In addition, the bill will outlaw the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines next year, fund a buyback program to turn over transportation stock, incentivize the replacement of gas stations with quick-charge infrastructure, and pass a clean fuel standard. A 100 percent zero-carbon portfolio standard for the power sector by 2045 will complement the deployment of renewables and construction of five new nuclear power plants using fourth-generation “breeder” reactors. New building standards will ban the sale of fossil-fuel equipment and a range of rebates and incentives will go toward replacing this equipment with electrified versions. Industry will already be motivated by the shock collar, but the EPA will impose a slew of new requirements, while financial assistance will help industry move to a mix of electrification, carbon capture, and hydrogen via electrolysis to reduce process emissions and create synthetic biofuels. Standards will drive purchasing decisions and incentives will turn over stock, utilizing every tool from industrial boiler standards to tax incentives for switching to hydrogen for creating heat and steam. The end result should be a rapid decarbonization of industrial processes.
In the agricultural sector, an end to subsidies for ruminant animals, the shock collar, and a simple tax levied on any creature raised for meat or milk will curb consumption and emissions while a tradable permit system similar to fisheries will cap the number of cattle. Anaerobic digesters will be required for manure, dietary regulations for animal feed, and a border adjustment tariff will ensure that imported meat faces similar costs. Some of these funds will be used to compensate ranchers and livestock owners. Strict regulations on nitrogen fertilizers will be complemented by incentives for farmers to switch to carbon-sequestering agricultural practices such as no-till farming and agroforestry. Subsidies for aquaponics and seaweed farming will produce a bountiful and nutritious food source while also sequestering carbon, reducing ocean acidification, and creating ecosystems in which fish, scallops, and other edible aquatic species will thrive.
The government will issue climate bonds better than the current market rate, allowing us to borrow at 2 percent to help finance the transformation of the economy. The newly created National Green Infrastructure Bank (NGIB), to be capitalized by the government, will finance everything from smart-grid transmission lines to greenhouses while coordinating with state and local governments to promote zero-carbon energy, biodiversity conservation, and financing for carbon dioxide removal (CDR). This last point is key. Getting to a zero-emissions economy is no longer sufficient. We must begin to remove as much CO2 as is technologically feasible, and the NGIB can play an active role in financing this.
Carbon utilization may be even more vital. For instance, a mandate for cement clinker substitution will institutionalize the method of drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere to create synthetic limestone in our primary building material. CO2 is a fascinating and useful molecule that can produce fertilizer, minerals, chemicals, polymers, and fuels, effectively eliminating industry’s need for a fossil feedstock. Though I loathe this buzzword, such a system would be the keystone of a truly “sustainable” economy. The technology for widespread carbon sequestration and utilization has existed for some time, but the market has remained anemic. Again, standards, investment, and incentives can begin to drive a widespread revolution in these processes.
Concurrently, the federal government will help finance construction of direct air carbon capture plants, carbon mineralization on the ocean floor, wetlands restoration, mangrove forests, and sequoia groves, directly training and employing up to two million people in the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC), modeled on the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s. Young and low-skilled workers will receive competitive wages, health care, and training, while many new production factories and tax incentives will target disadvantaged regions, particularly where concentrated urban and rural poverty has proved intractable. However, the CCC’s mission will begin on our eroding coasts, and what our task force has dubbed “the Great Transition.”
For decades, our government has been buying time on the coasts with expensive maladaptations. The reckoning has arrived, and it will require a comprehensive, politically fraught restructuring of our shorelines. Through the Coastal Resilience and Defense Authority (CORDA), the federal government will offer pre-crisis fair market value to homeowners living within the “hazard line” of the US coast, established as those areas within nine feet of sea level. For property within three feet, owners will, after two years, lose the opportunity for a buyout or federal flood insurance, and eminent domain may be invoked depending on the property’s viability, the goal being to restore as much of this area from paved-over development to wetlands as quickly as possible while also embarking on a federal works project to plant mangrove forests on the Southeast and Gulf coasts to protect against storm surge and sequester significant amounts of carbon. There will, however, be a hard cap of $5 million for single-family homes, $3 million for second homes and investment properties, and $25 million for businesses, forcing the wealthy to eat the cost of the retreat. For instance, Facebook’s campus in Menlo Park, California, built for over $1 billion and only 1.6 feet above sea level, will face a staggering loss with this program. A reformation of the National Flood Insurance Program will create the National Fire and Flood Insurance Program (NFFIP) using updated FEMA maps to calculate climate risk. Nonprofit disaster insurance backed by public dollars is still an absolute necessity, but it must not incentivize risky building behavior as the NFIP did for so long. Households will be zoned according to risk and certain properties that flood or burn will only get money to move, not rebuild. Community grants to states can help towns merge services and soften the blow of degrowth for communities that must unincorporate. PRIRA strengthened the welfare state for the privileged, and we must end maladaptive practices like beach sand replenishment in luxury neighborhoods (and not just because the global supply of sand will effectively be gone in twenty years). Wealthy enclaves like Nantucket, the Hamptons, and Cape Cod will likely expend vast resources to delay the reckoning, but soon the agony of wet carpets and sewage on the lawn will overwhelm nostalgia.
Meanwhile, states and municipalities will pay a deductible when accessing emergency disaster aid, not as punishment but to ensure they are considering risk in land development decisions, while a new national property tax, levied at a penny per square foot, will go to fill the coffers of the National Climate Hazard Mitigation Fund (NCHMF), which will essentially augment FEMA surge capacity. This will be used for nationally declared disasters ranging from flooding to wildfires to earthquakes to freak lightning storms, the idea being to backstop, for every citizen, the risk of a more volatile climatic regime. This will be supplemented by Secretary Rathbone’s “Get the Fuck Out of the Way” tax on property within fifteen feet of sea level, at an additional penny per square foot, rising another cent for each quarter inch of sea level rise. The Uniform Relocation Act, governing compensation for displaced renters, will be amended with more generous subsidies and incentives for communities to relocate to new public housing in Climate-Resilient Mobilization Cities (CRMCs).
The Coastal Resilience and Defense Authority will undoubtedly be controversial and induce howls from politicians and constituents alike. So be it. There will be accusations that we are abandoning storied cities such as New Orleans, Miami, and Charleston. This is accurate. These cities are no longer defensible given the current rate of sea level rise and attempting to buttress them will only incur greater losses of money, material, and lives. While decommissioning thermoelectric coastal power plants (particularly nuclear facilities), removing hazardous waste, and lining landfills will be a high priority, we must also take care not to collapse regional economies. There’s little point in spending precious resources trying to save a city like New Orleans built on a subsiding delta already below sea level, but building resilient “transition communities” on higher ground could be useful. Similarly, a great deal of port activity must begin a transition away from fragile coastal areas and toward navigable inland waterways, such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Hudson River-Erie Canal link to the Great Lakes, and Baton Rouge, which will absorb much of New Orleans’s waterborne commerce due to its safe elevation. (I’ll spare you the acronyms of all these programs.)