Your version of the Green New Deal calls for cutting the military budget in half in order to fund the program. What kinds of things would that allow us to do?
A demilitarized Green New Deal would fund projects to address the climate emergency like an actual emergency. Federal funds now spent on building weapons systems could instead build and incentivize the purchase of clean-energy components like solar, offshore wind, tidal, or thermal systems to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. We also urgently need a European-style passenger-rail system for less urban areas, like Maine, to help get us out of our cars.
This would be a win-win for climate, because the Pentagon's activities contribute greatly to global warming. [The former] Republican governor Paul LePage killed an effort by workers at Maine's renowned Bath Iron Works to organize around a project to build platforms for offshore wind. But we've recently seen real conversion of federal contracting, when Bath Iron Works accepted federal funds to quickly build some machines that make a type of COVID-19 testing swab. A Green New Deal would also be a win for jobs; research by economists at UMass Amherst has consistently shown that investments in Pentagon contracting produce far fewer jobs than investments in clean-energy manufacturing.
How has ranked-choice voting allowed you to make this kind of case, without the danger of becoming a spoiler and keeping the Senate in Republican hands?
Ranked-choice voting is indeed a game changer. It offers voters an opportunity to vote their values when they #RankLisaFirst and then #VoteBlueNumberTwo as a safety pick. There has been almost no talk of a "spoiler" effect -- and, when that is brought up by voters who don't understand R.C.V., it's amazing how quickly they come around to the system once they do understand it. No more vote shaming! I see it energize voters whenever I'm out campaigning.
Maine's progressive old guard has come together with a young core of Black Lives Matter supporters and Democratic Socialists to form a progressive alliance in my campaign that might otherwise have stayed on the sidelines if provided with no candidate supporting Medicare for All and/or a Green New Deal.
Meanwhile, Merav ben-David, a climate scientist who has studied the Exxon Valdez oil spill, has the Democratic nomination for Senate in Wyoming, to fill the seat left vacant by the Republican Mike Enzi, who is retiring. (If she won, she would be the first woman scientist in the Senate.) That's obviously not an easy fight, but she has produced one of the finest campaign ads of this or any cycle.
What lessons -- intellectual and emotional -- did you take from working on the Exxon Valdez spill?
Studying river otters following the Exxon Valdez oil spill, we were the first to scientifically quantify the interconnectedness of ecosystems on a huge spatial scale, and to demonstrate the role animal behaviors play in connecting ecosystems. It's like the butterfly effect: disturbance in one ecosystem can have unexpected, devastating implications in another, effects that we never imagined. That was true of the oil spill, and it's true for climate change. So that project turned me from a wildlife biologist to an integrative ecologist, but, more important, it turned me into an activist.
I also learned this: it took Exxon 20 years to pay a fraction of what it was supposed to, and the local communities whose livelihoods were destroyed are still suffering today. The fishing industry never recovered. It's a terrible lesson, but I learned that big corporations can use their money and influence, their lawyers, lobbyists, and P.R. people, to cause an enormous disaster and walk away from it unscathed. That fuelled my activism and drives my actions today.
We all know that coal mining is fading, because the free market has been moving away from it for years. The Wyoming coal miners who were laid off five times in one spring and lost all their paychecks and their benefits, the parents whose kids' school budgets were cut because our state budget depends heavily on mineral rights, know it better than anyone. They're just afraid of the consequences, and I don't blame them.
So the only way to help Wyomingites overcome this fear is to give them hope, to show them that they're not going to be left behind. We have to insure a just transition, and present an alternative future, one filled with options and opportunities.
Wyoming can continue to be a leader in energy by investing in wind energy, and become a global mining capital of thorium and rare-earth elements. At the same time, we can also attract new innovative industries to Wyoming, like biotech and robotics. Our state offers a high quality of life in some ways; we just need to offer better access to health care, high-quality education, and modern infrastructure. Cutting-edge companies want happy and satisfied workers -- we need to make sure Wyoming can deliver for them.
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