Recently disclosed court documents reveal that Citibank was following requests from the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the EPA Inspector General, and the Treasury Department when it froze the accounts of several nonprofit organizations and state agencies in February. The FBI told Citibank that these groups were involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy…
The Green New Deal has been largely blocked at the national level, but it is thriving in communities, cities, and states. Jeremy Brecher’s new book is both an urgent call to action and proof of concept.
Starting where we’re at
Less than one week after Trump was re-elected to the single most powerful political office in the world, it seems like a horrible time to release a book about the Green New Deal.
Thinking back to 2018, not so long ago in time but perhaps much longer in space, to when the Green New Deal was launched into public attention as a bold proposal for transformative national legislation, is frankly, beyond depressing. Loss, grief and rage compete with numbness and shock, easily overwhelming any effort to fathom where we were then, and where we find ourselves now.
But this is not a depressing story. We have no time for that now.
This is a story, a true story, about expanding the sense of what is possible and thereby expanding the actual limits of the possible. It is about shifting the balance of power and expanding democracy – what could be more right, right now? This story weaves once strange and wary bedfellows into a surprising sort of magical fabric, capable of keeping us safe as we pull the rug from under kings. This is the view from below.
Drawing on decades of hands-on experience at the intersections of environmental, labor, and justice movements, Brecher offers an overview of Green New Deal from Below initiatives across various sectors and locations, highlighting a diverse array of programs already in progress or under development. The initiatives shared by Green New Dealers are intended to inspire countless more projects, which can serve as the foundation for local, national, and even global mobilization and reconstruction – even, and perhaps especially in times when national legislation cannot be relied upon.
Brecher begins with questions, “Is [the Green New Deal from Below] a brilliant flame that may simply burn out? Will it continue as a force, but not a decisive element in a society and world hurtling toward midnight? Or will it prove to be the start of a turn away from catastrophe and toward security and justice? The answer will largely depend on what people decide to do with the possibilities [it] opens up” (10).
The Green New Deal is a visionary program designed to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Like The New Deal of the 1930s, the Green New Deal is not a single program or piece of legislation – rather, according to Brecher, it exhibits many of the traits of a social movement. “[The New Deal] was a whole era of turmoil in which contesting forces tried to address a devastating crisis and shape the future of American society. In addition to its famous “alphabet soup” of federal agencies, the New Deal was part of a broader process of social change that included experimentation at the state, regional, and local levels; organization among labor, the unemployed, urban residents, the elderly, and other grassroots constituencies; and lively debate on future possibilities that went far beyond the policies actually adopted” (12). While the New Deal certainly had its limitations in terms of racial and gender justice, it was this unifying and expansive vision that set it apart as a cohesive and immensely transformative program.
From its outset, the core principle of the Green New Deal has been and remains, “to unite the necessity for climate protection with the goals of full employment and social justice” (11). In other words, not only does the GND provide a unifying vision that aligns environmental, labor, and justice movements together in the pursuit of mutual aims, it weaves constituencies and communities into transformative power blocs, greater than the sum of their parts.
Though the GND has so far been consistently blocked and largely coopted at the national level by the fossil fuel lobby, and by corporate interests antagonistic to its inherent socialist implications, a lesser-known wave of initiatives has also emerged. Driven by community groups, unions, city and state governments, tribes, students, and other nonfederal actors, all aimed at advancing the climate protection, economic and social justice objectives of the Green New Deal, this grassroots movement can be recognized as “a Green New Deal from Below.”
“So far, these forces have managed to block the Green New Deal at a national level. The strategy of the Green New Deal from Below is to outflank them” (174). Brecher warns against mistaking the Green New Deal from Below movement for an unrelated collection of isolated or even of loosely related interventions – that would be to miss the forest for the trees, or as Brecher describes it, that would be like describing a collection of lecture halls, library, stadium, cafeteria, and dorms but failing to recognize the university.
The type of vision fueled and integrative coalition building exemplified by diverse Green New Dealers has major potential for mass member organizing, shifting power, expanding democracy, and could provide the way forward from our current predicament, shoved between a neoliberal heat-rock and a cold, hard fascist place.
How to Green New Deal from Below
Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez, who has introduced a motion to create a new city office to support workers transitioning out of jobs affected by new technology, including those in the oil and gas industry, summed it up well: the city cannot “correct the sins of environmental racism” by “taking away jobs from working-class communities” (108).
The core idea behind Green New Deal from Below initiatives is to address the urgent need for climate protection while also meeting the needs of working people and marginalized communities, an approach that moves beyond fragmented policies to a comprehensive set of strategies for social change. It integrates climate protection with the creation of good jobs and tackles the disproportionate concentration of carbon pollution, such as from fossil fuel plants, in low-income communities of color. This policy integration is reflected in the collaboration of previously separate or opposing constituencies. “When once-divided groups reach out to each other, explore common needs and interests, and start cooperating for common objectives they thereby create new forms of social action. That is the process that [Brecher has] called the emergence of “common preservation”” (180).
The initiatives described by Brecher are largely driven by such coalitions of diverse groups working toward shared goals, often including neighborhood organizations, unions, racial and ethnic justice groups, political leaders, government officials, youth and senior organizations, religious congregations, and climate justice advocates. Chapters 1-4 provide detailed but highly accessible examples of such initiatives, including candid debriefs that don’t shy away from exploring lessons learned from mistakes, at the community, municipal, and state levels.
One particularly potent lesson, gleaned through numerous campaigns, relates to tensions that can arise between environmental and labor protections. Historically and now, climate protection policies have often been viewed as a threat to workers and communities reliant on the fossil fuel economy. This perception generates opposition to climate action, with certain communities and worker groups highlighted as “poster children” for the negative impacts of such policies, leading to the widely framed “environment vs. jobs” debate, fueling conflict between environmentalists and organized labor, often amplified by fossil fuel interests.
Brecher lays out three key shifts in mindset that are beginning to offer an alternative to this polarization (147). First, many trade unionists have come to recognize that the transition to cleaner energy is inevitable, and that their members will be vulnerable unless policies are put in place to protect them. Second, climate advocates are realizing that their policies will face significant resistance unless they also address the needs of workers and communities that could be negatively impacted by these changes. Third, the core idea of the Green New Deal, that climate protection can be an opportunity to address inequality and injustice, opens up a broader vision for social change that transcends narrow interest group politics.
This “new thinking” often begins with specific interests but is increasingly fostering a broader awareness. Unions are recognizing the necessity of climate protection; environmentalists are acknowledging the importance of community well-being; and justice advocates see the potential for new coalitions to tackle long-standing inequities. “The result has been the development of coalitions among groups that had previously been at odds, lobbing virtual projectiles at each other from separate silos” (148).
