The Year of Yes: Why the American Jobs Plan Must (and Will*) Become Law

U.S. President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan is the politically ambitious, morally imaginative piece of legislation we need to tackle the ever-worsening climate crisis by rebuilding our country and rebooting our economy through grand-scale public-works projects.  Whether we actually get it, however, comes down to how hard we—all American citizens—are willing to fight for its full passage and implementation.

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In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic cast a floodlight on the pervasive environmental injustice, wealth disparity, infrastructural neglect, and systemic racism here in the United States, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced a fourteen-page nonbinding resolution that prescribed a holistic approach to addressing those interconnected crises known as the Green New Deal.

Often misunderstood by the public (it was about defining the problems and establishing aggressive targets for solving them, not proposing specific policy solutions, which were meant to come later), mocked by establishment Dems (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissively referred to it as the “green dream”), and knavishly mischaracterized by the right (The libs are banning hamburgers!), the Green New Deal is a straightforward-enough concept undermined by inadequate messaging from its own advocates as well as reflexive outrage from conservative media.  So… let’s try this again:

The idea is a simple one:  in the process of transforming the infrastructure of our societies at the speed and scale that scientists have called for, humanity has a once-in-a-century chance to fix an economic model that is failing the majority of people on multiple fronts.  Because the factors that are destroying our planet are also destroying people’s quality of life in many other ways, from wage stagnation to gaping inequalities to crumbling services to the breakdown of any semblance of social cohesion.  Challenging these underlying forces is an opportunity to solve several interlocking crises at once.

In tackling the climate crisis, we can create hundreds of millions of good jobs around the world, invest in the most systematically excluded communities and nations, guarantee health care and child care, and much more.  The result of these transformations would be economies built both to protect and to regenerate the planet’s life support systems and to respect and sustain the people who depend on them.  It would also strive for something more amorphous but equally important:  at a time when we find ourselves increasingly divided into hermetically sealed information bubbles, with almost no shared assumptions about what we can trust or even what is real, a Green New Deal could instill a sense of collective, higher purpose—a set of concrete goals that we are all working toward together.

Naomi Klein, On Fire:  The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (New York:  Simon & Schuster, 2019), 26

Klein makes a compelling argument in On Fire, but, alas, the strongest case for a Green New Deal was presented by the pandemic itself.  And after decades of incremental steps in which, time and again, Democrats invariably ceded more legislative ground than they gained—lest they be accused of supporting the kind of Big Government programs Saint Reagan had long since poisonously reframed as unpatriotic and un-American (socialism!)—the candidates seeking the nomination for president last year found themselves jockeying for the green ribbon of Most Environmentally Visionary.  Despite its bumpy rollout, the Green New Deal changed the entire political conversation.  As Klein noted in 2019:

The emergence of the Green New Deal means there is now not only a political framework for meeting the [recommended carbon-drawdown] targets in the United States but also a clear (if long-shot) path to turning that framework into law.  The plan is pretty straightforward:  elect a strong supporter of the Green New Deal in the Democratic primaries; take the White House, the House, and the Senate in 2020; and start rolling it out on day one of the new administration (the way FDR did with the original New Deal in the famous “first 100 days,” when the newly elected president pushed fifteen major bills through Congress).

ibid., 31

And here’s the thing:  We actually met the first two goals of that “long-shot” plan!

Sort of.

While we didn’t get an outspoken Green New Deal proponent like Sanders or Warren or Inslee, we nonetheless drove committed moderate Joe Biden appreciably—and demonstrably—further to the left on this issue than anyone imagined possible:

To Biden’s credit, he retooled his [climate] plan after becoming the presumptive nominee to include more ambitious goals and to emphasize racial- and environmental-justice issues.  “Biden’s agenda is a tribute to the rising political power of climate activists like the Sunrise Movement and other progressive activists championing the Green New Deal,” says Maria Urbina, national political director at Indivisible, a grassroots advocacy group.

