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The GND as the Real Deal – Real Homeland Security
by
Michael P. Totten, CEO, AssetsforLife & Lee G. Cooper, Professor Emeritus, UCLA


A survey jointly conducted in December 2018 by George Mason University and Yale
University asked voters whether they “somewhat or strongly” supported or opposed
the Green New Deal (GND) being proposed in Congress. By a four to one margin,
voters somewhat or strongly supported it; just 18 percent somewhat or strongly
opposed the GND. More focus on the national security implications of the GND
should dramatically lower opposition.

The voters were told the GND promised to “produce jobs and strengthen America’s
economy by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.
The Deal would generate 100% of the nation’s electricity from clean, renewable
sources within the next 10 years; upgrade the nation’s energy grid, buildings, and
transportation infrastructure; increase energy efficiency; invest in green technology
research and development; and provide training for jobs in the new green
economy.” 80% of voters support this.

Opponents immediately pounced upon the Deal, calling it reckless, impossible,
extreme radicalism, would cause an economic disaster, impose a government-
controlled socialist central-planning nightmare on the free market, or as President
Trump expressed it, "I really don't like their policies of taking away your car, taking
away your airplane flights, of 'let's hop a train to California,' or 'you're not allowed
to own cows anymore!'” The fossil fuel industry has spent several billion dollars
promoting such attacks over the past decade, when it became increasingly clear that
such a transformation was technically feasible and economically attractive
worldwide.

None of the opponents’ claims are true. An independent view that synthesizes
recent and long-established findings, asserts that the GND is reasonable, affordable,
and implementable with largely existing technologies. By some estimates an
emissions-free energy system worldwide would accrue direct savings and avoided
costs of health impacts and destruction from climate-triggered weather
catastrophes exceeding $50 trillion per year within the next three decades. It would
also prevent the yearly deaths of more than four million people, and generate tens of
millions of net new permanent jobs. The benefits specific to the USA would exceed
$4 trillion per year within three decades ($10,000 per capita/year), generate two
million net new jobs, and prevent 62,000 premature deaths from eliminating U.S. air
pollution.

Yet, many observers believe the GND will die in Congress. Arguing just the positive
jobs angle of the GND won’t translate into changing opposition votes. The majority
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of Congress members are advocates of or beholden to the fossil fuel industry

whether for campaign funds or because they represent fossil resource-dominant
states. This includes nearly all the Republicans and a minority of Democrats. Only
2,000 jobs for two years were enough to back the XL pipeline as a jobs bonanza, but
millions of permanent jobs don’t get opponents to convert.

Perhaps it’s also the imposing size of the task, which opponents find an
insurmountable undertaking within the next several decades. Americans annually
spend six to eight percent of U.S. GDP on energy - $1 to $1.4 trillion – consuming the
equivalent of 49 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboe/d), of which fossil
fuels constituted 80 percent (about 39 mboe/d). Replacing such a gargantuan sum
with emission-free energy services in such a short timespan has no historical
precedent.

Some critics claim it could require a comparable amount of money America now
annually spends on national security ($1.1 trillion in FY2019). What they self-
servingly ignore are the enormous cost savings in displaced fuels (~$800 billion per
year), and avoiding the massive social costs of carbon (~$1 to $1.7 trillion per year).
It is true that the immense size and pace of the change has led many commentators
to liken it to the transformation of scaling up for a world war, as was successfully
done in the U.S. during the 1940s.

No Lesson in the Second Kick of a Mule

The first major legislation comparable to the GND’s aggressive actions in fighting
climate destabilization was introduced in Congress 30 years ago. It was motivated
by the riveting congressional testimony of NASA climatologist James Hansen on the
evidence pointing to threats posed by rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This
led Republican Congresswoman Claudine Schneider (R-RI) to introduce the 12-title
Global Warming Prevention Act of 1989.

