The Abundance Agenda is repackaged Trickled Down Economics

I'm very scared about climate change, but the urgency of this moment shouldn't make us reactionarily hand the reins over to the private sector.

At 22 years old, I don’t claim to have all the answers for where we need to go and how we get there. However, after 4 years of trial and error, I refuse to prioritize solutions that are ineffective and only serve the interests of a wealthy few.

Coming from the climate movement, urgency has always been a top concern of mine. Our tactics couldn’t just be effective, they had to be effective and quick. Predictably, with the lack of sustained and powerful organizing from the climate movement post-2019, green capitalists co-opted the collective anger about lack of climate action for their own benefit, using speed as a basis of their theory of change.

If we need to move fast to build out clean energy, we must gut community input for solar, wind, mining, and transmission projects. This logic stretches beyond climate, too. If we need to move fast to build more housing, we must gut tenant protections from rent caps to eviction protections. This is Ezra Klein’s Abundance Agenda.

It’s this logic that Green Capitalists teamed up with Big Oil to gut core environmental protections established in the National Environmental Policy Act, which will inevitably result in lawsuits against more projects. These Green Capitalists aim to shape global and domestic climate policy for their comfort. 24 hour Amazon delivery and 400 daily packages delivered per Amazon driver….but have no fear! Amazon is electrifying its trucks! Not only is this blatantly ineffective at reducing emissions, it’s also a strategy that’s impossible to build coalitions around. Would anyone you know say they’d choose to keep everything in their life the same but with fewer emissions? Maintaining skyrocketing rents, expensive healthcare, defunded public schools, and normalized traffic violence is not popular policy.

Moreover, Ezra Klein’s Abundance Agenda parallels Reagan’s Trickle Down Economics in that they’re both rooted in this idea of a “meddling state”. If the government stopped getting in the way, then all will be better. Markets will reach equilibrium, leading to innovation, mass production, profits, and somehow reduced emissions within the time frame to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown. Haven’t we learned this is a lie?

There is no validity to the “nagging, meddling state that gets in the way of progress” argument because the state can never been separated from the private sector. As stated in Abolish Rent, the government and taxpayer dollars build and maintain the pipes that supply the water and carry out the waste in private properties. If location, location, location is the name of the game in real estate, it’s public investment that makes a private project valuable: the proximity to parks, transit, public schools, etc. The government regulates what’s considered a bedroom, enforces contracts, and implements health and safety standards. The government subsidizes homeowners and private real estate far more than tenants. Government involvement only seems to be a problem when it rarely enforcing tenant rights or indigenous sovereignty.

Do we need to address our permitting laws? Of course. But not with the intention of removing the state from clean energy or housing development.

The gaps of the Abundance Agenda became incredibly obvious to me when I joined an 800 mile lithium mining tour alongside UAW workers making EV Hummers, Amazon drivers unionizing with Teamsters, disability-transit advocates, transit workers from DC, Indigenous organizers from affected areas, and academics — hosted by Climate and Community Project. We visited the only operating lithium mining site in North America as well as mining projects under construction like Thacker Pass.

Climate and Community Institute, a progressive policy think tank, convened workers and advocates from across the lithium supply chain and in just 3 days we all were aware of our shared responsibility to one another. On the 3rd day, we visited Thacker Pass, a newly-approved, first-of-its-kind lithium mining project currently under development with the help of a $2 billion loan from Biden’s Department of Energy. Thacker Pass, so they say, will mine enough lithium to make the United States the second largest lithium producer in the world (the U.S. hardly produces any lithium now). When we arrived, Josh, an Indigenous organizer of the Great Basin, grounded us in the tragic history of the area. As we watched the trucks cut into the ground from afar, Josh shared in great detail how his ancestors escaped a massacre right where we were standing. We stood in a circle, hand-in-hand, to pray for a world beyond exploitation.

But hey, if we’re facing a global climate emergency with a fleeting time limit to combat its worst effects, sometimes hard decisions have to be made, right? Urgency means you gotta do what you gotta do to mine enough lithium for the batteries that will power the clean energy transition. At least that’s what Ezra Klein, Green Capitalists, and mining companies say.

To the surprise of no one who thinks about this one level deeper, what the lithium is used for matters just as much as ensuring we have enough supply. What even is enough supply? Does that not depend on how we transition?

General Motors has contributed $625 million to Thacker Pass to gain a 38% stake in the lithium mine. Lithium Americans is claiming that Thacker Pass can produce “40,000 metric tons of battery-quality lithium carbonate per year in its first phase”. Batteries have a myriad of applications, but it turns out our projected lithium needs are bloated as a result of our car-centered approach to transportation decarbonization.

Climate and Community Project produced a phenomenal report More Mobility, Less Mining, which details the faults in our transportation policy that result in excessive lithium production. The largest emitting sector of the United States is transportation at 28% of total emissions. Decarbonizing this sector is vital to cutting back emissions, but Big Auto and many other private interests have resulted in a single solution: electric vehicles. And not just EVs— gigantic EVs. If you take a look at the 13 models the Biden Administration provides EV tax credits for, mega-EVs like the Ford F-150 Lightning and Rivian R1T made the cut. The solution to this grand crisis is marketed as switching a big gas car with a big electric one.

According to the More Mobility, Less Mining report, EV sedans require 3x less lithium than EV Hummers, and simply prioritizing smaller EVs will reduce lithium mining by 37%. But, once again, why are we exclusively focusing on cars in the first place? Half of all driving trips are 3 miles or less. If we tackled that, couldn’t we significantly decrease transportation sector emissions? EV buses that are affordable and arrive every 10 minutes, walkable downtowns, transit-oriented development, widespread bike lanes — none of this is considered in auto-centered climate policy. And considering that most people rank several issues as a priority before they rank climate, isn’t healthier, people-centered communities where they can save money on gas and their child can walk to school without fear of a car accident a better approach?

Yes it is.

Combining a prioritization of smaller EVs and investment in mass transit in urban areas alone, we could reduce lithium mining by 79%. Seventy-nine percent.

It’s when you look beyond the isolated project that you realize the Great Wizard of Oz does not have any magical powers. The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. We’ve been duped. “Don’t you care about climate change? We have to move faster! We have to deregulate!” no longer has any weight. It’s not about abundance. It’s about state planning and people-centered policy.

What if we didn’t expedite the solar permitting process for 17% of Nevadan land and instead cut the laziness and put effort into planning how much solar to implement and where, as California has done? What if we recognized that the problem is car-fueled lives and not gas-fueled cars, and prioritized climate policy that directly helps working people and not the auto industry?

I don’t know about you, but I much prefer community empowerment through public sector mobilization over deregulation in the interest of Big Auto and real estate. Let’s start planning.