Green New Deal from Below initiatives contrast sharply with dominant neoliberal public policies that prioritize private enterprise as the primary vehicle for achieving social goals and restrict government action to facilitating private wealth accumulation – or more simply, they intentionally break from the profit over people and planet model of business as usual. Green New Deal from Below programs emphasize public planning, investment, and strict criteria for achieving public objectives. Their implementation involves not just private corporations but also government-run programs, public banks, cooperatives, and other alternatives to profit-driven enterprises. Resources are often raised through strategies like pollution fees, taxes on large corporations, and uber-wealthy individual incomes.
The climate policies of Green New Deals from Below aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the pace required by climate science with a focus on proven strategies: expanding renewable energy, phasing out fossil fuels, decreasing energy demand by increasing energy efficiency and doing more with less through programs focused on public abundance, while rejecting more costly, risky and green-washed approaches like carbon capture, hydrogen blends with fossil fuels, and nuclear energy.
Brecher gets into detail via diverse examples of campaigns, direct actions, community and public projects, as well as overarching and particular strategies in chapters 5-11: Climate-Safe Energy Production, Negawatts (Efficiency and Managed Contractions), Fossil Fuel Phaseout, Transforming Transportation, Protecting Workers and Communities on the Ground, Just Transition in the States, and New Deal Jobs for the Future. This is a wealth of information in a highly accessible and actionable presentation – from the nitty gritty of organizing meetings and local bicycle lanes to very large-scale campaigns like public jobs guarantees.
Strategy from below
The Green New Deal from Below does not provide a strategy for total social transformation. “That would require transformation of the basic structures of the national and world order, including capitalism and the nation-state system. The Green New Deal from Below can be part of that more extensive process of change, but it cannot subsume it” (174).
The Green New Deal from Below is a hybrid movement that operates both inside and outside the dominant political system, including elected officials, party leaders, government bureaucrats, and electoral activists, as well as communities, ethnic groups, labor organizations, and other civil society groups. It pursues its goals through a mix of conventional political tactics, such as supporting candidates, lobbying for legislation, and public education, alongside direct-action methods, including occupying political offices, blocking fossil fuel pipelines, and supporting strikes aimed at a just transition to a climate-safe economy.
These initiatives strategically function both within, alongside, and in opposition to existing political institutions. Actions focus on tangible changes that directly improve people’s lives. Whether it’s shutting down a polluting coal plant in an asthma-ridden community or providing free transit or bicycles to young people, these initiatives aim to make a real difference. They also educate and inspire: free transit and bicycles not only reduce vehicle pollution but also allow young people to explore alternatives to car-dependent lifestyles.
Additionally, participation and justice are centered in practice. Actions are also almost always led by coalitions of diverse groups. For example, the Green New Deal for Education brings together teachers, school staff, students, parents, unions, and racial justice advocates to fight for investment in healthy schools free from fossil fuel pollution. Sate coalitions have united unions, climate-impacted communities, racial and ethnic justice groups, and climate advocates to push for legislation that phases out fossil fuels in ways that create good jobs, support community development, reduce environmental injustices, and build climate-friendly housing and transit.
Historical sociologist Michael Mann argues that new solutions to societal problems often arise from the overlooked spaces within existing power structures – what he calls the “interstices.” These gaps, often hidden from the mainstream, provide fertile ground for marginalized or seemingly powerless groups to propose alternatives to the status quo. This process is sometimes called the “Lilliput strategy,” where small, isolated efforts are linked to create larger systemic change. However, Brecher points out that this strategy is not without tension (169). It requires balancing the need for identity and independence within each group with the necessity of broader cooperation. The resulting tension can either lead to fragmentation or domination, but it can also spark a process of collaboration where the distinct needs and concerns of each group are incorporated into a larger, unified vision.
This dynamic is key to the development of the Green New Deal from Below. While recognizing the unique needs of different constituencies, advocates of the Green New Deal have worked to forge connections between diverse groups that have historically been at odds. A notable example mentioned previously is the collaboration between organized labor and environmentalists – two groups that have often been in conflict. Rather than forcing these groups to give up their individual identities, the Green New Deal offers a shared identity centered on common goals. The success of these coalitions depends on ensuring that all participants benefit from cooperation through policies that combine labor protections, environmental justice, and greenhouse gas reductions. However, Brecher warns that these coalitions are fragile and can falter if the priorities of key constituencies are not given adequate attention.
Ultimately, Green New Deal from Below actions seek to shift the balance of power away from fossil fuel polluters, exploitative corporations, and the wealthy elite, toward exploited workers, marginalized communities, and non-elite groups. At their heart, they aim to expand democracy, challenge the rise of autocracy and plutocracy, and ensure power is more equally distributed and accessible to all.
By helping to build organized constituencies and coalitions that serve as political foundations for broader Green New Deal campaigns, these projects also create institutional building blocks, from energy systems to transportation networks, that can become integral parts of the economic and social infrastructure of a larger Green New Deal. By engaging people in projects that reflect common interests and a shared vision, these initiatives help overcome divisions and contradictions that weaken popular movements. They also reduce the influence of anti–Green New Deal forces by dividing them, disorienting them, undermining their support base, and, at times, even winning them over.
Brecher’s presentation reveals that the fight for the Green New Deal is closely tied to the fight for democracy. These initiatives offer models for, and demonstrate the benefits of, popular democracy. Green New Deal from Below projects show that people can achieve tangible gains that improve their lives, building a base for the protection and expansion of democratic governance at every level, embodying local participatory democracy while also reinforcing representative democracy against the threat of fascism at the national level.
Local and state-level Green New Deal initiatives are therefore crucial for achieving both climate and justice goals. They help build momentum and power for a national Green New Deal and serve as testing grounds, offering a “proof of concept.” These building blocks, when linked, form a more effective Green New Deal with deep local roots. Programs “from below” can then connect with each other and align with national planning and investment. Some national proposals even outline policies to facilitate this coordination. While federal and global action are needed to fully realize Green New Deal goals, the movement is already taking shape at the local level.
Going further
Brecher cautions, that while the Green New Deal program is crucial and beneficial, it is not sufficient on its own to address the deeper structural issues of an unjust and self-destructive global order. There are also critiques outside the scope of this book which assert that even if the Green New Deal was adopted at the national level today, on its own, it doesn’t go far enough, fast enough on climate protection to avert devasting outcomes.
One of its strategic objectives must therefore be to pave the way for more radical and far-reaching forms of change. Indeed, an internationalist Global Green New Deal has begun to materialize – both “from below” and championed to various degrees by a few government and multinational formations. The key will be to continue to build and connect participatory, justice centered activity around the world in ever widening and deepening solidarity.
Today, we are living with a profound sense of urgency – the urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the urgency of those suffering and dying due to injustice. The original Green New Deal proposal responded to this by calling for a ten-year mobilization aimed at transforming American society and economy as dramatically as the New Deal and the wartime mobilization during World War II. “The Green New Deal arose in a sea of hopelessness and despair. It pointed the way toward viable alternatives to the realities that evoked that hopelessness and despair. The Green New Deal from Below provides people with a way to start building those alternatives day by day, where they live and work” (180).