As the co-founder and co-leader of the Congressional Competitiveness Caucus,
Schneider’s bill focused foremost on the enormous monetary benefits to the nation
from taking wide-ranging actions. The bill was actually promoted as the U.S.
Economic Productivity Enhancement and Competitiveness Export Act, given the
multi-trillion dollar annual gains that would accumulate over time. The
environmental values from reduced pollution and emissions, as well as
strengthened national security from eliminating vulnerable foreign oil imports,
would amplify the benefits.

The prosperous sustainability message struck a strong chord, with one-third of the
U.S. House of Representatives co-sponsoring the legislation, plus half the full
committee and subcommittee chairmen, and many Republicans, including Newt
Gingrich.

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The core of the legislation concentrated on spurring ambitious, comprehensive,

continuous energy and resource-efficiency improvements throughout the economy.
In the wake of the 1970s OPEC oil embargoes that sent oil prices soaring, a wealth of
economic-engineering analyses revealed America was sitting on immense
“reserves” of energy savings that could reduce the nation’s energy bills by several
hundred billion dollars per year. These findings were assiduously documented by a
group of eminent physicists under the auspices of the American Institute of Physics,
which calculated the thermodynamic inefficiencies of all the ways energy is
consumed.

Two prominent physicists, Professor Art Rosenfeld at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory and Amory Lovins, founder of Rocky Mountain Institute, are considered
the fathers of energy efficiency. Dr. Rosenfeld repeatedly testified to Congress that
the national R&D advancements accelerating time-to-market of highly efficient
buildings, lighting, windows, vehicles, and other innovative products were accruing
multi-billion-dollar annual energy savings (plus pollution and emission reductions
at zero additional cost). The modest cost of the R&D generated phenomenal returns
on investment (ROI) to the taxpayers of $5,000 for each appropriated dollar.

In his 1976 Foreign Affairs article, “Energy Strategy, The Road Not Taken,” Amory
Lovins articulated this risk-minimizing, “end-use / least-cost” redefinition of the
energy problem, brilliantly posing the key question of “what quantity, quality, scale,
and source of energy will do each task in the cheapest way.” This economically
based approach first revealed the value of successful foresight into the competitive
energy-service marketplace.

It is noteworthy that between 1949 and 1973, the energy required for producing the
U.S. Gross Domestic Product (E/GDP) declined by 0.4% per year. Then, with the
price shocks following the oil crisis of 1973, innumerable efficiency improvements
to buildings, vehicles, factories, motors, lights, and appliances accelerated the rate of
reduction of E/GDP five-fold to 2.1% per year.

Without faster efficiency gains (smarter, more intelligent ways of designing and
delivering energy services), energy consumption in the USA would have risen from
42 mboe/d in 1973 to 95 mboe/d in 2005. Instead, energy consumption in 2005
was only 55 mboe/d. The difference (40 mboe/d) also avoided US$700 billion per
year in higher energy bills. How much is 40 mboe/d? Envision a freight train
annually hauling nearly 18 million railcars of coal, which would wrap around the
world seven times. There are only two nations that consume more than 40 mboe/d -
- the USA and China.

Even if one-third of these savings are discounted as being due to structural changes
in the economy rather than smart efficiency improvements to energy-consuming
devices, this still represents more than US$460 billion per year in reduced energy
bills. By way of comparison, there were only 16 out of 194 nations whose entire GDP
in 2006 was greater than these energy savings.

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Despite the enormous multiple benefits derived from efficiency gains, the federal
government has consistently given highest priority to fossil fuel expansion. A
snarky remark by one Texas public utility commissioner in the late 1970s opined no
nation ever conserved its way to greatness. And former U.S. Vice President Dick
Cheney once scoffed that "conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not
a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

U.S. Rep. Claudine Schneider pointedly challenged these dubious opinions
unencumbered by facts, every year when the Secretary of Energy testified on the
energy budget. Why, she asked, was the R&D funding for efficiency allocated less
than five percent, and fossil and nuclear R&D received 90%, when the taxpayers
were garnering colossal ROIs on efficiency R&D? Year after year the Secretary of
Energy had no answer, and no regard. At one point, exasperated at the Secretary’s
willful indifference in recognizing the rich evidence of economic, environmental and
national security benefits resulting from efficiency gains, Rep. Schneider noted, “You
do know, there is no lesson in the second kick of a mule?”

