What does the proposed “Green New Deal” mean for EOH research?

A political development in the United States, the Green New Deal,¹ unexpectedly opens new possibilities for environmental and occupational health research. Far from being an “unserious” partisan political maneuver, it puts forward policies that would require rigorous evidence for implementation.

Archives is not a journal of news or political developments and it is not partisan or devoted to advocacy, except for the journal’s commitment to science in environmental and occupational health. However, when a political development asks new questions and opens new opportunities for thinking through problems, it is exhilarating.

The United States experienced a major turnover in representation in Congress in 2018, which brought forward many new faces, and the country is currently sorting through the announced and to-be-announced candidates for the federal election in 2020. The sharpest wedge issues, after immigration and healthcare insurance, deal with contending visions for the future of the American economy and environment. Because of the dominance of America and its institutions, this means the future of the world, although only Americans have a vote. When it comes to regulation and environmental protection, the alternatives could not have been clearer: (1) continue down the current path of deregulation, less protection for the natural environment, and allowing increasing levels of “externalities” (real costs of operation displaced onto communities and the environment and not absorbed as operating costs by those who benefit), or (2) adopting a regime of environmental and social protection consistent with other developed countries and more like the United States followed in the 1970’s and again in the 2010’s (“twenty-teens”?). Into this seemingly black and white choice was suddenly thrust that rarest of political breakthroughs, a genuinely new idea.

The “Green New Deal” is a program designed on analogy to the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt 1933 to 1938, which consisted of dozens of policies, public works projects, and regulations designed to reverse the stagnant economy of the Great Depression and to lift people out of poverty and injustice. The New Deal did not succeed in ending the Depression by itself (it took American participation in the Second World War to do that) but it did provide an economic stimulus and template for a new and more humane “liberal” (competition-based, privately directed, consumptive) economy, developed the country’s woefully lagging infrastructure, and provided relief of suffering that blunted movement toward more radical solutions, particularly populist authoritarian government. Arguably and there is considerable argument among historians, the New Deal saved capitalism from itself.²

The Green New Deal has been put forward as an agenda by newly elected Democrats in the US House of Representatives.^1,3 It has been called radical by their opponents. However, the Green New Deal is actually rather conservative in most ways. In its present form,³ it calls for government investment in public works but also motivating the private sector to invest in infrastructure, alternative energy sources, carbon reduction and eventually neutrality (zero net emissions), and to reduce externalities by restoring regulation. These are all measures that are already in place in other OECD countries and that seem inevitable. The Green New Deal also calls for the creation of new employment opportunities and strengthening social programs, both as an end in itself and to stabilize the overall program by creating tangible improvement in people’s lives during the inevitably disruptive transition.⁴ What is new about the Green New Deal, then, is that it is a coherent program (in a country that distrusts anything resembling central planning), it embraces sustainable development,⁴ and it calls for policies and regulations that are data-intensive and evidence based. The science from which its programs will draw is not limited to traditional environmental science, either. Implementation of programs, motivating changes in behavior, and linking sustainable development with sustainable social development will require deep dives into data and deep thinking from environmental studies as environmental sciences, as we have discussed in previous editorials here.⁵

Should the Green New Deal become official US policy, now or in some form to come, look to environmental studies and the social sciences to play a bigger role in the design and management of environmental protection, sustainable development, motivating and sustaining social programs that connect with sustainability, and sociotechnical systems that combine technology with social change. Watch also for environmental sciences to face new challenges to retrieve sidelined data sets, finish incomplete studies, monitor progress going forward, and be put to practical use managing the social interface with environmental science and technology.

Tee L. Guidotti, MD, MPH, DABT
Editor Emeritus