Seven years later, a recent headline from New Scientist reads: “The 1.5°C target is dead, but climate action needn’t be”. For the first time, climate scientists have explicitly said it will be impossible to limit peak warming to 1.5°C. Our focus must be on taking real action, like the initiatives Brecher has laid out and like many others around the world, not on meaningless platitudes and slogans like “Keep 1.5°C alive” or vague promises of “net-zero”.
At the outset of the book, Brecher cites the world historian Arnold Toynbee on how great civilizational changes occur. The existing leadership of existing institutions face new challenges and fail to change to meet them. But a “creative minority” may arise that proposes and begins to implement new solutions. “Those building the Green New Deal are creating such new solutions, from below” (180).
Therefore, perhaps the greatest success, as well as the greatest potential, of the Green New Deal from Below is its ability to expand the boundaries of what is possible, bringing together and empowering people to fight for the things they need but have long considered out of reach.
Workin’ on a world
We may never know if these solutions will be sufficient or come in time. But Brecher offers us the chance to resonate with the feelings expressed by songwriter Iris Dement in her song “Workin’ on a World.” She recalls waking each day “filled with sadness, fear, and dread,” as the world she once knew seemed to be “crashing to the ground.”
Looking around where we find ourselves this November of 2024, in the shadow of so much loss but with so much yet to lose, it wouldn’t be crazy to admit to feeling the same. Yet, as Iris “reflected on the struggles of those who came before her, the sacrifices they made, she realized those sacrifices had opened doors for her that they never lived to see” (180).
“Now I’m working on a world I may never see,
I’m joining forces with the warriors of love
Who came before and will follow you and me.
I get up in the morning knowing I’m privileged just to be
Working on a world I may never see.”
Brecher concludes, “whether we will see the world of the Green New Deal fully realized, in the Green New Deal from Below, we can see that right now we are making a part of that world” (180).
I’d only add that in so doing, we are also each reaffirming our own and one another’s right to be here, to reclaim our world here and now with a place for us all in it, to choose to live and to help live, to occupy our lives. We’re not just doing it for the future, we’re doing it for the now. In the words of a different movement ancestor, Salaria Kea, an American nurse, desegregation activist, and the only black nurse who worked in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, fighting against fascism on the frontlines:
“I’m not just goin’ to sit down and let this happen. I’m going out and help, even if it is my life. But I’m helping. This is my world too.”
Through action, especially through our collective action, we are our vision come to life. We are the embodiment of that world we’re busy working on. Through us, it already does exist.
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You and I, dear reader, if you are of the composition of say Rosa Parks, or Rachel Carson, MLK, Paul Robeson, Angela Davis (or, fill in the social justice champion of your choice), did not sign up for this, or approve of it, or okayed it in our name:
Some researchers who have long studied the technology are deeply troubled that the company, Make Sunsets, appears to have moved forward with launches from a site in Mexico without any public engagement or scientific scrutiny. It’s already attempting to sell “cooling credits” for future balloon flights that could carry larger payloads.
Several researchers MIT Technology Review spoke with condemned the effort to commercialize geoengineering at this early stage. Some potential investors and customers who have reviewed the company’s proposals say that it’s not a serious scientific effort or a credible business but more of an attention grab designed to stir up controversy in the field. (A startup says it’s begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate)
There are so many words and concepts that can be leveled against these people, and there are literally millions of millionaires and billionaires and the legions of BlackRock/Forbes/City of London/JP Morgan Chase/Blackstone economic hitmen and hitwomen on board with pummeling planet earth, planet people, planet biodiversity with their venereal disease of the spirit. Economicus-Sapiens.
Many of my colleagues and I believe that our global civilization is on an economic path that is environmentally unsustainable, one that is leading us toward economic decline and eventual collapse… Our global situation is incredibly challenging today because of the adoption of the western economic model (e.g., materialism, consumerism, and throw-away mentality) throughout much of the developed and developing economies of the world. (Kitty Hawk Apollo 14 lunar captain, Edgar Mitchell — inspired by Robert Hunziker’s Dissident Voice piece, “Astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s “State of the Planet” Message Revisited”)
Robert cites a bunch of UFO activity in 2022: LiveScience article — “US Military Reports ‘several hundred’ UFO Sightings in 2022, Pentagon Officials Claim” — “UFO reports from U.S. military personnel are flooding the government’s new All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The U.S government’s brand-new UFO-tracking office has been open for half a year, but business is already booming.”
We talk about that in a minute.
Imagine, the idea of all of us being connected through quantum mechanics, molecular consciousness, those waves and particles that we in our ignorance call instinct and ESP. You do not have to go onto the Internet too long to find dogs, with cameras and mics in the house, getting excited and sensing master coming home, with these tools tracking their activity when the “masters” are on their way, or about to get on their way, miles from home, at random times, before getting inside the car and putting pedal to the metal.
Do you feel a connection to a tree, a coral reef, a crow, an eagle, a forest? Get real and belief you and I and those places are all masses of energy, molecules, waves, and consciousness, making a stew of humanity, a whole smorgassborg of the universe.
Dr. Mitchell founded Noetics Foundation to investigate consciousness, ongoing for 38 years, eventually coming up with a quantum hologram. “The universe is self-organizing, intelligent, creative, trial and error interactive learning participatory informationally nonlocally interconnected evolving quantum system. . . .
“Energy, we know is the foundation of all matter; information is the foundation of knowing. Both were present at the moment of creation, whether in a big bang, or in a continuous process of creation in galaxies. It is likely that just as energy produced the physical structure that we recognize as waves and particles, in our macro-world, the seeds of consciousness were also present to produce awareness and intentionality.” Ibid, p. 196. (Source: Edgar D. Mitchells’ Consciousness Presentation, University of Advancing Technologies induction into the Leonardo DaVinci Society for The Society of Thinking, 2011; from the Hunziker piece)
Recall, the peace makers. The lovers of humanity and planet. For now, his is the time of the prince of peace — “Jesus Christ is called the Prince of Peace because He restores every broken relationship, provides a well-ordered and balanced life, and offers the assurance of eternal life.”
Was his message going out globally, through galaxies? And, those who received and saw peace as peace, were they enough to stunt the ones who see war as peace?
We are at war with cultures, language, people, planet. War, so we need new connections to peace, more peace makers. NOW.
Think about what the “economy” means: it’s war against nature . . . . the driving force of Civilization after we pummeled our hunter and gatherer lives, after mother culture was fenced off for wheat and meat and forced labor and disharmony.
“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world.”
“The gazelle and the lion are enemies only in the minds of the Takers. The lion that comes across a herd of gazelles doesn’t massacre them, as an enemy would. It kills one, not to satisfy its hatred of gazelles but to satisfy its hunger, and once it has made its kill the gazelles are perfectly content to go on grazing with the lion right in their midst.” (Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael.”)
