> On Jul 15, 2026, at 21:39, Anthony Teso via groups.io > <[email protected]> wrote: > > My critique of the newly released DSA Program > DSA Program July 2026 Critique.docx > <https://1drv.ms/w/c/c3598b38f68269be/IQDW5Cx8sphJSZMXITXGFjmZAUB3_2SGhZiba0rYIRtwIWk?e=j2egKs> Thanks. I largely agree and want to add a point on one part of their program.
The DSA program “Workers Deserve More” has a short “Green New Deal” section, as follows: “Workers must lead our democratic transition to a green future. Pass a federal jobs guarantee. Implement massive investment in sustainable, publicly owned energy and transit infrastructure. Phase out the use of fossil fuels. Reclaim and repair our earth's resources for all." The two main concepts of this statement are a democratic energy transition led by workers and the public ownership of energy and transit. We should critically consider both since they are fundamental to DSA’s GND. The GND transition strategy starts with a “massive investment” to replace the energy grid and transit infrastructure. But this “transition” will necessarily be fueled by coal, gas, and oil. Many of the components of the infrastructure supply chain, such as computer chips from Taiwan, China, and South Korea, are today produced by burning coal. Thus, such a massive investment will be a massive increase in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, at least in the short term. The GND promise is for a future where GHG emissions decrease each year. We won’t reach such a future and “pay back” the carbon debt produced by the “transition” if it drives us to the “tipping point” of runaway global warming that cannot be reversed by human efforts [9]. This tradeoff is apparent in the policies of the last US president to admit the reality of climate change, Joe Biden. Biden’s administration promised 370 billion dollars of public money in tax credits for electric-car, electric-grid, and “clean energy” subsidies to home owners. As of 2024, one source estimates that $28 billion had been claimed by businesses [1]. It may also seem encouraging that the rate of US GHG emissions has dropped by 17% between 2005 and 2023. The decrease, however, was less than one-sixth of the Paris Accords target by 2030 [2]. The 17% reduction was driven by a 41% reduction in GHG emissions from energy generation, increased use of renewable energy, and a leveling of electricity demand. Energy-generation transitioned from one fossil fuel to another, from coal to gas, as a result of capitalist market forces, the lower price of gas relative to coal, and not government policies [3]. The US also reduced GHG emissions by a shift away from heavy manufacturing towards the less carbon-intensive service sector [3]. In other words, the US has exported much of its pollution to China, a place where energy generation is coal-based and environmental controls are lax. China’s emissions grew nearly six times the amount of the US reduction during that period [4] as emissions grew overall worldwide. The US helped fuel this expansion: By the end of his term, Biden's administration noted that "On federal lands and waters, oil production in 2024 is at an all-time high [5]. Oil production overall set a record in 2024 under the Biden administration [6]. This is not a policy failure but the logic of the capitalist market. Those pursing the strategy of "transitioning" energy production assume that making renewables cheaper will cause fossil fuel investment to be displaced. Three decades after the Kyoto Protocol to fight global warming, human societies today burn more oil, gas and coal today than at any time in recorded human history [7]. In fact, we burn more wood today than ever before [8]. So while an energy transition of one fossil fuel type to another occurred in the US, along with reduction in energy demand, GHG emissions grew rapidly in the 21st century as the sources of GHG-producing industrial production were exported to countries with dirtier energy and laxer environmental controls. It is the logic of a capitalist market with global supply chains to move production to places that are cheapest. Capital investment organizes production according to the diktats of a single process, valorization: the costs of producing and distributing a commodity must be less than the price of selling it. Capital adopts renewables only when they cheapen production costs — not to reduce total energy use, but to expand production. Even the oil industry chooses solar and wind inputs over fossil fuels for their derricks, platforms and other production systems to produce products that increase global GHG emissions. Rather than handing public monies to capitalist enterprises to produce different technological commodities, a political solution is needed. The political reality is that more than a trillion dollars of oil and gas assets must be stranded [8] to effect a transition to renewable energy generation. If these in-ground assets are instead extracted and produced, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that the resulting GHG increase will take Earth to the tipping point where humans will lose the ability to stop or even slow the process [9]. Alternatively, if fossil assets are stranded and never to be extracted, a loss of this magnitude on corporate balance sheets will rock the capitalist financial system. A political solution, rather than a market solution is needed: Production decisions should be driven by political decisions, not market forces. Rather than a technological transition, we need a political transition to democratic public planning that prices products such as artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies to reflect the actual damage they do to the environment. Public ownership is essential to this process, but not if the market continues to dictate prices and decisions. It is crucial that the public take away the profits that fossil-fuel companies use to buy politicians and thought leaders who convince people that global warming is not happening, or is not caused by human GHG emissions, or that a technological fix is possible that will reduce emissions at some unspecified time in the future. But if public ownership of fossil-fuel extraction is to reduce GHG emissions, this requires more complex decision making than the single goal of capitalist valorization. These decisions require democratic control by the people who produce, use, and suffer the effects of fossil fuel products. [1] https://iratracker.org/programs/ira-section-13102-renewable-energy-investment-tax-credit/ [2] https://rhg.com/research/us-decarbonization-priorities-in-the-wake-of-the-inflation-reduction-act/ [3] https://www.c2es.org/content/u-s-emissions/ [4] Estimates of GHG emissions vary by sources. In particular, there are gross and net GHG measurements. Net GHG emissions include carbon sequestration through “Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry” (LULUCF). Gross GHG emissions exclude the LULUCF sector. In 2005, gross GHG emissions were 7.505 Gt CO2; the 2023 estimate is 6.197 Gt CO2 for an estimated reduction of 1.3 Gt CO2, which is approximately the same difference as the net result. Edgar’s provides gross figures for China’s GHG emissions of 7.947 Gt CO2 in 2005 and 15.536 Gt CO2 in 2023. The increase is 7.6 Gt CO2 during this period, which is 5.8 times larger than the US GHG reduction over the same period. [5] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63824 [6] https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/president-biden-takes-action-protect-americas-coastlines-future-oil-and-gas-leasing [7] https://www.greensocialthought.org/less-what-we-dont-need/historian-jean-baptiste-fressoz-forget-the-energy-transition-there-never-was-one-and-there-never-will-be-one/ [8] https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/768ba59e-c692-47c3-9a13-3c3c10993396/content/src/html/wood-production-record-levels.html#gsc.tab=0 [9] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/summary-for-policymakers/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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