Jeff Goodell, “How Joe Biden’s Plan Could Be a Transformative Step to Addressing the Climate Crisis,” Rolling Stone, August 11, 2020

We also held control of the House (despite losing seats) and retook the Senate (thank you, Stacey Abrams)—but, as you know, barely.  Biden has nowhere near a filibuster-proof majority, and can’t afford a single Democratic defector.  (Here’s looking at you, Joe Manchin.)  None of this, however, has diminished his resolve to pass a transformative piece of climate legislation:  the American Jobs Plan.  It is, to be certain, a historically aspirational climate-change bill—a green-infrastructure investment package—though having learned from the branding missteps of the Green New Deal, the president is (wisely) leading with jobs, not climate.

Biden’s plan devotes more than $600 billion to rebuilding America’s infrastructure, such as its ports, railways, bridges and highways; about $300 billion to support domestic manufacturing; and more than $200 billion in housing infrastructure.  Other major measures include at least $100 billion for a variety of priorities, including creating a national broadband system, modernizing the electric power grid, upgrading school and educational facilities, investing in research and development projects, and ensuring America’s drinking water is safe. . . .

Biden’s plan lays out a large investment in clean-energy and environmental priorities.  The programs include $100 billion to bolster the country’s electric grid and phase out fossil fuels, in part by extending a production tax credit for 10 years that supports renewable energy.

Biden, who has pledged to make the power sector carbon-free by 2035, will also ask Congress to adopt an “Energy Efficiency and Clean Electricity Standard” that would set specific targets to cut how much coal- and gas-fired electricity power companies use over time. . . .

In an effort to transition fossil fuel workers to other jobs, Biden’s plan devotes $16 billion to employing Americans to plug abandoned oil and gas wells and restore land that has been used for coal, hard-rock and uranium mining.  In his news conference last week, the president said the workers would earn as much money sealing these wells as they would drilling them.  Another $10 billion would fund the establishment of a new Civilian Climate Corps, which would employ people to restore landscapes and help prepare communities for global warming’s damaging effects.

Jeff Stein, Juliet Eilperin, Michael Laris, and Tony Romm, “White House unveils $2 trillion infrastructure and climate plan, setting up giant battle over size and cost of government,” Washington Post, April 1, 2021

Now, despite how impressive all that sounds, it’s worth pointing out that good-faith critics of the plan—meaning environmental activists, policy experts, progressive politicians, and climate scientists, not froth-mouthed conservative pundits—have expressed varying degrees of skepticism and/or disappointment with the scope of the American Jobs Plan.  Says Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Director of Climate Policy at the Roosevelt Institute and an author of the Green New Deal:

It would certainly be a good start, but it really leaves a lot to be desired.  In particular, the scale is simply too small; $900 billion on climate is not enough to catalyze the pace of decarbonization we will need in order to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030, while providing millions of good jobs. . . .  It is certainly better than what we have now, but there’s still a lot of room to improve.

Ezra Klein, “What if American Democracy Fails the Climate Crisis?”, New York Times, June 22, 2021

Biden and his climate team (including White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy and United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry) aren’t fools; they realize the American Jobs Plan doesn’t in itself take adequate-enough steps to solve the climate crisis.  The American Jobs Plan, like the Paris Accord (a treaty then–Secretary of State Kerry helped broker), isn’t a silver-bullet solution, only a starting point—the one we’ve been putting off for three decades—just as the Green New Deal is intended to be.  Observes Saul Griffith, founder of Otherlab and Rewiring America, about Biden’s climate policy:

It’s not even remotely close to sufficient.  But something extraordinary did happen when the Biden administration came out and said it was aiming for a 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2030.  It may not be binding, but that is enormously more ambitious than John F. Kennedy standing up and saying we’ll go to the moon by the end of the decade.  We knew how to build rockets, and we knew where the moon was.  We don’t know all the answers of where we’re going.