Ahh, the collective consciousness of humanity, with that belief in our interconnectedness, oh where oh where is that now in this world of planned pandemics, bioweapons from hell, or ferrets a la bat cornonavirus manipulation? All those bioweapons labs in Ukraine, run by the DOD/CIA, and alas, that precautionary principle and do no harm ethos?
In a world of PayDay loans (as in loan sharking) and one where a fine of a $1000 for front yard grass too long, or homes and land forefeitured for back taxes unpaid, for all the uglinesss of millions spent on ZioAzovNaziLensky to get into jets for shopping sprees or photo ops with the Demons of Peace, the US Senate and US Congress and US Administration and the MIC, we are at a point where most people give up, hold up their hands, mutilated by materialism, and then tell me there’s nothing they can do about another trillion dollars for war, or nothing they can do about the homelessness issue, or climate disturbance, etc.
Hands in the air all the way to the Post-Christmas bargain basement sales.
I am hearing from so many people who are damaged, full of the trauma of capitalism, battered and stunted by daily living in a world of dog-eat-dog, where the concept of taking a village to raise a child and taking a village to protect the infirm, old and sick is laughed at. We can get a crypto coin guy a bail hearing for $250 million, and we can see the obscenities of the Wolves of Wall Street dictating who and when and how we, the 80 Percent, pay pay pay for their dirty deals, and we can get Sunday Un-News shows yammering on and on on why there is a food crisis, why there is an energy crisis, and on and on, but what do we really need to solve the problems. We need economics under the umbrella of people, planet, biology, equity.
Steady State Economics, as the Apollo 14 pilot might have advocated:
A steady state economy features relatively stable size. It is ideally established at a size that leaves room for nature and provides high levels of human wellbeing. The term typically refers to a national economy, but it can also be applied to the economy of a city, region, or the entire planet. The size of an economy is generally determined by multiplying population by the amount that each person consumes. This quantity in a steady state economy neither grows nor contracts from year to year. Herman Daly, the dean of ecological economics, defines a steady state economy as… “an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance throughput, that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption.” (Source)
This equitable concept, please believe, is not the wet dream of Kissinger or the World Economic Forum or the Billionaire Gates Class who want all nature under their control, as we are useless eaters to them. This steady state economy is not the Faustian bargain of eugenics, not of one world government controlling Big Brother AI-VR-AR style, not the sort of one NeoLiberal Dictator determining who gets what, where we live, how much space is too much space, for us etc. It is, however, an economy of peace and leaver mentality, this classic connectivity, the interconnectedness of us, the universe, with the mountains, forests, plains, wetlands, coral reefs, and on and on. Again, the Apollo pilot:
Mitchell listed critical planetary boundaries under siege:
(1) rapid population growth beyond sustainability: 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 8 billion in 2022;
(2) degradation of life-sourcing ecosystems;
(3) excessive resource depletion such as shrinking forests;
(4) eroding soils;
(5) failing freshwater resources;
(6) more frequent crop-withering heat waves;
(7) collapsing fisheries;
(8) expanding desertification;
(9) frequency of extraordinary powerful storms;
(10) shrinking natural resources;
(11) melting glaciers.
Again, thinking and acting globally, but also being and believing as a nationstate, and binding cultures and languages as closely to what a people’s history and family tree are worth. Out with the dirty and old, but in with the retrofitted, in with the classic and the things that make sense for clean air, clean water, clean soil, peace and as diseas-free as possible.
But letting science run amok, well, that is the current state, and the economists and propagandists and marketers are believing in their own religious cultism capacity to pull the wool over the collective eyes of us, the 80 Percent.
“The current state of science is not good enough … to either reject, or to accept, let alone implement” solar geoengineering, wrote Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, in an email. The initiative is calling for oversight of geoengineering and other climate-altering technologies, whether by governments, international accords or scientific bodies. “To go ahead with implementation at this stage is a very bad idea,” he added, comparing it to Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s decision to use CRISPR to edit the DNA of embryos while the scientific community was still debating the safety and ethics of such a step.
Shuchi Talati, a scholar in residence at American University who is forming a nonprofit focused on governance and justice in solar geoengineering, says Make Sunset’s actions could set back the scientific field, reducing funding, dampening government support for trusted research, and accelerating calls to restrict studies.
These are very fragile times, and if indeed there is more UFO “activity” for 2022, I wonder what those star people are seeing in us? All those radio and television signals beaming out into space of Hitler, of the killing fields of World War I and II, and Vietnam, and the genocides throughout just the last 122 years. And now, all that negative energy coming from the Nulands, Kagans, Blinkens, Zelenky’s, this Hebrewization of war-economics-poverty, and then all those useless generals and CIA, both the political parties, goy or Jew, it doesn’t matter.
This nuclear posturing by Biden, and now talk of winning and controlling a controlled strategic nuclear strike into Russia, we can you imagine the universe feeling the pain of Homo bellum (war) never learning, always destroying, until we have every fetus incubating inside human or mammal or other species with dozens of forever chemicals, PCBs, hormone disruptors, neuro-destroying toxins. Star people cranking up at light speed, they know the sickenss of this dominant species.
Shall I repeat how destructive this species is, without the Prince of Peace or MLK or the lot of them being listened to and shepherding us into a state of collective whole consciousness? Neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or manmade toxic substances (neurotoxicants) alters the normal activity of the nervous system. This can eventually disrupt or even kill neurons, key cells that transmit and process signals in the brain and other parts of the nervous system.
Is that not the definition of insanity for star people? There is no way the star people had anything to do with Mayan temples, as the Mayans destroyed their civilization because they wanted plaster for the pyramids and buildings. Burning down the low slung jungle and forests to produce lime. There is no way in hell any star person, and Rosewell alien would shepderd that as their goal. The thin epidermis of our atmosphere, the fragility of the combo of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and the rest, whew, only star people would know THEN burning recklessly would punch holes into our life giving and live enhancing heavens.
Law of time, and the noesphere. Go to my blog, and look for Charles Miller and the Law of Time Interview.
Here is another hyper-fear but creative look at how to get out of this mess: (Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD)
I’ll take all this with a grain of lithium salt, as we know the greenies like 350.org and Bill McKibben as all for Biden-Blinken-KIagan-Nuland warmongering. Read Matthew Ehret:
Prince Charles has just given the world 18 months to save the world. Over the past years, the prince and his father (among other inbred aristocrats of Europe) have taken an incredible interest in the safety of the earth from the pollution emitting machines who greedily consume and reproduce without any consideration for Mother Gaia. In recent months this green transformation of the globe has taken the form of the “Green New Deal” promoted in the U.S. by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. A children’s campaign endorsed by pope Francis and led by Greta Thunberg has spread across Europe and America while a Billionaires Club under the guidance of Al Gore, and George Soros is funding a Sunrise Movement to fight global warming.
