We must abolish the police to save the planet!

Your neighborhood, maybe not so much, but definitely the planet.

"There's No Green New Deal Without Police Abolition"

I'm actually okay with that, but probably not in the way she means.

The piece appeared in Atmos, and describes Rhiana Gunn-Wright as the "Green New Deal mastermind."

And yes, I believe that is intended as a compliment. Personally I would liken it to, say, being named the "Chernobyl nuclear meltdown mastermind," or the "Let's put Ishtar into production mastermind," but no, they definitely mean it as a positive.

How do we start? According to Gunn-Wright:

[It] starts off with recognizing that police brutality is an environmental justice issue.

Sure, why not?

We live in a time where gender programs in Pakistan are considered "Covid relief," and "Childcare" is considered infrastructure. Heck, there was real infrasctructure, a bridge, in the Covid relief bill but apparently that was too meta even for the Democrats.

Environmental justice is not just about air pollution. It's not just about how close or far you are from a fossil fuel facility. It's also about what makes up your physical environment, including policing, public safety, education, clean water. All of that is part of a person's physical environment.

That might sound like a random list of things cobbled together without rhyme nor reason to further a political objective but that's not it all. You just don't understand it.

Don't feel too badly, you're probably not a Rhodes scholar like Gunn-Wright, which imbues her with a kind of super-intellect that might appear as gibberish to we lesser human beings, much in the way a copy of John Locke's Two Treatises of Government might appear to an ant, or perhaps United States Senator Mazie Hirono.

Let me try to dumb it down for you:

You are surrounded by stuff, and the stuff that's important to the "environment" is whatever fits within the Democratic Party platform.

When I think about police abolition and the Green New Deal, what actually unites them is a willingness to recognize that the system we have doesn't work.

Nothing unites them, therefore I'm going to conjure up the most ethereal ill-defined category I can that is so broad that it will be nearly impossible to refute.

And acknowledging that we might not know everything we need to do right now, but we'll figure it out on the way as long as we're committed to the right principles.

In other words,

"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

Don't worry about the actual real-world consequences on people's lives. Gunn-Wright has all the right feels, and that's all that matters.

That comfort with uncertainty and risk—and the creativity to find different types of solutions—all of that is necessary for police abolition and the Green New Deal.

The true unifying principle behind police abolition and the Green New Deal:

The people pushing them have no idea what they're talking about.

Why, is that a problem?

Imagine a future without police—with less crime and more safety.

We don't have to imagine. We have an example in Portland.

See, that's not crime.

That's justice.

The U.S. spends billions on our police forces—dollars that could go toward addressing the root causes of crime, such as poverty and mental health, and toward building sustainable infrastructure.

Excellent point, other than being completely wrong. We've known for decades that poverty and mental illness are not the root causes of crime.

Having read the entire interview, I am not surprised Gunn-Wright is considered the "mastermind" behind the Green New Deal. It actually make sense now.

It is completely incoherent. She does not make arguments, she makes assertions. She lumps together a wish list of political goals and tries to create a patina of intellectual coherence that could only appeal to people who desperately want to believe her.

And she's the one with Biden's ear.