Also core to Rep. Schneider’s legislation was foreign assistance and export
promotion of efficiency products and market-driven policies helpful to developing
nations to implement resilient, clean, low-risk energy services enhancing economic,
environmental, and national security. They provided cheap insurance against
looming weather disasters triggering climate refugees; hundreds of millions of
roaming homeless people are projected to occur if global GHG emissions are not
deeply reduced.

In a subsequent Foreign Affairs article (“A Farewell to Fossil Fuels” 2012), Amory
Lovins noted, “In 1976, I heretically suggested [U.S.] ‘energy intensity’ could fall by
two-thirds by 2025. By 2010, it had fallen by half, driven by no central plan or
visionary intent but only by the perennial quest for profit, security, and health. Still-
newer methods…could reduce U.S. energy intensity by another two-thirds over the
next four decades, with huge economic benefits.“

The preponderance of public policies, regulations, and subsidies at both the federal
and state levels continue to push a fossil-fuel-expansion agenda. Efficiency
“reserves” are rhetorically supported but actively ignored or opposed, despite these
least-cost-and-risk ways of delivering energy services at the point of use greatly
expanding each decade (prompting the witticism that efficiency opportunities are
low-hanging fruit that keep growing back). Similar disregard and opposition to
solar PV and wind remain pervasive, despite these two emission-free options
joining the efficiency reserve as being lower in cost and risk than fossil (and
nuclear) options.

Preferencing fossil fuel is a bad deal – for business and the economy, health and the
environment, and most of all for national security. The irrefutable climate science
on the range of threats and risks, many already underway and becoming

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increasingly more severe and frequent, warn that delaying deep GHG reductions is
raising the probabilities of triggering tipping points within the next two decades
that will take centuries from which to recover. While climate denialists arrogantly
dismiss and willfully resist the science findings, military leaders see the threats as
dangerous as terrorism.

The DoD’s Quadrennial Defense Review, which updates assessments of the nation’s
strategic challenges, has emphasized “The impacts of climate change may increase
the frequency, scale, and complexity of future missions, including defense support to
civil authorities, while at the same time undermining the capacity of our domestic
installations to support training activities. Our actions to increase energy and water
security, including investments in energy efficiency, new technologies, and
renewable energy sources, will increase the resiliency of our installations and help
mitigate these effects.”

Retired Rear Admiral David Titley provides a historical perspective, “The parallels
between the political decisions regarding climate change we have made and the
decisions that led Europe to World War One are striking – and sobering. The
decisions made in 1914 reflected political policies pursued for short-term gains and
benefits, coupled with institutional hubris, and a failure to imagine and understand
the risks or to learn from recent history.”

Retired Army Brigadier General Chris King adds another caution, “This is like
getting embroiled in a war that lasts 100 years. That’s the scariest thing for us.
There is no exit strategy that is available for many of the problems. You can see in
military history, when they don’t have fixed durations, that’s when you’re most
likely to not win.”

Navy Admiral Samuel Locklear, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, sees climate
destabilization as the pacific region’s largest security threat over the century.
Climate disruption “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen ... that
will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios
we all often talk about.”

The Security Costs of Uncertainty

Comparing the GND to scaling up for war is more than metaphor; in fact, the GND
should be considered the Real Deal, as in Homeland Real Security. The DoD has
recognized designing an energy strategy for economic and national security since
the 1970s when foreign oil disruptions cost the nation several trillion dollars in lost
economic product. The U.S. military provides both the compelling reasons and the
exemplary model of actions that need to be taken for establishing real and enduring
domestic energy security, economic security and defense security.

