States lead to federal follow-on

The 42nd Annual Kenneth M. Piper Lecture explores the origins and impact of the Green New Deal (GND) as an example of "catalytic localism": local policymaking shaped in dynamic dialogue with federal policy processes. As an ambitious effort to address the "triple crisis" of spiraling economic inequality, climate change, and structural racism, the GND is an important illustration of the dynamic scale-shifting - from local to federal to local, and back again - of mutually reinforcing policy cycles designed to build political and cultural consensus for systemic legal change. First introduced in February 2019 by a group of progressive Democrats led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), who championed "the duty of the Federal Government" to create good jobs by building a clean energy economy, 1. the GND advanced principles that grew out of local "blue-green" campaigns to promote economic and environmental equity These local campaigns built networks and policy templates that shaped the structure and content of the federal GND, which in turned helped to influence the political environment for GND-style laws and legislative proposals at the state and local levels. The lecture examines this dynamic lawmaking, while evaluating the potential and tradeoffs of laws - like those proposed under the GND - that seek to combine sustainable environmental change with structural labor reform. Specifically, drawing on evidence from states and cities that passed or proposed "mini-GNDs" prior to the pandemic, the lecture explores the challenges of incorporating robust labor standards into ambitious proposals to address climate change and considers the conditions under which the GND might work better for workers.

My motivation to study the GND as a version of catalytic localism grew from a puzzle. Because the GND resolution emerged during the Trump presidency - and thus had no chance of becoming law - what precisely was it meant to achieve? The conventional wisdom was that the GND was a progressive vision statement: an aspirational document intended to galvanize [*292] voters, bolstering the progressive bloc within the Democratic party, and strengthening the position of its authors as party influencers (and, in the case of Ocasio-Cortez, as a potential candidate for higher office). While this analysis seems correct, my previous research on local blue-green alliance formation and policymaking suggested an alternative, complementary, rationale 2: that the GND, though not meant to be immediately enacted, might nonetheless serve to catalyze change from below; and that bottom-up momentum might produce a critical mass of state and local mini-GNDs that could provide the political foundation for, and build public opinion around, a national version - which might then spark new local innovations. My lecture explores this possibility by tracing the local origins of labor-environmental collaboration, the relationship between the federal GND and state and local laws, and the potential for federal GND policymaking, which was raised in connection with President Biden's ambitious - though now politically moribund - infrastructure plan.