Is this passion to save the planet from humanity genuine? Do these oligarchs and billionaires really care so much that their support for a Green New Deal is as benevolent as the media portrays… or is something darker at play? To answer these questions, we will have to first quickly review what the Green New Deal IS, then where it came from and then finally what its architects have stated they wish to accomplish with its implementation. (source)
Again, science, with no limits, with no deep holism, without any regard for consequences is devilish. But expecting Indians and nations in Africa to stay in the mud, in huts, with no technology that the West has, is the ultimate of racism.
“It is not the growth of industry which destroys the world’s forests. In most cases, the cause is a lack of industrial output, a lack of good industrial management of the ecosphere. Over the past fifteen years, the greatest single cause for destruction of the world’s “ecology” has been the toleration of the policies demanded by the so called “ecologists,” the so-called “neo-Malthusians” of the Club of Rome, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), of the World Wildlife Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Ford Foundation, the ‘Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Sierra Club, and so forth and so on. We are not putting enough industrially-produced energy, in the form of water management, chemicals, and so forth, into the farming of the Earth’s biosphere. At the same time, we are using biomass for fuel and other “traditional” uses, in cases we should be using nuclear-generated energy supplies, and using modern, industrially produced materials in place of timber for housing and so forth.”
Case closed now. There is no balance, no alternative view, not robust critical thinking, no deep teach-in’s, no debates, no smart people with different perspectives in the same room. The only way to harmonize the quantum us is to bring us back into dialogue, health, peace. Until then, we will be held captive by the monsters, and you know who they are: So, climate change, and no new deal for nature, and really this lock up of the world for the West is the same chavanism of the West and Russia. There is no Plan E for a planet run by Hollywood, Banks, Military, Media, Billionaires, Rotten Digital Gulags.
Our natural world is facing the most serious threats she has ever known.
At the forefront is the accelerating loss of biodiversity, upon which all life depends.
Worse still, this very real threat is now being marketed and exploited in order to reboot the global economy.
Human rights violators WWF lead the charge for this deal, which essentially consists of a neocolonial land grab from the most self-sufficient peoples on the planet, principally in Africa and Asia.
Scientists, politicians and oil companies have been aware of the connection between fossil fuel production, ecocide and climate crisis for more than 70 years. Yet, in 2021, the world broke a record for carbon dioxide emissions.
If the systems created by the wealthy could meaningfully address the crisis, they would have by now. Many of us feel immobilized, increasingly cognizant of this grim reality, but are unsure of where else to channel our energy. In his new book, The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution From Below, Peter Gelderloos offers a robust critique of governmental and market solutions claiming to address ecocide and contrasts them with a litany of examples of bottom-up solutions that have actually managed to slow the necropolitical gears making life on this planet uninhabitable. He encourages people who care for the environment to imagine and create their own dynamic, contextualized ecosystems of revolt, outside of electoral channels and situated within their territories.
Gelderloos is also honest about the obstacles that horizontal, insurgent movements so often face, from political repression to co-optation to power grabs to interpersonal strife. “This is still a battle that pits David Against Goliath,” he writes, “and if we were to approach this ecological crisis as though it were a wager in a casino — as the economists do, for example — then our money would be more wisely placed backing the forces of the apocalypse.” But, he adds, “this motley network of underdogs is our best hope.” In this interview, Gelderloos discusses his critiques of the Green New Deal, the connection between colonialism and ecocide, and the importance of concepts like autonomy and solidarity for informing our struggles for a better world.
Ella Fassler: In your book, you argue colonialism and states, not “human activity,” are the root causes of the climate crisis. Can you break that down for us? What’s the connection between hierarchy and climate crisis?
Peter Gelderloos: Humans have been around for 300,000 years. Human groups have had a learning process adapting to new habitats as we’ve moved around the globe, but if destroying the environment were an innate consequence of human society, we never would have survived as a species. Pinning the blame on agriculture is also simplistic, given the huge diversity of ways human societies have found to feed themselves and also exist as a responsible part of their local ecosystems.
There is, however, one configuration of human society that, in every instance we know of, has caused their local ecosystems to collapse, usually in the form of deforestation and soil depletion. That configuration is the state, or hierarchies that are very far along the continuum toward becoming states. By their very nature, states are exploitative, war-making institutions that view their subjects — human and nonhuman alike — as resources to be dominated.
The states that certain popular authors have named as examples of supposedly ecological states tend to practice something like feudalism, which is actually a dual power system in which autonomous commoners (and not state administrations) are in charge of most interactions with the rest of the ecosystem.
As for an ecological collapse on a planetary scale, that only ever became conceivable when the state institutions developed in Europe were forcibly imposed on the rest of the world through colonialism. That was not a voluntary process. And it needs to be viewed as an ongoing process because all of us, everywhere around the world, are still forced to live our lives in the confines defined by capitalist institutions and state structures developed by those colonial powers and their heirs like the U.S.
You explain that policy solutions like the Green New Deal require an increase in deficit spending, which doesn’t lead to economic collapse so long as governments service interest payments. But governments can only service these payments if their economies and GDPs keep growing, which is impossible on, and destructive to, a planet with finite resources, an argument I had never explicitly considered. Why else are top-down solutions like the Green New Deal, even those that center racial and economic justice, wholly inadequate — and as you put it, unrealistic, for addressing the climate crisis?
The Green New Deal is great for capitalism. It is a proposal designed to save capitalism from its own excesses, from the crisis that capitalism has created. In that way it is very similar to its namesake, FDR’s New Deal, which was implemented not to save the working class from capitalism but to save capitalism from the revolutionary movements of a discontented working class.
The Green New Deal ensures new growth for capitalism at a time when capitalism has been floundering for decades to create real growth. It encourages highly destructive mining projects and massive energy infrastructure so that the wealthy can get even wealthier off of electric cars and other false solutions, while Indigenous lands are being stolen in one of the largest land grabs since Columbus for industrial wind parks, lithium mines, copper mines, and other extractive projects.
The Green New Deal is the best hope for the survival of capitalism, not for the survival of the planet.
If the Green New Deal isn’t our magic bullet, what are some general solutions and one or two particular movements that give you hope and inspire you?
There’s this anxiety for creating a unified plan to solve this whole problem for the entire planet/society/economy. But that’s the exact kind of thinking that got us into this mess, and anyone who has experienced bureaucracy knows that the people at the top with the plans are the ones with the least idea of what’s actually happening on the ground.
In fact, real intelligence is decentralized, localized, contextual. Liberated communities, liberated ecosystems will know better than anyone else what they need to adapt and heal. Liberated communities networking can share knowledge and resources on a planetary scale. This is already happening, but the NGOs and experts ignore it while governments are busy calling it “terrorism” and trying to stamp it out.