For nearly half a century the Pentagon has been monitoring the increasing
vulnerabilities of the massive, heavily centralized, U.S. energy supply system to

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major attacks and disasters. Multiple threats are now an ever-present reality that
could disrupt U.S. foreign oil imports (equivalent to 100 billion gallons in 2018),
collapse the electric-grid network (200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission
lines), or cripple the nation’s interstate oil and gas pipelines (2.4 million miles).

The menacing risks are due to manifold causes, encompassing domestic subversives,
foreign terrorists, military conflicts, cyber-attacks, and climate-triggered weather
catastrophes. As a result, the DoD has mandated all military bases, facilities, and
installations transition themselves into renewable-powered, “island-able”
microgrids, capable of fully functioning even if the grid or pipelines collapse.

Cyber sabotage and warfare has become a pervasive reality that threatens the very
core of economic continuity, as recently reported (“U.S. Cyber Command operation
disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms”
(Washington Post, 2/26/2019, Ellen Nakashima). Both the U.S. and Chinese
military are vying for global dominance in advanced artificial intelligence (AI),
expressly stated in recent strategic documents, which weapons experts view as the
new, lethal, and accelerating arms race. This calls for an urgent examination of the
portfolio of beneficial actions our nation can and must take to strengthen the
economy and society’s resilience in the face of sudden, surprise cyber-attacks. We
now live in the Uncertain Century.

For example, since the 911 tragedy in 2001 all U.S. nuclear reactors and oil
refineries have remained on alert to possible physical and cyber attacks. The
Stuxnet computer virus attack initiated by the U.S. and Israel on Iran’s large nuclear
centrifuge complex in 2010 crippled that nation’s process for producing atomic
bomb material. There is a black market for such devastating computer viruses now
accessible by sub-national extremist groups.

We face numerous potential disasters, whether triggered by malignant acts, military
attacks, technical or human errors, or acts of nature. The military’s answer lies in
island-able microgrids (able to work with or without the grid), powered by onsite
renewables and distributed storage systems, which ensure resiliency of operation.
Revealingly, while military readiness is being addressed, surrounding civil society
may remain crippled during such crises, greatly reducing military readiness and
effectiveness. The GND would move toward replicating that resilience more broadly.
This helps maintain the logistics for materials and personnel for the military and
supports the community as well. The ability to confront and address such threats is
why it is imperative to expand the military’s exemplary model throughout civilian
society.


The Most Secure Domestic Energy Options

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently assessed the amount of
solar power that can be generated by existing rooftops in each state. California, for

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example, could generate 74 percent of total electricity demand, while the

nationwide average is roughly 40 percent of total power.

Not included are all the available ground spots for solar power canopies – on
parking lots, along rail and highway corridors, on brownfields, abandoned
superfund sites, peri-urban farms, etc. – which could double the amount each city
could generate through distributed microgrids.

Nor do these estimates include any efficiency gains, which are as significant as the
solar percentages in delivering energy services at the end-use. Taken together they
comprise an immense “energy reserve” located in the heart of every city and
community, offering unparalleled resilience against the aforementioned disruption
risks. The grid connection design for this needs special attention, but no new
technology.

Building Security Efficiently

Efficiency gains offer three vast pools of cost-effective energy services for buildings
and industrial facilities. First, deep reductions in end-use demand are achievable
through the construction of ultra-efficient, high-performance buildings, built to
PassiveHouse, Net Zero Energy (NZE) and Energy-Plus building standards. The
PassiveHouse reduces energy consumption by up to 90 percent in new construction,
while NZEs produce onsite power that generate as much energy as consumed
annually, and Energy-Plus buildings produce more than they consume each year.

Deep retrofits of the existing building stock could reduce energy demand by half or
more. California is leading the nation, setting a 2020 goal to have all new residential
buildings be NZEs, and a 2030 goal for all new commercial buildings to be NZEs, as
well as half of all existing buildings.

