the spent power plant fuel, we should be aware of the fact that energy planners are beginning to talk about peak uranium just as we talk about peak oil now. The economically retrievable supplies of untapped uranium are very few and many are far away in countries like Kazakhstan.


Evan as we are beginning to make major use of lithium for batteries in everything from cell phones to automobiles, there are increasing concerns over a peak in lithium and a search for other energy storage alternatives. The largest under-developed supply of lithium is in Bolivia and that development is subject to political as well as economic factors.

All of this is to say that we need to rethink that manner in which we use the limited material resources of this spaceship Earth to supply the needs of a growing population and it's desire to attain at least the same standard of living that we currently enjoy. The current UN low population forecast is for an increase of 2.4 billion people by 2050. That is more than the current populations of China and the US combined. And most of these would try to attain our lifestyle if they could.

We need to consider not just oil and natural gas or even more scarce materials like uranium or lithium. We have to begin to consider even the steel used in construction, the aluminum we use to wrap our food, the wood that frames our houses or even the number of trees it takes to make chopsticks and toilet paper.

The modern industrial practice is that of a linear irreversible throughput, where resource are moved into from the ecosphere to the humansphere where our economic engine of growth processes them producing waste along the way. But then, we discard most of it, creating more waste and our governments encourage us to do this to produce economic growth.

At some point, even the most ideological free marketer among us will be forced to admit that this pattern can not be sustained and that we need to find a new vision of what constitutes a life worth living.

Whatever that goal is, we will not get there along our current path. We need to transform our economy to one that cycles materials rather than uses them, where waste becomes the raw material for productions; that recognizes that we are all part of an ever changing ecosphere. There will be economic consequences of such a radical change. It is our choice whether we absorb those consequences now when they are manageable or later when they are not.

What Next? A Positive Vision of the Future.

After I commented on Tom Friedman's NY Times Column form 3/8/2009, I decided to ask another Green what he thought about it. This is his response. Click Read more!.


What Next? A Positive Vision of the Future.

By Howard Switzer



Seeing Tom Friedman admit that the growth economy was a mistake we cannot continue is something we should encourage many more to do. I think doing what he did may be deeper than simply realizing the level of crisis we've created. It was an admission that he was wrong, that his world view was mistaken and he’s turned his focus to problem solving instead of reacting to perceived fears. I thought it was another sign of the apocalypse, the “lifting of the veil”, the great awakening if you will and many more will follow in an accelerating wave around the world. Well maybe it’s not too great yet but if you look at all the websites and community initiatives pursuing a more sustainable life it begins to look encouraging. Examples include community wise dialogue and listening projects, localized food production, localized fuel production, localized currencies, ecosystem protection and restoration projects, natural building, etc. etc.. All these things and much more speak to an understanding that human well being is threatened and we need to come together around a decentralized system to survive. While some internet activities may seem more a waste of time, the fact that we can find positive efforts to connect people doing good things, besides being a great store of information, is important to informing the human organism. Tom Friedman may be demonstrating the necessary change in attitude toward planet/species, a reversal of the attitude of civilization over the last 6000 years. Paradigm shifts are more a social/political phenomenon than a technological question and have to do with a new worldview and creating whole new structures which are supported by the larger culture. However there are technological artifacts we can probably incorporate into that new worldview.



The system, “Obama World,” is focused on the economic issue at the exclusion of the climate issue and will continue to fail miserably even if they can generate some momentary spurts of economic activity. This is because they not only don’t know what to do but that they work for the banks so any idea of what to do must squeeze through the narrow gate of those interests and all sustainable solutions are much too broad to even come close to getting through. Their list of priorities is anemic and intentionally deceptive. I do think that blogging and twittering endlessly about their machinations has diminishing returns. It seems to me we need to be articulating a positive vision of the future that people can embrace while also hooking people up to something they can dig their toes into. While climate may not make it into the “national dialogue” consider where that dialogue happens, the system’s media. The same media that spoke approvingly of Bush and his agenda and now speaks glowingly of Obama’s agenda. However, on the internet it is not only a national but a planet ‘round dialogue. I also find it is often in the local dialogue because the elders of communities recognize that there are changes, especially in rural areas.

If, as Tom Friedman recently wrote, “we’ve hit the wall,” then what is next? I think the answer is that we clearly articulate a positive vision of the future that millions of people can embrace. So what would be a positive vision of the future? To Greens it would a one that is sustainable. There is much we cannot determine about the future but we can be pretty sure we will be facing less and less fossil fuels, a collapsed global economic system and a climate change. These don’t seem very positive unless you consider them an important catalyst to change in the human organism’s relationship with the planet. The only model of sustainability I know of is that of a healthy mature ecosystem, like a rainforest. That is; one in which every species is fully employed, all work cooperatively while recycling all of their resources, and all products and services are distributed in such a way that every species remains healthy.

