The ‘Green New Deal’ will become a corporate-crony feeding frenzy

Nobody likes the guy who gives away the ending, but I’m going to be that guy. Some of you are new here, and so you don’t realize how this whole “Green New Deal” is going to turn out. But it’s pretty clear that there are only two possible endings.

Option one is the boring one: The whole idea dies in the cradle, thanks to its obvious impossibility and the evident incompetence of its advocates. Uploading the correct FAQ to the Internet was too difficult for them (or so they claim), but they’re going to somehow refurbish or replace every building in America and succeed with high-speed rail where California’s state government failed?

Option two is that the whole thing becomes a massive festival of crony capitalism, a raft of corporate welfare loaded with handouts, packed with protective regulations that dole out monopolies and enrich the insiders, and allowing the authors of the “deal” to cash out in the end.

This latter path may surprise some who see the “Green New Dealers” as a pack of raving anti-business socialists. But this is the way Washington works. It’s how it works under Republicans and Democrats. It’s how it works under the Left and the Right.

Whenever government gets bigger, there’s always some special interest benefiting. There’s always someone getting rich.

The clues are in there in the very resolution that the sponsors introduced. The measure promises to “invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century.” Read that again: “invest in … industry of the United States….”

This idea of the federal government investing in industry appears repeatedly. One passage calls for “investing in existing manufacturing and industry,” while another champions “investment in — zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing.”

All of these dreams become real only if the federal government forks over billions and billions to General Electric, Siemens, monopoly utilities, Tesla, Google, and the other corporate giants who hire the right lobbyists and position themselves to pocket the handouts. This is how it will take shape, even if it isn’t exactly the same as the unicorns and rainbows that some of its authors might really have in mind.

A great tell is the support it has received from Henry Waxman. Waxman wrote an op-ed in December touting the general concept of a “Green New Deal.” Under his byline, the Atlantic identifies him as a “former congressman from California.” But if you are versed in the ways of Washington, you know what “former congressman” means. Look all the way to the bottom of the piece, and you’ll see, “He’s currently chairman of the public-interest-focused public-affairs firm Waxman Strategies.”

This is all to say that Henry Waxman is a revolving-door lobbyist, and he’s really excited about the “Green New Deal.” Waxman was also the author of the last major climate bill in Congress, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, known at the time as “Waxman-Markey.”

Monsanto helped shape the bill. Coal giant AEP endorsed it. General Electric pinned their hopes on it. Greenpeace opposed it.

Waxman-Markey was a corporate-welfare boondoggle that would have handed out greenhouse gas credits and subsidized politically connected industries. It would have done little or nothing to curb carbon emissions.

This is the standard course of environmental regulation. Big business finds a way to turn green into green, with no benefit to the planet. That’s why we have an environmentally destructive ethanol mandate to this day.

Waxman’s recent “Green New Deal” op-ed extols climate corporatism. He encourages liberals to begin their “GND” push on the state level. Waxman writes, “Already, California and Hawaii, among others, have invested heavily in renewable energy and committed to a carbon-free future.”

Pacific Gas & Electric was one of the big donors in 2010 trying to save these “carbon-free future” rules. PG&E is now facing bankruptcy over its role in sparking forest fires.

Green efforts only pass in Washington if they have the backing of big businesses that stand to profit from them. The authors of the “Green New Deal” seem to believe they can avoid a takeover by special interests if they just make the whole process “democratic” and “inclusive” enough.

How charming.

“A Green New Deal,” their resolution reads, “must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses.”

But you can’t have this intricate, collaborative, and inclusive process unless you take a very long time. The entire premise of this moon-shot, new deal, grand mobilization is that we don’t have a lot of time before the planet melts.

If these “Green Dealers” get their way, things will be rushed and thus centrally planned. Our World Wars show what happens when Washington starts “reorganizing” our economy toward some pressing immediate need. Namely, we get lots of corporatism and profiteering.

There’s nothing new, in this regard, about the “Green New Deal.” But for K Street and big business, at least, there is the promise of some green.

Related Content