Nationwide the existing building stock consists of more than 5 million commercial
buildings covering 90 billion square feet (ft2), and 136 million residential buildings.
New commercial buildings are expanding by roughly one billion ft2 per year, and
more than one million new residences are being constructed annually. In addition to
all new buildings constructed to NZE standards, deep retrofits of the nation’s total
building stock over the next quarter century imply completing an average of four
percent per year.

Second, substantially more benefits and values can accrue from beneficial
electrification (BE), which takes advantage of synergisms with the onsite and
distributed solar power systems, and with the previously noted efficiency gains. BE
reduces end-use demand by 35 percent due to the inherent efficiency of
electrification over combustion devices – thermal power plants, boilers, furnaces,
stoves, dryers, etc.

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Third, widespread digitization has given rise to the Internet-of-Things (IoT) being
commercialized (e.g., smart lights and appliances, intelligent machines and
equipment, building automation). This involves the use of smart sensor networks in
buildings to monitor actual performance, which ensures the building is operating as
efficiently as it was originally designed. For example, one of the world’s largest IT
corporations, Infosys, found that after designing and constructing ultra-efficient
buildings requiring 50 percent less energy at no extra first cost, installing the sensor
networks increased efficiency savings to 80 percent!

The value of integrating these several pools of energy efficiency gains with onsite
and distributed solar, is that it enables buildings - which consume 40 percent of the
nation’s fossil fuels and 72 percent of its electricity - to free up excess generated
electricity to perform other essential services. These include charging electric
vehicles, or selling energy for a profit into the utility grid, and increasingly, storing
energy in onsite batteries for later use, as is now routinely done in Hawaii and
Australia. These are among the concrete actions cities can implement to match the
security of the island-able microgrid capabilities powering America’s defense
installations.

Uninterruptable Mobility and Transport Services

Similar resilience-enhancing and security-strengthening strategies are abundantly
available to cities for ensuring access to mobility and transportation services. One
immediate action that would accrue security, economic, as well as health and
environmental benefits is to build upon voters expressed desire for the redesign of
streets to make them safe for all ages to walk and bicycle. Less than four percent of
Americans currently walk or bike daily; compared to, say, Dutch and Danish citizens
at six and 14 times that rate, respectively. The medical community has persistently
advocated for cities to make streets safe for pedestrians and cyclists, arguing the
health benefits would put a significant dent in the nation’s obesity epidemic and
$3.5 trillion annual healthcare expenditures.

There is a wealth of experience and documentation of how cities already are
implementing successful plans, programs, practices and policies, resulting in
catalyzing a rise in citizens’ frequency in walking and biking, integrated with transit.
Cities that undertake “complete streets” with infrastructure designed for safe
walking and cycling gain immediate results (e.g., Denmark analyses found cycling an
average of 2 miles per day results in 1 less sick day per year per person). At the
same time they are putting in place the durable adaptations that enable
communities to swiftly respond to surprise disruptions and sudden disasters with
far less costs and damages to their local economies.

Such fuel-efficient re-designed localities could result in America’s fuel-guzzling
cities, which consume nine to 12 barrels of oil equivalent per capita per year
(boe/pc-yr), reducing their fuel consumption to just one to three boe/pc-yr. It is
also noteworthy that those cities worldwide renown for their walkability, cycling

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and easily accessible transit systems correlate strongly with being considered the
most aesthetically pleasing by visitors and registering highest by their citizens for
living pleasure and satisfaction.

The entire transportation sector is already in the midst of radical changes promising
to be far greater than those a century ago when Henry Ford first mass-produced the
affordable car. This is being driven to a large degree by the digitalization,
computerization, Internetization, and mass minimization of global products and
services. It is not just that the decade-old smartphone enables citizens to perform
scores of tasks that formerly required time- and resource-consuming drives to
numerous commercial stores and businesses. Smart phones, GPS, and social media
platforms also have enabled the billion-rider-a-year, 50-million-driver on-demand
ride-hailing industry, which Goldman Sachs and others see rapidly growing to a
$285 billion a year mobility service within the decade.