From Standing Rock to the movement to save the Atlanta Forest to the ZAD (Zone à Défendre, or Zone to Defend) in France, struggles against wind farms in Oaxaca and against the petroleum industry in the Niger Delta, these movements are already powerful, they’re already global, they’re already learning from each other. They just need more support, and they need people to stop lending their attention, their credulity, their resources, and their patience to the institutions responsible for ecocide or for making a buck peddling false solutions to it.
There seems to be a bit of a contradiction between being opposed to “converting” people to a particular way of thinking, while also recognizing that many of our revolutionary horizons aren’t realized because repressive mechanisms are able to turn the public and perhaps some well-intentioned organizers against the most “radical” elements of a movement. How do you grapple with this contradiction?
Autonomy and solidarity are useful concepts, because they mean everyone gets to define their own needs, everyone gets to define their own struggle for freedom and a dignified survival, as long as they don’t make freedom or survival impossible for someone else. If you come from a different tradition of struggle or if you put more weight on linguistic freedom or on certain organizational methods or on the food culture your people have practiced in that territory for thousands of years, that’s okay. But if your version of freedom requires Venezuela and Nigeria to be smothered by a petroleum economy, I’m sorry, you’re not a part of our family.
These are very sensible ideas that clearly elucidate the best possible way for an entire world of very different communities to get along. People can usually understand this concept and support it as a shared framework really quickly. Until they realize it means states are not compatible with this best possible world. Until they realize it means their political party doesn’t get to draft a blueprint for the entire species, and by extension the rest of the natural world.
And historically, when push comes to shove, the left has always chosen blueprints over solidarity. They say it’s pragmatic. Well, in the last 50 years, the amount of conservation area managed by pragmatic NGOs and pragmatic government programs has increased 500 percent, yet in the same time, animal populations have plummeted by 70 percent.
As I document in my book, police agencies and corporate security consultants are charged with surveilling and disrupting movements to save the planet, specifically identifying pragmatic activists and organizations as the most naïve, the easiest to manipulate, and therefore a key point to pressure in order to divide the movement. So maybe it’s high time we stopped listening to pragmatists?
Some readers may not be ideologically or ethically opposed to lawbreaking or direct action in the face of the climate crisis, but feel like they aren’t in a place where they can risk jail time or criminal charges. What advice would you give them?
It is so important to break with this frontline mentality that only certain ways of participating in struggle are valuable or worthy of being celebrated. Every bit as much as we need people who face off with cops or sabotage the megaprojects and economic systems killing us, we need people bringing real practices of transformative justice to our communities and movements. We need movement historians helping us remember where we came from so we don’t have to start from scratch every 10 years. We need people supporting those who are in prison, people who are depressed, people with health problems. We need gardeners. We need healers. We need people who can build and repair the machines we actually need for a dignified survival.
The capitalist world economy is facing major challenges today: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused damage to most economies around the world, skyrocketing inflation is disproportionately affecting poor and working-class people, and even stagflation (a combination of high inflation and stagnant economic growth) looms on the horizon. In addition, there is a global food crisis fueled by the war in Ukraine. The current food crisis has its roots in neoliberal policies in agriculture in developing countries, according to radical political economist Shouvik Chakraborty.
None of the current global economic problems can be solved without massive changes to the workings of the world economy to counter the harms caused by neoliberal capitalism over the last 40 years.
Is neoliberalism dying? And what are the alternatives? Is socialism a viable option for developing countries? Chakraborty addresses these questions in an exclusive interview for Truthout below. Chakraborty is research fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and author of scores of academic articles in macroeconomics and political economy.
C.J. Polychroniou: The world economy is projected to experience feeble growth and high inflation in 2022, and there are even concerns about stagflation. What are the major challenges facing the world economy in 2022?
Shouvik Chakraborty: The world economy entering a stagflation phase genuinely concerns the working class across the globe. However, given the income disparity among the advanced and low-income economies, the challenges faced by the workers under such a stagflationary scenario are different. The concerns in the former are more focused on the continuation of a particular lifestyle — whether they would be able to purchase a single-family home, afford a vacation or continue driving their private vehicles. At the same time, the fear in the lower-income countries is related more to the necessities of life — whether they would be able to put food on the table, a minimum supply of clean and safe water, and access to some minimum level of electricity and cooking fuel. Given the lack of income support such as food stamps, social security benefits and unemployment benefits, the marginalized sections in these low-income countries are acutely vulnerable to the coming economic crisis. The advent of neoliberal policies over the last four decades led to the retreat of the state from even the basic forms of welfare measures in these low-income countries like providing food through fair price shops, price-controlled health care through primary care facilities, supply of clean water, etc., which were once part of the dirigiste regime, and, thereby, exposing these vulnerable sections now to the vagaries of the market forces.
The pandemic made things worse for these poorer sections of society, especially the women who have been disproportionately impacted. During the pandemic, these marginalized sections have already faced an economic blow to their income and in sustaining their livelihood. With the unequal distribution of income globally and inequality within nations accentuating further during the pandemic, the more affluent sections globally were less affected by the recessionary conditions and could shield themselves. However, the marginalized sections, especially those in the low-income countries, were the worst impacted. Therefore, it is true that the fears of an economic recession combined with an inflationary situation concern the global economy. Still, their extent and nature differ based on the current levels of income and development of those economies. Additionally, for the developing countries, repaying their debts at higher interest rates in a reduced growth rate environment would pose additional macroeconomic challenges.
There is a global food crisis going on, and many accuse Russia of using food as a weapon of war. Yet, there are many governments around the world that are imposing food-export restrictions that not only drive food prices up but also squeeze food supplies. So, what is actually causing the global food crisis, how bad is it going to get, and what ways are there to solve the current food security crisis?
The global food crisis will be acute, and it will be most felt in the countries that are already food-insecure and suffering from hunger. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has already issued dire warnings. Although one can point to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, export restrictions, supply-chain issues and climate change-related disruptions accentuating the global food crisis, it is not the entire story. During the neoliberal era, one sector that mainly got ignored by the policy makers, especially in the developing world, is agriculture and its allied sectors. According to the OECD Agricultural Statistics, the total budgetary support to the agricultural sector as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the emerging economies declined from 1.25 percent to 0.81 percent over the last two decades.
As a consequence of negligence to this sector, the average annual growth rate of agriculture, forestry and fishing sector worldwide, according to the World Development Indicators, declined from 3.7 percent in the 1980s to 2.9 percent in the 2010s. It is starker in the case of the lower- and middle-income countries. Over this same period, while the overall growth rate of low- and middle-income countries increased from 3.6 percent to 4.7 percent, agriculture and its allied sectors’ growth declined from 3.9 percent to 3.4 percent. The point of citing these statistics is that much before the Russia-Ukraine war and pandemic, the agricultural sector was already suffering, and the food supply was impacted.