Now you see, basically daily, the news stories of automobile companies bringing forward the date of the last time they’re going to produce the internal-combustion-engine car.  It’s gone from 2050 for most companies last year to 2030, and some are talking 2025.  We might just be at the very beginning of the reinforcing cycle of ambition begetting more commitment, which begets more ambition.  We are absolutely not even remotely on track yet.  But this, I think, is what it feels like as you start to ramp up.

ibid.; emphasis mine

Exactly.  We are ready to get started!  And make no mistake:  The American Jobs Plan—the investments it makes and programs it creates—enjoys the enthusiastic approval of Americans across the political spectrum, despite tried-and-failed efforts by right-wing media to brand it as a socialist Trojan horse:

Data For Progress released a new survey finding that an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of voters support the key climate and clean energy components of the American Jobs Plan.  Voters support improving the resiliency of roads and bridges to the impacts of climate change (87 percent), removing and replacing all lead pipes (85 percent), modernizing the electricity grid (84 percent), and building new renewable energy projects like wind and solar power (70 percent).  The polling also showed continued and growing support for bold climate action as part of infrastructure, with nearly two-thirds of voters (62 percent) agreeing that lawmakers should keep ambitious climate and clean energy investments in the American Jobs Plan.

“New Poll:  Voters Strongly Support Biden’s American Jobs Plan,” Climate Power, April 28, 2021

But, hey—since when should the will of 330 million Americans supersede the pathologically obstructionist agenda of fifty GOP senators (who, it’s worth noting, represent 41,549,808 fewer people than their fifty Democratic counterparts)?

Democrats acknowledged that a final package might be smaller and narrower than the ambitious proposals discussed on Wednesday, given that all 50 senators who caucus with the Democrats and nearly every House Democrat will have to support the measure for it to become law.  Republicans have long resisted the scope of spending Mr. Biden and other Democrats have pushed for, and it is unlikely they will support the reconciliation package.

Emily Cochrane, “Democrats Float $6 Trillion Plan Amid Talks on Narrower Infrastructure Deal,” New York Times, June 17, 2021

Standing in the way of Joe Biden’s morally imaginative policies is Mitch McConnell’s deviously immoral imagination, and recent history has proven that whatever McConnell wants, he finds a way to get.  At a virtual townhall with Climate Reality Leaders last month, former Vice President Al Gore himself acknowledged the political reality of Biden’s razor-slim majority:  “Listen, President Biden faces a difficult challenge getting the votes in the Congress—we’ve got to help him!  He doesn’t have a magic wand—but he has us.  And we need to get busy and do everything we can.”

That’s right:  He has us.  The fate of the American Jobs Plan shouldn’t be decided by Mitch McConnell, and it absolutely shouldn’t be neutered of all climate provisions, per the compromises of the recent bipartisanship infrastructure deal, in a vain attempt to appeal to Republicans who won’t vote for it regardless!  (Because we learned that lesson, right, Dems?  You remember:  the whole incremental-steps dance McConnell trained us to do before he then kills the deal anyway?)

There are some worthy ideas in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

But it is NOT a climate bill. Period. You know what is? The American Jobs Plan.

Congress, we need:
– Clean Electricity Standard
– Renewables tax credits
– Civilian Climate Corps
+ 100 other CLIMATE policies

— Dr. Leah Stokes (@leahstokes) June 28, 2021

If we want the American Jobs Plan—and we do—we’ve got to fight for it.  So, what can we do?  What can you do?

