Hello, hello! I hope you all are having a good summer. I have two new stories at The Intercept to share with you this week.
The first story is about the world of climate finance — a term that’s generally understood to mean the transfer of funds, technology and resources from wealthy, developed countries to poor, developing ones in order to help them mitigate their carbon emissions and adapt to climate change.
This whole notion of climate finance — and how much we need to transfer — has been largely absent from all U.S. political discussions, but it’s hugely important. Developing countries account for roughly 60 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions, and are expected to account for nearly 90 percent in the next two decades. What role will the U.S. play to help developing countries bring those emissions down? And what ethical and moral obligations does it shoulder? How is this conversation playing out in terms of national security + self interest? Where do things stand right now?
The Green New Deal doesn’t have much to say about climate finance and international aid, though it has a lot of language around environmental justice and protecting frontline and vulnerable communities. While it’s not as easy to sell politically as creating jobs for deindustrialized towns in Ohio and Michigan, grappling more with what the U.S. and other nations will need to do on the global stage matters a great deal for what is literally a global crisis. I am hopeful that this article provides a good background for people who are new to thinking about climate finance, and I hope it helps to elevate the issue as politicians continue to debate what action is needed. I argue that given everything going on, it’s a good time to engage more with what has long been the third rail of climate politics.
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The second story is a more alarming civil rights update, about a potential threat to inclusionary zoning at the Supreme Court. Inclusionary zoning is a policy tool employed by more than 880 jurisdictions in 25 states and Washington D.C. to promote mixed-income neighborhoods and residential integration. The way it typically works is a city (or state) passes a law that requires real estate developers to reserve a certain number of units in new housing complexes for tenants who live on more modest incomes; some places also allow developers to pay a fee so the city can construct more affordable housing elsewhere. While definitely not perfect, inclusionary zoning is an important policy that leaders have used for decades to promote diverse communities.
But some conservatives have long argued that inclusionary zoning amounts to an illegal theft of property, and now that Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court, civil rights advocates say those opponents might have an easier time making their case. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm known for challenging things like affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act and school integration, filed a petition this month at the Supreme Court, asking them to review a new inclusionary zoning lawsuit. I wrote about the case and some of the legal arguments behind it here.
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Is there information about what the global green new deal funds would be spent on? Big dollar amounts seem to be thrown around with not much info about how the money would be allocated.