Historically, agricultural prices are volatile. With the underlying crisis of this sector and the recent events accentuating it, global food prices increased last year, and that trend continues. The two other factors contributing to the rising prices, as a direct fallout of the neoliberal policies, are the increased profiteering of the major multinational agribusinesses and the speculative activities on the futures commodity market. The increased speculative activity is recently confirmed by a critical study that tracked the movements of financial investors (investment funds in particular) in commodity markets. Both profiteering and speculation need to be immediately regulated.
The production of agricultural commodities is usually price-responsive (although with some lag), and it is possible that other agrarian economies (assuming the Russia-Ukraine war continues) would probably respond by increasing their production level and improving the supply chain. However, to do so, the governments in those economies need to support the sector by increasing public investments and total budgetary support. This would, however, be an anathema to any state adhering to neoliberal policies and its obsession with balanced budgets; hence, the political challenge should be to do away with the neoliberal order.
Neoliberalism has been a disaster for most countries in both the developed and the developing world. Is it the case though, that neoliberalism has lost its force? Is it in crisis?
Neoliberalism has weakened the working class globally — the race to the bottom in wages, de-unionization and privatization. In the advanced countries, the workers’ wages have got tethered to those in the lower-income countries and, therefore, the share of labor compensation in GDP has been declining for several advanced countries around the world. In the United States, this share declined by 5 percent between 1975 and 2017. The decline in other countries like Germany, Japan and France is even more significant, with the largest occurring in Canada, at almost 11 percent.
This has accentuated the inequality within countries, especially in these advanced economies, in terms of both income and wealth inequality. Since 1990, income inequality has increased in these developed countries. It also further accentuated the already existing wealth inequality globally — while the bottom half of the global population owned less than 1 percent of all wealth in 2018, the richest decile (top 10 percent) owned 85 percent of all wealth, and the top 1 percent alone held almost half of it. The pandemic has only worsened this inequality, with hundreds of millions of people forced to leave the workforce. This level of inequality creates a lot of precarity and vulnerability among the working class.
With the rise of nationalist slogans and racist mongering in the advanced countries, the right-wing forces blamed the poor workers in the emerging economies — Mexico, India, China and African nations — for the loss of employment faced by the workers in the advanced countries. Right-wing people falsely argue that the advanced economy workers have to suffer because some guy in Bangalore or Shanghai is taking away their job, and the workers in these emerging economies are prospering. It is true that inequality among per capita national incomes has declined in relative terms in recent decades. However, the average income levels in advanced economies are still very high. For example, the average income of people in the European Union is 11 times higher than that of people in sub-Saharan Africa; the income of people in North America is 16 times higher than that of sub-Saharan Africans.
Despite this reality, the right-wing forces continue the narrative and challenge the process of globalization, and encourage the rise of nationalism. In many advanced countries like the U.S., France, Germany, and others, this false narrative, along with other factors like immigration, led to the rise of authoritative, undemocratic regimes. These regimes bolstered the narratives of xenophobia and nationalism. In the U.S., for example, the Trump administration decided to escalate trade wars with China, moved out of the Paris Climate Accords, and turned their back on the European Union in the name of nationalism and protecting the national economy. This led many scholars, including some progressives, to write the epitaph of the neoliberal order.
It is true that the ideas associated with neoliberalism, especially that of the free market, are facing some challenges, especially after the pandemic during which a significant chunk of the population in the advanced countries benefited from the welfare measures of the state. However, I still doubt whether the free movement of capital and international trade, an integral part of the neoliberal regime, faces the same challenge. Capital, especially speculative finance capital, is still free to move across borders in search of speculative profits. And the U.S. dollar is still the top currency in the world and enjoys the global reserve currency status. Most of the central banks in the world have to adjust their interest rates in response to what the Federal Reserve does, sacrificing their independent monetary policy. This might even push their economies into recession because the central banks of those countries are scared of a capital flight. So, Main Street has substantially challenged Wall Street, but I still think the former has a long struggle ahead to make a permanent dent in the latter. Hence, it is true that neoliberalism is facing substantial challenges, but it might be too early to write the epitaph.
If the neoliberal agenda has indeed failed, what alternative paths of development are realistic for today’s world?
As mentioned earlier, although neoliberalism has not entirely lost all its steam, it has been challenged. The Green New Deal proposed and discussed in the Global North by various sections of the progressives presents a viable alternative to the neoliberal agenda. Any alternative progressive path of development in today’s world must keep the science of climate change at the center of policy making. The world is facing an existential crisis, and an alternative progressive development path must consider these policies’ environmental and ecological impacts. It should directly link to access to natural resources such as water, air and land.
However, from a developing country’s perspective in the Global South, the pursuit of the Green New Deal in the Global North should not become a cause of pain and exploitation for the workers, peasants, petty producers and miners in the former. Historically, the economic interactions of the advanced economies through the mechanisms of “free and fair” trade led to the exploitation of human and natural resources in the Global South. Hence, one should think about the Green New Deal as a Global Green New Deal, where the interest of the populace in the Global South is equally protected like that of the Global North, and the North partially bears the cost of this Green New Deal program in the South. Otherwise, what would happen, as history has shown us time and again, that the Global North will prosper at the expense of the Global South.
Is socialism a viable option for the Global South?
Socialism is, of course, a viable option for developing countries. With the recent win of the progressives in Peru, Chile and Colombia, it seems to become more feasible. But, the critical question is: Which model of socialism will these emerging countries follow? Will it be the Chinese model of socialism? In that case, I believe the progressives globally need to give it a pause and rethink whether they want to follow that trajectory. I say this because many leftists in the world, including my country, India, seem to unquestioningly follow the Chinese model of socialism without even genuinely understanding its repercussions in a democratic setup.
I believe democracy today needs to be an integral part of the socialist agenda, with the dignity of individuals upheld, where a top-down approach to planning with the state deciding it all needs to be questioned. Local participation, decentralized administration and democratic interaction should form the core of a new socialist agenda. A rights-based approach, where the right to life and the basic necessities for it — food, clean water and air, housing and clean energy are upheld, needs to be a central part of a socialist program, along with other rights like the right to health care, the right to education and employment. We need better protection of social and economic rights, which does mean a more significant role for the state. Protection of the workers’ rights, petty producers, small farmers and miners, whose interests have been sacrificed in this neoliberal era, must form the core of the new socialist agenda. A newly envisioned socialist order in the emerging economies of the Global South has to learn from the mistakes made by the earlier regimes by engaging in dialogues and attending to the needs of the local communities.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Taxes demonstrate the legitimacy of democratic control of the economy. This is what conservatives cannot accept—and what surviving climate change will require.
Somerville, MA is an inner suburb of Boston and the most densely populated city in New England with 81,000 residents. It was long an industrial center inhabited by repeated waves of immigrants, but it has increasingly become a bedroom community for Boston and Cambridge.
Somerville is currently being transformed by the extension of the Boston Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) subway system’s Green Line throughout the city, bringing transit access to 80% of Somerville residents. Over five million square feet of new development is in the works.
