Perspectives

Rinaldo S. Brutoco is the Founding President and CEO of the Santa Barbara-based World Business Academy and a co-founder of JUST Capital. He’s a serial entrepreneur, executive, author, radio host, and futurist California introduces historic law requiring all trucks to go green by 2045. who’s published on the role of business in relation to pressing moral, environmental, and social concerns for over 35 years D espite only making up seven percent of vehicles on the road in California, diesel trucks account for 70 percent of the state’s smog-causing pollution Abandon the Protestant Work Ethic and 80 percent of diesel soot emitted. In a move that’s expected to shake the auto industry, the Golden State recently enacted one of the country’s most com

I’ve been thinking lately about all the money that’s been flowing into the econprehensive rules targeting air pollution caused by transportation. omy from the CARES Act. The $500+ billion that went to big corporations California’s Air Resource Board has introduced a new rule that says all comhas been in the news lately – mostly because of the brouhaha over Treasury mercial trucks and vans sold in the state in 2045 must be emission-free. The Secretary Mnuchin refusing to tell the Congress how much he gave, to whom he move would see a massive shift from dirty and harmful diesel-powered trucks gave it, for what, and with what conditions (if any). to ones running on batteries and zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells.

The portion of the relief bill that really interests me, however, is the $400+ billion The rule is expected to go into effect as early as 2024, starting with smaller that was intended to go directly to Americans all over the country in the form commercial vehicles. Half of all trucks sold in the state must be zero-emission of direct payments. This amount, together with the $600 per week of enhanced by 2035, together with all short-haul drayage vehicles in ports and rail yards, unemployment payments paid by the Federal Government, is what has kept the while all last-mile delivery trucks and vans must be switched over by 2040. American economy afloat for the past few months. It’s the only thing that is keepThe regulation represents a step forward in the fight for environmental jusing vast numbers of Americans, millions of Americans, from falling into desperate tice, as the air pollution generated by delivery hubs and ports disproportionatepoverty. And, fortunately, it’s the smartest investment we can make for the immely harms California’s Black, Asian, and Latinx communities. diate present to keep the economy alive, and as a bridge to a better tomorrow.

Asrecentexperimentsindirectmonetaryreliefshow,asmallamountofmonthFertilizer relies on fossil fuels. This company could change that. ly cash given directly to people who need it is the most effective anti-poverty Fertilizer has had a major impact in avoiding the oft-trotted out trope that strategy ever imagined. The reality is that everyone in the bottom 75 percent of population will outstrip food supplies, a dire prediction that has not come to be. American’s wealth structure spends most everything they have as soon as they According to Our World In Data, nitrogen-based fertilizer may be supporting can, primarily for necessities. That’s what makes our consumer-based economy up to half of the world’s current population (infuriatingly, hunger is not an issue work. No matter how many yachts the uber rich buy, it doesn’t help us because of supply, but access). But that bounty comes at a cost: a deep climate footprint. a) it represents an infinitesimally small amount of total dollars, and b) the yacht Aside from the carbon emissions from producing it, researchers at UC was almost certainly built in some other country! Berkeley found evidence that increased fertilizer use has led to a sharp uptick

ThecurrentcashsupportprogramsaresettoexpiresequentiallyinJuly,August, in nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Fertilizer is a andSeptember,wehavetoask: Howwilltheeconomystayafloat going forward? necessity, but the future of food will depend on finding sustainable ways to proHas the Federal government become the “EMPLOYER OF LAST RESORT”? duce and use it. That’s where Norwegian manufacturer Yara comes in to play. Should it be? And if not, how do we address the multiple challenges of fewer Working with French utility company ENGIE, Yara plans to use solar power workers needed in manufacturing as robots invade the shop floor, our groceries as a greener method to produce fertilizer, with the testing site to be integrated are checked out by a computer, and an 18-wheeler can get to Miami from Los into an existing plant in Western Australia. Angeleswithoutadriver?Thesimpletruthisthatwewon’thaveenough40hour Ammonia is the key component of fertilizer manufacturing, but producing it per week jobs for everyone who wants one. We’ll end up with unemployment requires natural gas. Yara’s plan is to remove the natural gas, replacing it with at year end in the ten to 15 percent range ifwe are lucky! That totals 20,000,000 to ammonia derived from solar power. Considering the massive impact fertilizer 28,000,000 people! Currently we have no plan for all that excess labor in certain has on the environment, we’ll be keeping an eye on Yara’s development. •MJ white collar fields. Simultaneously we have a total undersupply of labor in activities like farm worker, housemaid, janitor, and other perceived to be “less desirable” blue collar jobs. How to resolve? We also ought to reduce the average work week from the 50+ hours down to 35

