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Feb. 8, 2012
Green Blowback in Six Steps
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Blowback is a concept that usually refers to a negative consequence that occurs because of implementing a particular national policy.
However, blowback can be positive; and we should set our sights on facilitating positive blowback that furthers a green agenda. Below are steps we could take to facilitate blowback that would be especially welcome to environmentally conscious citizens:
- Our foreign aid is often paired with an understanding that a recipient country will purchase military weapons from U. S. manufacturers. We should consider ways that we could use similar understandings to sell clean energy or clean energy technologies to other countries that get our aid. Blowback would be positive in that everybody could enjoy living in a healthier and more sustainable world. For example, if we exported clean energy technology instead of coal, everybody could live in a world where it would be easier to breathe and global warming would be reduced.
- Tax policy is under scrutiny because existing tax policy favors companies that choose to lay off American workers and export jobs overseas. Unfortunately, we also, in effect, export green jobs overseas when we fail to have a long-term strategy to give tax incentives to companies in green industries. For, example, the U. S. used to be the leader in producing solar panels. Now, China -- which has a long-term strategy of providing support to its green industries -- makes solar panels at a volume more than six times higher than the U. S. Blowback over effects of tax policies may help both workers and green companies.
- Super Pacs, the political action committees that the Supreme Court unleashed to contribute to political advocacy without restriction, have been instrumental in vicious negative ad campaigns during the Republican primary election battles of 2011 and 2012. Both conservatives and liberals are questioning the benefits of asserting a constitutional right of corporations and wealthy individuals to contribute to Super Pacs without limits. Blowback could result in a constitutional amendment that would put people (not corporations) back in control of elections. People are more likely than corporations to demand environmental protections from their political representatives.
- Educational policy is placed in the hands of committees in some states where a narrow ideology can control which textbooks are purchased for use by students. For example in Texas in 2009, text books that teach about climate change were required to include views in conflict with science that is accepted by a vast majority of scientists. Blowback from concerned citizens will lead to our having a better educated populous when we adopt educational policies that do not allow ideologies to trump science.
- Sometimes regulators seem to have been captured by the companies they are supposed to be regulating. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has led to blowback demanding that regulators monitor more closely the practices of potential polluters.
- The U. S. Chamber of Commerce states that it represents the interests of millions of businesses. However, its policy is to oppose regulation of the worst polluting businesses in America. A positive blowback is that businesses around the country are not joining the Chamber. Rather, they are joining the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) and local "green chambers." Dolphin Blue has joined the ASBC and was the first business in Texas to join (and financially support) the Texas Green Chamber of Commerce.
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