Seeking to think through Green New Deal, the following seem to be the fundamental core principles and objectives. To create a plan (actually, an adopted actionable program) that will
- Reduce humanity’s risks from and impacts on climate change (in accord with climate science) and
- Strengthen society (improve economic performance, reduce economic and other disparities, address social injustices).
While there are many serious questions and debates (100% renewable or clean electricity? Carbon pricing (tax, cap and trade, otherwise)? How does other social policy legislation (free public university, universal health care, full employment) fit with the GND? Etc …) that merit embracing, there seems to be one clear arena for aggressive increased public investment that truly fulfills, strengthens, meets these core principles: Green Schools.
As I’ve often written about, Greening the School House is perhaps the only way to do all of the following with the same investment dollars:
- reduce
- school costs (or free up resources for other uses, such as text books, salaries, …)
- pollution (both local and global)
- vulnerability to natural/man-made disasters
- improve
- educational performance / outcomes
- student, employee, community physical/mental health
- local economic performance and future prospects
As put in the past, greening the school house
might be the only educational achievement enhancing path that is also “profitable” (due to energy and operational cost benefits) even without considering the secondary (job creation, student/teacher health) and tertiary (pollution levels, capacity building for energy efficiency and other ‘green’ across the country) benefits.
Want to make a step forward in achieving a Green New Deal, to reduce our climate impacts and risks while strengthening the society, then make sure to understand, promote, and execute serious efforts to Green Schools.