(6:20) Don Fitz: Well, a lot of people today act like Alexandria Casio Cortez wrote the GND, and then some of the critics of that say, no, it was actually the Green Party of the U.S. that wrote it. And neither one of those is correct. The GND was actually [first] developed in the early 2000s by international financial policies such as that of the International Monetary Fund and several other financial groups. The Green New Deal originated in Europe as a way to expand capitalism and to expand the production of what they called "environmental" things. I realized that the GND that was adopted by the Green parties in Europe, and then later by the Green Party of the U.S., was not an environmental program at all. It was a very destructive program to expand production (7:13).
Dan Young: Was this something that developed prior to the global recession starting in 2008 or after that?
Don Fitz: It was in 2008 that it was written as a U.N. plan for the GND. When people realized that the traditional ways to expand production were not going to work anymore, they had to come up with new ways to expand production. And so they came up with the idea of painting everything green. And that's what it was. Environmentalism was rising very much in the early 2000s, and so they said let's paint everything green, call it green, and then we will have a way to expand production. (7:58)
People often say we need to increase production to increase jobs. Well, no, if you look at the U.S. from roughly 1900-2000, there is 300-fold increase [in production] and you didn't have a 300-fold increase in jobs; there was just a production of more and more stuff. Roughly at the time that Woodrow Wilson was in office, or a little bit after, between WWI and WWII, a lot of the big financial institutions and big corporations realized that for the first time in the history of the world you could produce enough for everybody to have their needs met. And so there was a conscious design to start producing things that would fall apart because they would have to be replaced. And of course by WWII we were shifting over to everybody having a car, instead of some people having a car. And so it was very easy to design cars to fall apart. (8:59) And so that's basically what happened--an intentional desire to force the increased production because the basics of life were already available to people between the two world wars.
Dan Young: Through planned obsolescence. That's what they sometimes call it.
Don Fitz: Planned obsolescence. And now it is absolutely massive. It's everywhere.
Dan Young: So you would say that from what you have seen from AOC's version that it is continuing the Green capitalist model of the GND?
Don Fitz: Absolutely, the GND is basically a form of neoliberalism. And, of course, neoliberalism means you don't solve problems by the government doing things, or people collectively solving problems (9:48). Neoliberalism is turning everything over to private corporations. You don't improve public schools. You turn them over to charter schools. You don't improve the post office. You destroy the post office by helping UPS and every other corporation. You get rid of everything the government does. Well, AOC's plan is to basically privatize, or turn everything over to the market for improving the environment. That's ridiculous. The problem is that the economy is too massive, and the GND wants to make it (10:20) even more massive. And that is not going to solve any problems whatsoever.
(10:27) Dan Young: A lot of people would disagree with you since a lot of this particular GND is about expanding government-run entitlements and social programs.
Don Fitz: Yes, it does include some of these, but when you are talking about how these things are going to happen, all of these things are going to be privatized. If you read different versions of the GND (such as the one by the Green Party), it basically says we're going to expand energy, but without nuclear power. But when you read people who are part of the Democratic Party, one of the big problems is that when they talk about clean energy or renewable energy, what's included in that is nuclear power, waste incineration, medical incineration, wood burning, dams--all of these things are incredibly environmentally destructive.
Basically what we need to do to deal with energy is to realize that there needs to be a lot less production. We need production for the necessities and things that last. We need to produce things that people actually need in order to have a better life. And that is the way to use less energy. The GND never ever says, "We will use less energy. It says, "We want to use Green energy."
(12:03) Dan Young: So the idea is that you have a different GND that would be about providing a better life for everyone, or a decent, if materially stripped-down life for everyone. How would you do that while decreasing energy and reducing our environmental footprint? How would you outline the major social and political reforms needed?
Don Fitz: Well, the first thing I would do is advocate a shorter work week because obviously a lot of the production that goes into the GND they say is needed to give people jobs. I say no, if people don't have jobs, we need to have a shorter work week. The other thing is unions need to be a big part of this because everytime there is a shorter work week gained what happens is--it's called "Capitalism intensifying the labor process." This means you are forced to work harder-to produce more stuff in a briefer amount of time. A good example is teachers. They say oh sure we'll give you a shorter work week, and then every teacher will have more kids in the classroom. No, we need to deal with any unemployment problems by having a shorter work week with zero intensification of labor. That's not going to happen by businesses having a good heart. That will happen through strong unions fighting for that.
(13:25) The other thing that we do need a government for is for the government to intervene a lot to deal with production standards. We have some safety standards, but every administration likes to weaken and water them down. We need to have standards where everything is produced to its maximum life expectancy. It is ridiculous for people to go out and get a new car every 5 years. Cars should last well over 200,000 miles. And the other thing the government needs to do in cooperation with communities is to stop producing the things we do not need. Every community in the U.S. can be turned into a social community where people have the things they need without driving a car. Cars should not be used for more than 20 percent of the trips we make. What happens in an automobile economy (I grew up when there was much fewer cars) is that everyone in the family over 18 needs a car to get by.
We need to bring back having local stores where people buy things within walking or bicycling distance. So there needs to be a massive urban redesign. This is different from the GND. The GND does not want urban redesign of existing buildings. It wants to build new buildings. It doesn't advocate fewer cars on the road. It wants to have more cars on the road that are run by electricity, as if that is an improvement. And that's no improvement. You could come up with example after example of how the GND contradicts the direction the economy really needs to go in order to have a better quality of life while using less energy.
(15:25) Dan Young: It seems like the GND document is a wish list.
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