Electrifying Movability

The convergence of several disruptive technologies (each 10x better in performance
and/or price than the current one) underpins the momentum driving fundamentally
superior mobility options, notably ultra-efficient, high-performance electric vehicles
(EV), and autonomous (self-driving) EVs. These include remarkable advances in
lithium-ion batteries, LIDAR sensing technology, blazing-fast computation speed,
Big Data access, the accelerating evolution of deep-learning AI algorithms, the
Internet Cloud, and smartphone apps. Additional breakthroughs emerging
commercially notably include crash-impact resistant carbon fiber auto composites
and other super-lightweight materials that greatly enhance an EV’s mileage
efficiency, recharge for longer range in less time, and can be paid for by needing
fewer batteries.

Predictably, the military is heavily investing in advancing all of these technologies,
given their critical role in delivering battlefield mobility with dramatically less fuel
shipments that are vulnerable to disruption.

Compared to the ubiquitous internal combustion engine (ICE) an EV has 90 percent
fewer moving parts (2000 vs. ~20), is five times (5x) more energy efficient, uses 10x
less fuel, has 10x lower maintenance costs, and lasts 3.5 times longer (Tesla has a
target for 7 times longer, or 1 million miles driven). The battery has accounted for
one-third of an EVs total cost, but the 15x cost decline of EV battery packs since
2005 are helping EVs close in on the same purchasing cost of a gas-fueled vehicle.
Analysts anticipate this will occur within several years, at which point EVs are very
likely to become the vehicle of first choice.

Ride-hailing autonomous electric vehicles (AEVs) portend perhaps the most radical
advances in mobility. In addition to the promise of eliminating nearly all vehicle
accidents, which exceeded seven million in 2017 causing more than two million

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injuries and 35,000 deaths in the U.S., and removing traffic congestion and costs, the
mainstreaming of AEVs could boost U.S. economic productivity by an estimated one
trillion dollars per year.

Detailed analyses indicate that within the decade ride-hailing AEVs will become four
to ten times cheaper per mile than buying a new car, and two to four times cheaper
than operating an existing vehicle. The financial implications include freeing up $1
trillion per year in disposable income for Americans in the 2030 to 2040 timeframe.
Energy security gains result from a 30 percent decline in oil demand, driven by a 70
percent reduction in the number of required vehicles, as well as being electrically
powered with renewables.

While America Sleeps

China is the world’s EV juggernaut, with 50 percent of market share. There are close
to 500 Chinese EV companies producing nearly three times as many EVs as the USA.
China’s government is pursuing an all-electric future, setting ambitious EV sales
targets, accelerating AEV commercialization, and has announced a complete ban on
the internal-combustion engine to be phased in. China is installing a London-sized
electric bus fleet every five weeks, and 99 percent of the 400,000 electric buses are
operating in China.

Importantly, and not unexpectedly, China’s big EV push is motivated by the need to
strengthen energy, economic, and national security, given China has surpassed the
U.S. as the world’s largest importer of vulnerable foreign oil supplies. But China’s
leaders also fully recognize this will strengthen their leading position in the
expanding global market for EVs and AEVs. The desperate need to clean up cities
blanketed in toxic air pollution is also a key factor, given the intense anger by
China’s citizenry suffering from the suffocating and health-debilitating smog.

Not lost on the Chinese is the recognition that three-fourths of expanding physical
infrastructure worldwide this century (energy systems, new factories, buildings,
vehicles, appliances, equipment, etc.) will occur in developing countries. Likewise,
this is where the overwhelming majority of expanding global GHG emissions will
occur. China’s commitment to achieving deep GHG reductions stems from their
realization that the nation’s aggressive targets for an all-electric, renewables-
powered, emissions and pollution-free domestic economy aligns with a
commanding export business strategy for seizing competitive advantage in these
growth markets.

