Suggestions for Barack Obama Thread

I’m not sure if this belongs here, but I thought it would be a good thread for the forum. I called it suggestions for Barack Obama because he is the one that I would prefer to be elected and I think that if McCain won he would likely not do a whole lot for the environment nor be as likely to accept green suggestions anyway.

I see Obama as being potentially very positive for the US. he is the candidate that I think can potentially at least TRY to make the necessary changes for the US to become more sustainable over the long run. Hopefully he will appeal to a lot of working class people and blue collar citizens. I find though that his message is leaning too much toward the older, brown collar jobs rather than the green collar jobs that he could start promoting once elected. Instead of subsidizing the car industry, which would be good for the blue collar class and the economy in the very short run, in the long run it would be better to remodel the economy to one that is less dependent on cars to begin with.

During the New Deal era and following it, massive amounts of public money were “invested” in the development of superhighways, suburban development and the transition to the car and oil based economy that we are living in today. The economic results were of course fabulous. In the decades that followed, the middle class expanded in size and wealth greatly. Even the lower middle class and lower working classes increased their standards of living. Through unions and economic growth, even car plant workers for example like the United Auto Workers of America and the like, were able to own a suburban home and a cottage in the country for fishing, golfing, etc. and live the “good life” or “American dream.” These same working classes were living in practically slum-like conditions about a century earlier, think of the days of coal-powered innercity textile factories and the Oliver Twist world of London.

Now I may get a little too neoMarxist or leftist for some. But the way I see it, since the deregulation, shipping overseas of manufacturing, and over-reliance on credit and the finance industry to generate wealth imposed by Reganites and since then by almost all US administrations (Clinton being one of the worst in my opinion: Think of the mess of the bubble bursting during the dot com bust literally a few days after the Bush/Gore election. Clinton and Allan Greenspan also laid the groundwork for the current credit crisis and world financial crunch we are seeing today through continued deregulation that promoted temporary economic benefits while Clinton was still president. While I’m not at all a fan of W. Bush, much of the damage he did he was able to do quite easily due to the economic planning of the Clinton administration.) the post-WW2 growth that existed in the New Deal era I mention stopped and growth instead focused on finance and financials after Regan took power.

The Obama approach as I see it today seeks to turn back to the dirtier (automobile-based economy) era of New Deal economics to bring greater prosperity to the middle classes that have been falling behind since Regan. His approach will in fact be good and if he has enough support in Congress, industry and elsewhere he potentially could be successful in implementing such a program. So yes, Obama, please do support American jobs, companies that employ Americans rather than ship jobs overseas, and an increase in regulation to prevent credit and financial crises that we are experiencing now.

HOWEVER, if Obama were smart in addition to being practical, he would see the tremendous potential he currently has in creating not just a more prosperous middle class and economy as he is proposing, nor the green jobs or green economy that he has the potential to do, but rather he could move in a greener lifestyle and society for America, and the world.

If we look at the examples of Germany and China and their investments in greener energy, we would be able to see that if the US invested or promoted through regulations (NOTE THAT HERE OBAMA DOES NOT NECESSARILY HAVE TO SPEND A CENT OF GOVERNMENT MONEY IF IT IS JUST THROUGH REGULATIONS, HE JUST HAS TO MAKE LAWS THAT WILL PREVENT THE CONSTRUCTION OF POLLUTING POWER PLANTS AND INDUSTRIES OR THEIR EXPANSION AND SO THE INDUSTRY WILL BE FORCED INTO GREEN POWER PROJECTS) green power like China and Germany have, then blue collar jobs would be created in the green energy sector to offset and replace the ones being lost in the sectors that are currently hurting like automobile construction. These jobs would also allow experts to move over to managing new green companies from the financial sector that I have explained is too big and unsustainable. These expert people will come from the expected job losses in the financial sector due to the current economic crisis. Yes I know many of these people are being blamed for the current economic downturn but they are largely university educated and do have skills that can be put to good use.

As well (and now I get a bit more extreme), Obama could, through public expenditures similar to the New Deal, create a more sustainable American society. Just as the shift from pre-automobile America caused great economic gains especially for the American middle classes, so could a shift to a greener society. The key is not that there will be greener work in the future or that there will be less work to be done in the future, but that any large economic shift causes great economic activity and wealth creation. During the New Deal era, it was the construction of the automobile infrastructure and the suburbs. Now, it will be the destruction of much of the automobile infrastructure and its replacement by massive construction in train lines, solar and win power generation equipment, and eco-neighbourhoods. As seen in some cities where the former warehouses and factory buildings of the great American manufacturing sector are being turned into condos, apartments and lofts, a major initiative could be launched similar to the one of the construction of the suburbs. This one would bring people back into the cities and could also transform the further-out regions into more walkable, cyclable and public transit friendly neighbourhoods. The construction boom would be enourmous.

Now I know that people will argue the the US federal government is in debt and may even go broke. However, municipal bylaws that govern what type of new housing, infrastructure, and what panning exists where could be changed to provide the shift I am proposing, at no cost to the government. If the McMansions were banned and the bylaws stated that only sustainable developments could be constructed, then the private sector, through its replacement of naturally decaying structures over time and building of new structures according to the new bylaws I am proposing, would bear the entire cost, and would still be able to make a profit.

Of course after this is all done, people will ask what economic activity will there be. Well, if you look at the consumer economy that the US is currently running on, it is easy to see as an environmentalist that one part of the equation is clearly missing. What comes out? The answer is of course garbage. And this is trucked away at the expense of the public sector voluntarily. This needs to end. If companies were forced to recuperate the products that they manufacture at the end of their lifestyle, the number of manufacturing jobs would immediately double. Arguable so would the price of commodities. However, as people do need to consume less in order to live sustainably, some reduction along the line is necessary [U]AND[/U] as I have effectively just doubled the work done by what I will call manufacturing (although it will now be manufacturing and de-manufacturing, as well as re-manufacturing) there will be twice as much economic activity being done and paid to the blue collar workers / middle-class, so as or if commodities double in price so would the amount of currency flowing to the middle class. I have also largely eliminated the public expenditure spent on garbage disposal, saving US governments billions.

Now another thing that should be done is composting. If all of the garbage that could be composted was actually used to create natural, environmentally friendly fertilizers and soil, then the jobs that are currently part of the petrochemical industry could be shifted to local, large-scale compost operations. This would also shift soil production locally, where large parts could be used locally to use in urban gardens for food production and rooftop greenspaces. These measures would reduce carbon required to transport foods long distances and would also provide increases in all of the benefits that green rooftop retrofitting provides (reduced carbon needed for heating and cooling, reduction in pollution from rainwater runoff, jobs created by retrofitters, etc.)

Finally, throughout the past few centuries as democracy has spread throughout the world, so has the right to workers to take time off. In 17th Century England the weekend did not even exist. So if in the future there is less work that needs to be done, then simply expand the weekend to three days, or reduce the workweek from fourty to thirty-five or thirty hours a week. Proposals like this already exist in France and many European countries, and there are actually fringe political parties in Canada and the US that have recently sprung up with the goals of reducing the amount of work that working people need to do.

Good luck, Senator Obama. The power is yours.