Thinking Inside the Box: A Blueprint for Green New Deal Industrial Mobilization and Strategy for Human Capital Repurposing

Abstract

The American “Green New Deal” (GND) is a controversial public policy initiative described by advocates as the “millennial generation’s World War II” that seeks to ban carbon-based and nuclear energy in order to avoid a predicted Climate Change apocalypse. Proponents of GND have thusfar failed to offer a substantive proposal for the industrial mobilization necessary to win their war on carbon, and this paper attempts to fill that void with development of a rough-order estimate of $52 trillion in new industrial output required to replace combustion-powered infrastructure. Drawing from World War II industrial mobilization as its template for urgent human resourcing, the paper proposes that deconstructing the current post-secondary education sector by 65% and repurposing its currently misappropriated human capital to industrial mobilization provide the only apparent available cohort of requisite size and intellectual acuity to achieve GND goal realization in 20 years. The paper is intended to provide a rational basis upon which advocates and proponents alike can engage in a debate that includes GND feasibility and its broader implications for re-industrialization and sector re-orientation of the US economy during the working lifetimes of millennials.