Such central-planned, state capitalism is an anathema to some U.S. political and
business leaders for a nation considered the bastion of free market capitalism.
Comparing that socialist exercise to the GND is specious and disingenuous. The
pragmatist asks for an alternative free-market plan, such as we sketched above. Of
course, a free market is an abstract ideal that in reality is indisputably dependent
upon government-enforced laws, rules and regulations in order to function. And

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while there has been non-stop debate since our country’s founding as to the delicate
balance between an unfettered free market and the legitimate Constitutional
responsibilities of the federal government, ensuring the provision of national
security against invasion is an undisputed obligation. This is the government’s role
in public-private efforts to solve large-scale problems, military and beyond.


Homeland Real Securities

National security may be the number one responsibility of government, but it is only
as effective as it entirely understands and appropriately responds to the nature of
the security threats, vulnerabilities and risks. The burdensome reality of surprise
cyber-attacks completely redefines how to defend against this economic and
national security threat. Both figuratively and literally, our centralized energy
system installations have become the new battlefield targets. Real security now
demands we remake our way of delivering energy services to the point of use so as
to make them uninteresting targets.

Doing this immediately, rapidly, and steadfastly nationwide for the next several
decades has several compelling reasons. First and foremost, the real defense
security it can provide every community pays for itself many times over. It is totally
opposite to the financing of the past two decades of wars, which arguably has done
little to remove the threat of domestic disruptions. These wars have been
overwhelmingly financed on credit by increasing the annual federal deficits; a tax
liability now estimated at $6 trillion, or ~30 percent of the national debt.

The foreign wars since 911 have resulted in half a million deaths worldwide, and
raised our nation’s national security budget to more than $1 trillion per year. Yet the
fear of terrorism has shown little sign of waning in the United States. While $1
trillion has been cumulatively spent just on domestic security, this has focused on
airport and seaport check points, border patrol and control, upgrading police
departments, and maintaining nationwide communications surveillance by the
National Security Agency. It mainly has been profitable for the shareholders of
military-industrial-finance companies, as well as record profits for the oil companies
as oil prices skyrocketed. But it has not focused on nor invested in the full range of
real domestic security that is now imperative.

Instead, we have the building-, neighborhood- and city-scale energy-system
transition highlighted above. It’s both technically feasible and economically
attractive and offering real and durable security against a range of potentially
devastating risks and threats. First costs can and should be financed through U.S.
Treasury “defense” bonds. Similar to war bonds, the zero-risk, sovereign-backed,
real homeland securities, would get repaid out of the combination of the energy
savings and solar generated power. They are fundamentally, highly productive
investments, enhancing the asset values of all citizens’ dwellings and business
owners’ facilities, as well as improving the city’s economic multiplier as money

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spent on energy stays in the community rather than exported. At the same time, the
strengthening of security measures is cheap insurance against the potential
catastrophic costs of lives and property that will result from remaining ill prepared.

We can adapt now or collapse later. By adapting we avoid lost opportunities from
ignoring the dramatically changing global market that the Chinese and other nations
are reaping. Instead, the experience and learning curves generated from the
aggregated actions of citizens and businesses in towns and cities across the country
excellently position the demand for these new innovative products and services of
U.S. companies in the international market, worth hundreds of trillions of dollars in
the coming decades.

The national “defense” securities could be acquired by public banks, whether
municipal, state, or public actors, which in turn, can provide the ultra-low-cost
financing essential for citizens and local businesses to undertake the
transformational investments in their buildings and other energy-related assets.

The GND is the real security framework through which Congress, state and local
leaders, and citizens of all political persuasions should view what this nation
desperately needs right now. They will find a win for national security, a win for the
citizenry, and a win for the environment that all can agree upon.

*** ***

Michael P Totten, CEO, AssetsforLife, served as Executive Director of the President’s
Clearinghouse for Community Energy Efficiency in the late 1970s, as well as drafted
the 12-title, Global Warming Prevention Act of 1989.

Lee G Cooper, Professor Emeritus, UCLA Anderson School of Management, is the
author of Systems Entrepreneurship (2019), and founder and past-CEO, Strategic
Data Corp (SDC).

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