First, forthetoughestjobsAmericansdon’twant, weshouldimmediatelysetup hours and redefine 35 hours as full time. Whatever you were making at 40 hours avigorousGuestWorkerProgramthatwillpermitforeignnationalstheopportuper week you’d be paid for 35 instead! That alone would create over three million nity to come to work for a set period of time up to nine months (although entry new jobs and would leave us more personal time to remember what makes us for periods as short as one season or three months should always be allowed “human” in the first place. We shouldn’t feel guilty to want to work fewer hours so the Guest Worker can maintain a “real life” in their country of origin). These – we should think of ourselves as very forward-looking. For those of you thinking Guest Workers would receive a livable wage, contribute into our income tax and we couldn’t pay for such an “extravagance,” drop me an email and I’ll explain SSI systems, and enjoy the full protection of the law for all health, safety, and how the entire program would actually pay for itself just as the current 40 hour regulatory matters. That’s easy to set up, completely benign, and would be both per week set up does. good forthe U.S. and forthe GuestWorkers themselves who would no longerbe Tragically, the biggest thing holding us back from the foregoing practical soluharassed crossing the border, or abused by improper labor practices. tions to our current economic crisis is our inappropriate clinging to the Protestant

With regard to our own citizens, it is clear we have to be much more creative Work Ethic. and courageous. We need to figure out how to employ the tens of millions of The Protestant Work Ethic is the belief that hard work justifies our existence, people that will not have a job available for them on January 1 st , 2021. We’re just and everyone should be made to work hard as a way to “earn their keep.” going to have to look for innovative ways to lower our unemployment rate. Interesting how billionaires and mega-millionaires never seem to be worried

Let’s start by agreeing to totally reconstruct our collapsing national infrastrucabout the Protestant Work Ethic, because if you’re rich enough, it doesn’t apply ture. Let’s rebuild the 55 percent of all bridges that are unsafe to drive on. Let’s to you! They live off their dividends, tax breaks, tax shelters, and other forms of build high-speed inter- and intra-urban rail systems that will move people and “passive” income. They don’t use the “sweat of their brow” so they hold society “goods” more efficiently and economically. It is stunning to realize that the U.S. captive to a level of unconscionable “benign neglect” for the poor. The rich fail invented economic long-distance rail and now has a worse rail system than every to see why everyone doesn’t drive a Mercedes. If the poor worked hard enough, other modern industrial nation. We also have to rebuild all of our fossil fuel-based surely they would have a Mercedes in their driveway too! We all know that is energy systems to create energy that is “green,” sustainable, and far more affordtotally absurd. The disadvantages that start at birth, and are multiplied as a able than our current mess of tangled monopolies, oligopolies, and compromised young adult from a disadvantaged background squirms his way through a mostpolitical leaders. ly broken public education system and ultimately finds himself on the bottom

Interest rates are almost zero, the economy is in the tank. We have to look at rung of society’s economic ladder. copying Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s idea for the Civil Conservation Corp (the The plain truth is that by helping each other up from our humblest origins to “CCC”)? We could begin repairing all those bridges and building those grand whatever plateau our talent can take us is a true hero’s journey. As almost every new public spaces with CCC labor. Have you been to Yosemite and seen the emigrant knows, it is the essence of the true “American Story.” It is what we have grand Lodge, or to Mt. Hood to see that mountain top retreat? Those gorgeous done for 400 years in the U.S.: risen from what the sweat of our brow could probuildings were built by the CCC which in its nine-year history employed over duce (the Puritan Ethic) to what the creative ingenuity of our consciousness freed 3,000,000 single, unemployed men on Federal land until the Depression ended. from survival thinking could create. •MJ 26 MONTECITO JOURNAL “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” - Gloria Steinem 2 – 9 July 2020