By Jacob Johnson
A growing majority of Americans believe climate change is happening. Unfortunately, many still believe addressing the problem would be too costly. When working to strike down climate legislation in 2019, Senator Mitch McConnell said the Green New Deal amounted to “self-inflicted economic ruin.” Many conservatives argue any feasible approach to climate change must be based on incremental change driven by market forces. Government regulation that moves too far and too fast would cause unprecedented shifts in the economy and in people’s daily lives, they contend. After all, fossil fuels are at the heart of our economy. The agriculture and meat industries are important to our daily lives (even if they are responsible for a huge share of overall greenhouse gas emissions). These conservatives are right that addressing climate change will require radical changes to our economic and social systems. But they’re wrong that such government-imposed changes would be unprecedented. History shows it’s actually quite common.
Many times in the last century, the United States government has made radical changes to economic and social policies in an effort to address existential crises. In each case, the United States hasn’t just weathered the storm—we’ve come out stronger than when we entered. From these historical lessons, we can be confident of two things: First, that we are capable of meeting the challenge of climate change, despite the enormous costs; and second, that when the time comes, we will have an appetite for the kind of radical and rapid change that seems unpalatable now. Therefore, we should continue to dream big when proposing solutions to climate change. There will be an inflection point when such radical solutions aren’t just palatable—they’ll be desperately sought after.
The United States was reluctant to enter World War I. The massive cost of war was a powerful deterrent. Indeed, the total cost of the war eventually amounted to 52 percent of national GDP. To pay the bill, the US government implemented radical economic changes at a rapid pace. Income tax rates in the highest bracket went from 1.5 percent at the beginning of the war to 18 percent by the end—an increase of 1200 percent. Businesses faced new taxes at rates of 20 to 60 percent of “excess corporate profits.” In addition to this new tax revenue, the government created a novel program to raise money by issuing debt to a previously overlooked population of debt buyers—everyday Americans. Liberty Bonds, used to fund the war effort, were purchased by members of the public for $50 per bond. If one didn’t have $50 on-hand, they could buy War Savings Stamps for $5, or even Thrift Stamps for 25 cents. Celebrities, boy scouts, soldiers, and entertainers were sent all over the nation to apply social pressure and encourage “patriotism” in Americans (patriotism meaning to buy as many bonds as they could afford).
In addition to momentous economic policy changes enacted to address the existential crisis of World War I, several new government agencies sprang up to create social change among the public that would support our collective effort to win the war. Many don’t realize the original mission of the Food and Drug Administration was to encourage food conservation for the war effort. In a national propaganda scheme that would horrify today’s political pundits, the US government aggressively campaigned for “Meatless Tuesdays” at home so the food could instead be sent to the boys fighting overseas. For many today, going vegetarian—even for a day—is too high a price to pay for freedom.
War isn’t the only context in which radical and far-reaching changes to our economic and social systems have taken place. During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt employed sweeping authority to declare a “bank holiday” in which virtually all banking transactions were suspended nationwide. Only after receiving approval from the president and the Treasury Department were banks allowed to reopen their doors. Some banks never received that government blessing and stayed shuttered forever. In addition to the incredible authority President Roosevelt exercised over the private banking industry during the economic crisis, he undertook a deliberate and effective campaign to modify public behavior. In one of the first presidential addresses delivered over radio, Roosevelt convinced the public not to make a run on the banks. Without this public unity, won through a calculated propaganda campaign, it’s likely the economic crisis would have continued and become far worse.
As the nation climbed out of the Great Depression, it stumbled right into another world war. In yet another example of mass social engineering to address an existential crisis, World War II saw the return of government-impelled food conservation. The First World War led to a broad propaganda campaign to conserve food, but no mandatory rationing program. That changed in World War II, when the government took a more heavy-handed approach to force social change. Restrictions were levied on imported foods, transportation, and agriculture products. To ration scarce resources, the government issued war ration vouchers. These vouchers were required to purchase certain meats, cheeses, and canned products. Over 90 percent of Americans were forced to register with the government to receive such food vouchers. To the horror of modern-day readers, there were times when Americans couldn’t even buy sugar without these government-issued coupons.
In addition to socially engineering changes in the public’s consumption patterns, the government took unprecedented action to force private industries to shift production. President Franklin D. Roosevelt leveraged the newly formed War Production Board to compel industries to produce goods for the war. This was no small change. Before the war, US manufacturers produced about three million cars. During the war, fewer than 200 cars were built for consumer use. In their place, privately-owned factories transitioned almost completely to producing guns, trucks, tanks, and aircraft engines. It seems almost unimaginable today that the government could require private industry to make such radical changes in production.
Alongside these rapid changes in production, momentous social changes occurred as well. World War II saw black workers and women enter the workforce in ways never realized before the crisis. This, in turn, led to other workplace improvements like employer-provided childcare centers. While some of these progressive changes phased out after the war, it showed that the country was capable of weathering hitherto unimaginable changes to meet an existential threat—and to grow the economy while doing it.
More recently, we all lived through an incredible moment of economic upheaval, unprecedented government intervention, and broad public unity in the face of a shared crisis—Covid-19. Partly driven by fear, but also driven by a shared desire to “flatten the curve,” millions of Americans voluntarily put our daily lives on hold and stayed indoors for months. The federal government acted with uncharacteristic speed to expand social services, provide cash relief, and invest in vaccine research. In a callback to FDR’s War Production Board authorities, President Trump used the Defense Production Act to enforce stiff penalties for the hoarding and price-gouging of personal protective equipment (PPE). The use of such authority has typically been reserved for wartime; however, using it for Covid-19 ensured medical professionals and other Americans could access PPE throughout the pandemic without paying exorbitant prices that would have otherwise been driven up by typical supply-and-demand pressures.
These history lessons illustrate an important point: radical policy and social changes in response to a national (or global) crisis aren’t unprecedented—they’re common. The climate crisis hasn’t yet risen to the point where both the public and the government feel the true urgency of this existential threat, but that day is rapidly approaching. As more people in California, Canada, and Australia experience increasingly frequent and persistent wildfires, as more coastal cities incur billions of dollars of damage from extreme hurricanes and atmospheric rivers, as New Yorkers experience more frequent floods from what used to be typical weekday rainstorms, the urgency will be felt.
There will be a day when America is ready to change how we eat, how we work, how we bank, and how we live. It will fall to future policy leaders like us to lead that radical change. We should learn from history. We shouldn’t let fear of political infeasibility stop us from imagining far-reaching policies that will forcefully address climate change. The economic and social changes we propose may feel radical and unprecedented, but the truth is history will just be repeating itself.
Jacob Johnson is a student at NYU Wagner, focusing on public management and leadership.
