Green New Deal Plan

Manufacturing Reconstruction program

Economies are based on production, and production is dependent on the infrastructure. The economic rationale for a large-scale infrastructure-building program is to rebuild the manufacturing and other parts of the production system. Instead of using up fast disappearing resources such as oil, fresh water and various metals, the Federal government should set up a national recycling system that will provide most of the inputs for the production system. This would include organic material to compost for the redesigned agricultural system. Agriculture needs government help to move from dependence on pesticides, artificial fertilizers and other fossil fuel inputs to organic farming located close to towns and cities. Factories need help to replace their current machinery with machinery that will not pollute, will not create greenhouse gas emissions, and that will produce 'Zero Waste' products,which would involve emphasizing design of products so that they can be re-used, not recycled. . Companies need help redesigning products that can be pulled apart and reused instead of being thrown away as garbage.

If the agricultural and manufacturing systems are set up to mimic nature's ability to sustainably recycle and reuse, instead of mining, polluting and destroying, then whatever is produced, either from a factory or a farm, will do so in a sustainable way, that is, it will not take more out of ecosystems than it puts back. If that is so, then economic growth can still occur, even though that growth will not include bigger things and more things, but better things, higher quality things (and services). This would probably require that the Earth's population eventually stabilized.

This transformation will need to occur world-wide, which is why a Global Green New Deal will have to create a new Marshall Plan, to help all countries implement their own Green New Deals -- in return for which they will agree to protect their ecosystems.