The Canadian National Newspaper: Obama’s New Green Deal: Sign of Change or the Same Old Story?

Much of the world breathed a collective sigh of relief when the poll results rolled in confirming the election of Barack Obama as the new President of the United States. Gone was the pugilistic Bush Dynasty with its shoot-first diplomacy; its neo-con artists and its barely comprehensible, beady-eyed figurehead.

In its stead, a seemingly genuine, straight-talking, articulate and thoughtful man who claimed he stood for change. With him came a million or more activists, some brand new, some vastly experienced, who helped to put him there. “Yes we can!” became the slogan for this new generation of believers in the American Dream, an “America” that had once again become something the world could put their trust in.

The Honeymoon was short. As Obama began to assemble his Cabinet, his true allegiances became all too apparent.

The first in this parade of disappointments was Obama’s preliminary pick of Larry Summers, one of his top economic advisors, for the job of Treasury Secretary. While Chief Economist for the World Bank (first red flag), Summers made the outrageous claim that Africa was “under-polluted.” He reasoned that since Africans had such a significantly shorter life-span, it stood to reason that more dirty industries should be encouraged to relocate there. While the highly controversial Summers was not ultimately selected for the Treasury job, it is still hard to imagine how a man whose father hailed from Kenya could choose such a man to lead his economic team.

On the environment, Obama’s choices have also been terrible. His new choice for Director of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, is coming under fire from PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility). PEER asserts that when she was Director of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, Jackson was responsible for appointing industry people to key positions, suppressing science and covering up toxic contamination.

Under the banner of “renewable energy,” Obama has hand-picked Cabinet members known for their support for large-scale, destructive biofuels (called agrofuels by critics). These include Vilsack (Secretary of Agriculture), known for his advocacy on behalf of biotechnology and his close relationship with Monsanto and support for corn ethanol; Ken Salazar (Secretary of the Interior) who has been a major proponent of flex-fuel car production and cellulosic fuel development; and Steven Chu (Secretary of Energy) who was instrumental in establishing agrofuels as the major focus of Lawrence Berkeley Labs (which he directs) and oversaw the establishment of the Energy Biosciences Institute, a $500 million partnership involving UC Berkeley (a supposedly public institution) and BP, along with the Lawrence Berkeley labs, the goal of which is research and development of cellulosic fuel technologies.

The so-called second generation cellulosic agrofuels being promoted by Obama’s team are driving the development of genetically engineered trees, specifically designed to more easily transform into liquid fuels. Only recently, ArborGen, a leading GE tree developer, submitted a request for deregulation of a GE eucalyptus tree, planned for huge plantations across the U.S. South, specifically to feed future agrofuel facilities.

The impact of the escape of GE trees and their traits into our forests coupled with the massive new demand for wood that would accompany the manufacture of liquid fuels from trees (on top of the already growing demand for wood for traditional uses such as paper), will drive massive deforestation in forests all over the world, including right here in the U.S. With Ken Salazar as the head of the Interior Department (that oversees our national parks) and Tom Vilsack as the Secretary of Agriculture (that oversees our national forests), U.S. forests could be in serious trouble. Already proposals have been made that U.S. public lands could be an excellent source of materials for cellulosic agrofuels. Compounded with the fact that deforestation is a major driver of climate change, manufacture of agrofuels out of trees is a significant threat.

As it turns out, in Obama’s “new green deal,” the green stands for money, as the deal emphasizes financial incentives and support for notoriously destructive corporations that are pushing agrofuels and other false solutions to climate change. These false solutions, which also include so-called “green nukes” (as they have been called by VP Joe Biden), and the insanely oxymoronic “clean coal,” signify a difficult road ahead for those of us committed to finding and implementing real, effective and just solutions to climate change.

What about international action on climate change? Will Obama finally “join the world” and sign onto the Kyoto Protocol global warming agreement? I predict yes. Not, however, because of a commitment to tackle the climate problem, but because the climate change debate at the international level has ceased to be about finding solutions to the climate crisis, and has become one more way to maximize profits—another form of “disaster capitalism.” As someone who has walked the halls of the world’s greatest “carbon trade fair” since 2004, I have seen the UN Climate Conventions become completely subordinated to the goals of big business and the whims of the market. Trade in carbon has become the latest financial bubble, and American businesses want their share of the pie. That they also get to paint themselves green in the process is a very nice bonus. In signing onto an ineffectual and thoroughly undermined international climate treaty, Obama will likewise get a nice feather in his cap, helping to deflect the criticisms of his detractors who want the U.S. to take real, effective and just action on climate change.

So is all hope lost already? No. The most positive outcome of the election of Obama was not the man himself, but the huge upsurge in optimism and the belief in our collective power to make change. As Noam Chomsky and others have pointed out, real change does not come from the top. Real changes must be forced from below—by powerful grassroots movements. So once again, real change lies in our own hands. The incredible energy that helped put Obama into power is now going to have to take up the challenge of holding him accountable.

The climate crisis is one of the most important issues facing us today. The international movement for climate justice is counting on the U.S. movement to be the force for real, effective and just action on climate change. We have a prime opportunity to take up this challenge this year. The Mobilization for Climate Justice, a national alliance of organizations from all around the country, was recently founded with the express purpose of mobilizing action on climate in the U.S. In December of this year, the UN Climate Convention will meet in Copenhagen to finalize the details of the new international climate agreement that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. The world is drawing the line here. Mobilizations in the U.S. are being planned for that month, coming ten years after the WTO shutdown in Seattle.

The U.S. has a special historic responsibility to take real, effective and just action on climate change as both the leading contributor of greenhouse gas emissions and the number one obstacle to effective action at the international level (under both Democrats and Republicans).

We must both confront the false climate solutions being promoted by the Obama Administration, and demand real, effective and just solutions. At the same time we must support those efforts at the grassroots level—the small-scale, locally controlled solutions to climate change—that are already occurring.

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