Quite a number of things, as it happens:

• Add your name to this petition demanding that we not only build back, but build back better by prioritizing climate and justice in the American Jobs Plan.
• Then, each day, encourage at least one friend, relative, neighbor, or colleague to do the same.  Our opinions and actions are most influenced by those we know personally, so please talk to your loved ones about the American Jobs Plan.
• Want to take it one step further and make it personal?  Send your members of Congress—both senators and your district rep—a personalized letter or give them a call to let them know what the American Jobs Plan would mean for your community.  Having met with many elected/appointed officials and their policy deputies as a Climate Reality Leader, I can assure you:  hearing from constituents makes a real difference with respect to their legislative priorities.  They work for us.
• To that end, reach out to your local officials—city councilmembers and mayors and governors—and implore them to express their full-throated public support for the American Jobs Plan, and to explain to their constituents, in an e-mail blast or a virtual townhall, how it would benefit their communities directly.  As before, encourage your neighbors to do likewise.
• Tweet your representatives.  Address them via their official handle with a message like this:  We need an infrastructure plan that takes on the biggest challenge of our time—the #ClimateCrisis. That’s why it’s time to #InvestInClimate with @JoeBiden’s #AmericanJobsPlan, which would make transformative investments in clean energy, climate, & justice.  (Feel free to copy-and-paste that verbatim.)
• Whenever you see a story about the climate crisis in a newspaper, write a letter to the editor—150 words or less—expressing your support for the American Jobs Plan.  (Go ahead and repurpose the sample tweet above, without the handles and hashtags.)  Even if it doesn’t get published, it lets the editors know the concerns and priorities of their readership, and that directly affects the amount/frequency of coverage the issue receives.  This matters.
• Follow @ClimateReality on Instagram for quick actions you can take to push Congress to act.
• Join a Climate Reality chapter near you to get involved; you needn’t be trained by Vice President Gore to participate.  The Our Climate Moment™ campaign is empowering citizens and activists across the country to build unrelenting pressure on Congress and the Biden administration to act quickly on targeted policy solutions.  If you’re interested in knowing more, please feel welcome to post a question in the comments below, or reach out to me privately, if you prefer, at seancarlinhq[at]gmail[dot]com.

I want nothing more than for you all to share the profound hope I feel for what comes next—for the fairer, more just, more sustainable world we’re about to build.  But hope requires action.  We can’t just trust that this will get done; we have to ensure it does—with the fullest degree of moral imagination possible.  We have to, every single one of us, demand it.

Now, I often end this way by quoting one of my favorite poets in the last century, Wallace Stevens.  He wrote a line that—it stayed with me.  He wrote:  “After the final no there comes a yes / And on that yes the future world depends.”  I remember that, and when I do, I’m reminded of the legacy of the many advocates for a more just and equitable future that have come before us.  In the beginning of the fight against slavery, abolitionists were met with no after no after no, but eventually there came a yes.  The women’s suffrage and women’s rights movements met endless nos, until finally there was a yes.  The civil rights movement; the movement against apartheid; and more recently the movement for gay, lesbian, and trans rights here in the U.S. and elsewhere.  After the final no comes a yes!

When any great moral challenge is ultimately resolved into a choice between what’s right and what’s wrong, the outcome becomes inevitable—because of who we are as human beings.  We will choose to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, as John Lewis frequently said.  That is where we are now.  And it’s why we’re going to win this.  We have everything we need to tackle the climate crisis right now.  Now is our moment.  We need to build up the political will, and political will is a renewable resource.  Let’s renew it.

Gore, Al.  “Why We Need a Climate-Focused Infrastructure Plan.”  Climate Reality Project webinar, 59:17.  June 11, 2021.

We are on the cusp of the grandest and most consequential worldbuilding project in the history of civilization.  The American Jobs Plan is the inventive outline for an entirely new sociocultural narrative.  If it’s passed and implemented as drafted (and ideally even strengthened), it’ll get a paragraph devoted to it, alongside the Paris Agreement, in the textbooks of subsequent millennia—it’s that important.

Use your voice to help make it law of the land.  Political will is a renewable resource, absolutely; so is moral imagination.  Let’s see how much we can generate.  I’m betting we’ve got more than enough to power the Sustainability Revolution into the twenty-first century and beyond…