The Deal Maker May Make Deals

 

We do not know if a Trump administration will be globally catastrophic, or tend to revert to the neoliberal mean, or move in surprising directions. It is business as usual that has already set us on the path toward global ecological catastrophe: billions of poor, wars without end, and an ever expanding national security state. The United States already is global prison champion. Barack Obama already deports millions annually and presides over drone assassinations. We should remember the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Trump may accelerate the process of self-destruction, or the deal making business man could depart from business as usual and even act as master builder for a global renewable resource infrastructure, which would mean trillions in profitable investment making enormous amounts of money with a by-product of slashing poverty and carbon.

He would do so because that’s where the money is…why Willie Sutton robbed banks. Economic growth needs to mean ecological improvement. Trump may tell miners he’ll bring back coal. Reality is that polluting fossil fuels cannot compete with zero fuel cost renewables with rapidly decreasing capital costs and increasing efficiency. A mega-profitable multi-trillion dollar global renewable energy system must be built if we are to avoid catastrophe.

This will mean building the largest agglomeration of global physical capital. Renewable investment already attracts far more capital investment globally from Wall Street than fossil fuels. That’s now business as usual. It does not depend on regulations or Paris climate agreements.

For me, I’m working on the pursuit of a sustainable 3-tons-per-person-per-year carbon dioxide standard (globally 21 gigatons per year) that’s applicable on all levels from your house, your neighborhood, town, state, and nation. We need to understand how much carbon dioxide equivalents we each are responsible for and make plans and take steps to reach a sustainable level that will of course include the need on all levels for financial support and investment tools to help the transformation, in addition to lock law,[1] rules and regulations.

First step is a good carbon accounting that will open your eyes. There are good online tools available. Global CO2 average is around 4.5 tons per person per year and rising. US average is around 18 tons per person per year. China is 6.5 tons. With 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere as goal (we are now over 400ppm), this makes personal actions and goals seem meaningless. The total must be understood as sum of our individual acts as social behavior. In fact, the lesson of the rise of Trump is that we all must act where we are, right now. We must help spark a great global rising from below for an ecological and just future starting from where we are. And we have much power where we are to help our community move in the right direction.

If we all live like Americans we are doomed. Transformation must be global and rooted in pursuit of social and ecological justice for all. The rich must help finance the renewable transformation for the poor. We have no choice if we are to survive and prosper.

China National Grid, the world’s largest utility with $50 billion in annual profits wants to help build global HVDC renewable energy supergrids to power the planet through renewables. It is not inconceivable that the United States, China, and other OECD[2] states would cooperate on the renewable transformation and making money from it. What choice do we have other than self-destruction or a renewable energy future?

Donald Trump is a reality television star and a businessman without a coherent ideology, who makes millions licensing his name and whose ghost-written best seller was The Art of the Deal. Until 10pm on election night, he had no idea he could really win. His own pollsters told him he would not.

Yes Trump could bring about an American fascism, world war, economic collapse, and accelerated ecological catastrophe. Trump could also tweet madly while making deals that help transform global energy infrastructure building a Trump supergrid amidst social chaos unleashed by Republican reactionaries. Today in Boston students from several high schools organized a walk out and march on the State House to demand the State of Massachusetts resist Trump. There’s going to be push back big time and the rise of a strongly progressive Bernie-Sanders-on-steroids party, and enormous political consequences for Republicans if they do not deliver the bacon.

Donald Trump is smart enough, I hope, not to turn his back in big renewable infrastructure deals that will put millions to work building a renewable energy future, further enrich him and his cronies, and save his ass politically. If given the chance, the deal maker may make deals while consequences may not be what was expected.

[1] A lock law requires prices to conform to those of a specified date.

[2] Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is a 35-member intergovernmental economic organization.