Okay, this should be easy; eco-villages full of happy people of all ages employed at growing their own organic foods, medicines and clothing materials, producing energy from the sun, wind & water flows and plants, biologically cleaning water and recycling all materials used; large scale mining would be stopped and metals recycled into their most efficient use in systems for food, healthcare, energy, and transportation, all broadly distributed. Creativity would be encouraged. As many of needed goods as possible would be grown or otherwise produced at the village or regional level. Local credit unions and currencies would be used. Currencies would only be used for a measure of value and a means of exchange. Various forms of non-violent conflict resolution techniques would be utilized as needed. Pre-industrial modes of building using earth, straw, wood, sand and stone, would be utilized in modern passive solar designs. There would be a variety of energy systems, some configurations would produce more than electricity but would also produce fertilizers and bio-char for agriculture, animal and human foods, liquid and gaseous fuels and certain pharmaceuticals utilizing human, animal and plant wastes.

Well, I’ve only begun to fill in this vision, there are doubtless many holes yet to fill, I am only one cell in the human organism. I invite everyone to join in. Whatever the final vision, it will be a collaboration. But there are many roadblocks to any of this happening because we live in a society that is extremely, if not pathologically, polarized. The major divisions include the religious/secular divide related to the science/religion debate and the political divisions we know too well and the divisions within those that we are also familiar with. So a critical part of the vision will be to resolve these polarizations. If we can do that, I believe there is no other party so well positioned to clearly articulate a positive vision of the future that millions can embrace as the Green Party.

If we have hit the wall, what then? Pt. 1

If the major symptom of our economic sickness is the fact that banks are not extending credit, I guess that I need to report things are headed back to normal. I received a credit card promotions in the mail yesterday. That makes 2 for the week. I did not even bother to look to see what the deal was, what the rates were, but it seems that banks want us to spend again.

Still, the bigger question is always whether all of the spending is a good thing.


In my previous post, I cited Tom Friedman and compared his view that our current system is not sustainable with that promulgated by the Center for American Progress. Friedman follows that first column with another that asks a similar question in a more fundamental manner.

What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

Wait a miniute%hellip; is this really Tom Friedman, champion of all things global in a very flat world? Or is it that global understanding which led him to be nearly the only writer in our MSM dominated world who is daring to ask that question.

It is clear that Greens would say that Friedman has posed the fundamental question for our economy. Unfortunately, Greens have not reached any consensus as to what we should do about it. To me, that is the invitation to explore a range of solution. For some of this, I will invite a guest blogger or two. I will try to have at least one update per week. Stay tuned.

Fundamental problems

The economy is in disarray. By any measure, this has been the worst year for the economy that most living Americans have experienced and it has not ended. While the government is trying to resuscitate the banking system, Whirlpool today announced that they were cutting ~5000 jobs because their products, the necessities of a good kitchen, just are not selling.

I will try to expand on this as part of my argument that Greens should be making the most of this situation, but are not. Click Read more! to get rest of the info.


It is easy, as Obama is wont to do, to blame this all on George W. Bush and the Republican Administration. McCain's running a messy campaign makes that easier. There is a connection between the current Republican administration and Congress, the raft of Grover Norquist funded libertarian leaning think tanks in Washington and the general idea that the market is more effective than government in creating what is good and the regulation only stands in the way of prosperity forever. Even Alan Greenspan operated on that premise from the time he first read Ayn Rand until the last couple of weeks.

Buried in this is the fact that Wall Street and the banking system had been turned into a bucket shop looking a lot like a NY OTB betting parlor. They would play a 'futures' game betting on the future price of a stock without actually owning it. By the early 1920's there were outlawed. This was just plain gambling and both state and federal laws prevented it until the year 2000. In that year, the Federal law was changed to allow what we have all heard of as credit default swaps.

Some explanations that I have heard of credit default swaps compares them to buying an insurance policy against losing your money. However, there was no regulation and you did not actually have to own the obligation (in this case mortgages) in order to get the insurance. That is rather like buying and selling insurance on your neighbor's house. Now, when the prices fell, everyone wanted to collect their money but it wasn't there to be collected. We now know why our grandfathers outlawed the practice.

As early as April of this year, the word was out. This should not have been a surprise.

The sacrosanct free market would supposedly regulate itself. The problem with that approach is that regulations are just rules. If there are no rules, the players can cheat; and cheat they have, with a gambler's addiction. In December 2007, the Bank for International Settlements reported derivative trades tallying in at $681 trillion - ten times the gross domestic product of all the countries in the world combined. Somebody is obviously bluffing about the money being brought to the game, and that realization has made for some very jittery markets.

So, we blame everything on Bush when this practice was signed in Federal law by Bill Clinton and he is no Republican. Better yet, the Federal law stipulated that no state could regulate the practice either.

Where does this have to do with Greens? It would seem to be a great time to go forward with an alternative. We know the problems, we should be telling everyone what will get us out of the mess, but we are not. We are not even making much of an effort to do so.

Greens have never come to any agreement on a set of fiscal policies. There Greens who are socialist, communists, anarchists or just generally convinced that big corporations are inherently evil. We need to be really clear about the alternative. We need to understand just what we mean by a Green Economy. It is not just, as Van Jones or Thomas Friedman (God, I hate put them in the same box) would have us believe: an economy based on global warming and energy, though that is part of it.

Even Ralph Nader comes off as being only an activist against some vaguely evil corporate state. His CounterPunch OpEd on the bailout outlines some steps to a remedy, but there are NOT based on any idea of what a Green Economics would really look like. It is only tweaking a broken system with any systemic modification. Still, that is more than I have seen from our leadership.

Republican have a Free Market ideology with a little bit of policing. Democrats have a different public ideology, but it looks a lot like the Republicans, only with more policing because they know that the Republicans are evil. Greens have no common understanding of either economic or fiscal policy and, for that reason, are not able to take advantage of the current turmoil to advance our cause.

Just look at the various committees that we have in the national party. None of them deal with economic or fiscal policies.

Arizona Republic on Green Party Ballot Access

The Arizona Republic had an article Sunday on the fact that the Green Party has won ballot status in that state. Thank you to everyone who made the trip over to Arizona to help in this effort or who contributed financially to the effort.

The Republic's story included an interview with Arizona Green Party CoChair Angel Torres, one that began with a simple questions...

Question: Why be a Green Party member?

Answer: Look at our platform - go to our Web site, www.gp.org, our national party Web site. No matter what the issue - on the environment, the economy - our platform is far and away better than Republican or Democrat.

We're campaigning for a progressive tax policy, for good government, to eliminate corruption, for renewable energy. Arizona should be leading the world on renewables (resources for energy production). That will provide good jobs for Arizonans and Americans. We should be retooling our factories to build solar panels and solar electricity. We need to put the American people back to work.

There is a real contrast between this and what I see from GPCA. In a time when the major concern of the electorate, when energy costs are rising, when people talk of no longer being able to afford commuting to work, when home prices are plummeting and the equity that people counted on for retirement is disappearing, Torres is talking about "putting the American people back to work."

Where is the economic program from the GPCA?

With hope for the new year.

Reading Bryan Caplan's new book, The Myth of the Rational Voter. Since you can not escape the campaign news about the upcoming primary events, the follow quote is a very sobering thought.

When a consumer has mistaken beliefs about what to buy, he foots the bill. When a voter has mistaken beliefs about government policy, the whole population picks up the tab.

What is the probability of such mistaken beliefs? I would guess that even a failing student in Econ. 101 has a significant knowledge advantage over the average voter.

Climate Change and Green Economics

This week, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon confirmed what the rest of the world knows and some of our own government won't admit, that Global Warming is real, that we, yes "we", are the cause and the consequences of non-action are serious. This was in an OpEd for the Washington Post that ran the day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Bali started.

Secretary General Ban ended his column with a call for action.

Our job, in Bali and beyond, is to shape this nascent global transformation -- to open the door to the age of green economics and green development. What's missing is a global framework within which we, the world's peoples, can coordinate our efforts to fight climate change.

I can understand what he means by "green development". The need for additional technologies is well documented. People are investing in solar, wind and wave technologies at an increasing rate. Just the need having a distributed electrical grid tying together these many sources of power rather than a hierarchical grid controlled from a few power plants and throttle points is a substantial challenge.

The data referenced by Secretary General Ban indicates that the potential is surprisingly robust.

Growth need not suffer and, in fact, may accelerate. Research by the University of California at Berkeley indicates that the United States could create 300,000 jobs if 20 percent of electricity needs were met by renewables. A leading Munich consulting firm predicts that more people will be employed in Germany's enviro-technology industry than in the auto industry by the end of the next decade. The U.N. Environment Program estimates that global investment in zero-greenhouse energy will reach $1.9 trillion by 2020 -- seed money for a wholesale reconfiguration of global industry.

However, I am not sure if the Secretary General has the same definition of "green economics" as I do. In fact, I am sure that I don't have a good definition of that term. It is, however, a term that we had better come to know if the Green Party is to participate in governance at any level.