Somerville’s long-term mayor supported development but not union labor for either city employees or for construction, much of which, to the dismay of building trades unions, was done non-union.
The Gulf Coast is home to “over 47% of total petroleum refining capacity … as well as 51% of total U.S. natural gas processing plant capacity,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Given that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of the climate crisis, the Gulf Coast is a primary site driving global warming — and revealing its impacts. Extreme weather has become quite common in the entire region and sea levels are expected to rise between 14 and 18 inches by 2050, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In this context, the Green New Deal project proposed by progressive activists and lawmakers carries special weight for sustainability in the Gulf Coast. Much of the Gulf South region of the United States — Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — is politically conservative, which means the fight against the fossil-fuel economy is a truly uphill battle. Nonetheless, activism for transformative change is quite widespread throughout the Gulf Coast region. There are hundreds of organizations in the region committed to the fight against the climate crisis, even though they may not be nationally known and surely do not get the attention they deserve from corporate-owned media.
The Gulf South for a Green New Deal (GS4GND) is a regional formation of some 300 organizations working towards climate, racial, and economic justice across the Gulf South. It was launched in May 2019, with hundreds of attendees representing tribal nations, neighborhood associations, student groups and community organizations. A few months later, GS4GND produced a policy platform outlining what a Green New Deal should entail in order to be successful in the Gulf South.
On June 4, people from across the Gulf Coast will gather in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for the Gulf Gathering for Climate Justice and Joy. Ahead of this event, Truthout interviewed Jesse George, the New Orleans Policy Director for the Alliance for Affordable Energy. In the interview below, George discusses the importance of organizing and the need for a just transition in the Gulf Coast. He also explains the obstacles facing organizers in their fight against the powerful corporate interests entrenched in the Gulf South. This fight draws inspiration from the “rich legacy of liberation” in the region, George noted.
C. J. Polychroniou: What would a just transition look like in the Gulf South?
Jesse George: For generations the fossil fuel industry has degraded our land, air, and water across the Gulf South. As we face stronger and more frequent storms, ever accelerating land loss, and the compounding effects of climate change, it is critical that we transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to a renewable energy future that prioritizes the needs of Gulf South residents, especially the Black and Indigenous communities who have paid most dearly in this extractive economy.
Across the region, corporate interests have told Gulf South residents that they have but two choices — surrender their resources to industry in exchange for promised (but never realized) prosperity or risk complete economic destruction. And now, as we seek to protect our homes and communities from the worsening impacts of climate change, polluters are ready with another set of lies that could cost us our lives — dangerous and unproven technologies backed by false promises like carbon capture and biomass. The truth is that polluting industries have offered little in the way of economic security and their latest scheme to continue extracting the region’s resources will do nothing but line the pockets of the very executives responsible for polluting our land, air and waterways.
But a just transition — one that uplifts the workers and fenceline communities that have shouldered the burdens of the petrochemical industry — is possible and presents tremendous opportunities here in Louisiana and the entire Gulf South. For example, Louisiana has long been known as an energy state, and that doesn’t have to change. We just have to change the ways we make that energy. Across the Gulf South there is tremendous potential for offshore wind, and yet we’ve seen practically no development. The infrastructure and workforce that currently services offshore oil rigs could easily be transitioned to installing and maintaining offshore wind turbines. A just transition means paying for job training so that those workers can make the transition to the renewable energy future. We have a duty to ensure the economic benefits of the new renewable energy economy don’t just flow upwards but benefit the people who have suffered most severely from the impacts of the extractive economy.
And finally, a just transition means building climate resistant communities. Last year Hurricane Ida, one of the strongest hurricanes in recorded history, ripped through south Louisiana before making its way northward retaining enough strength to flood New York City subways. Our energy grid failed and folks were left for weeks, even months, without power in extreme heat. People died. Renewable energy, particularly local solar where folks are equipped with panels and batteries that feed into microgrids, could save lives in an event like this. We have the technology. We just need to build the political power to transform our economy.
Why is it important to organize as a region? What unites the region?
The Gulf and other waterways literally connect our region like the circulatory system in a human body. We share many of the same struggles — from extractive petrochemical industries to continual climate disaster, to the fight against the false solution of carbon capture. If we share the same struggles, we should stand shoulder to shoulder in facing them. For too long our region has been treated as a sacrifice zone by industry and our elected officials are all too ready to auction off our resources to the highest bidder.
Two years ago, a pipe carrying compressed carbon dioxide ruptured in Yazoo County, Mississippi, a majority Black county. The burst pipe filled the area with noxious gas and sent people to the hospital. What happened in our neighboring state could be a tragic harbinger of what’s to come to other parts of the region if we fail to stop the false promise that is carbon capture. The whole idea of carbon capture and storage is an industry lie. There is no evidence that long-term carbon capture and underground storage works. The few completed carbon capture projects aren’t removing carbon from the air, they’re capturing just a small percentage of the carbon a facility is actively emitting. In the instances where the carbon capture projects have not failed completely, they have come nowhere close to their touted carbon capture goals.
And yet, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards and President Joe Biden are rallying behind carbon capture technology and essentially signing a permission slip for polluting industries to continue business as usual. It is essential that we stand in solidarity with residents from across the Gulf South to share knowledge and ensure that industry can’t shuffle false promises from one place to another. The health of our region depends on our ability to work together to secure a just climate future.
What obstacles do organizers in the Gulf South face?
Petrochemical and extractive industries have a vise-grip on the Gulf South. The idea of our region being a sacrifice zone becomes self-fulfilling as industrial expansion continues unabated. Those who would maintain the status quo have a lot of money and power. They have bought off politicians from both major parties.
The corporate interests fighting to maintain the status quo are entrenched and they’ve been spreading lies for generations. For years, they’ve convinced us that we have no choice but to surrender our resources to them. Industry has done a very thorough job of scaring people. They’ve scared everyday people into thinking these extractive industries are the only source of steady employment in the region. Furthermore, industry has our elected leaders shaking in their boots too afraid that hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations will be turned against them should officials have the nerve to stand up to polluters.
And these extractive industries have maintained this multi-generation scare campaign on lies. They’ve told us they’re the only economic option for the region. They’ve told us industry isn’t responsible for elevated cancer risks and other poor health outcomes. They’ve told us that their ill-fated plans to capture the very emissions they create and pump them underground is safe. And now they’re telling us complete lies about renewable energy options that could employ thousands and drastically reduce carbon emissions. The oil and gas and petrochemical industries don’t want to cede control of our region and they’re not going to let it go easily.
The Gulf Gathering for Climate Justice and Joy is free and open to the public including folks who may not already be involved in the climate fight, so what do you hope attendees leave with?
We want attendees to leave the gathering with a sense of hope and a vision for the future of our region where human life and health are valued above corporate profits. We hope attendees will leave with an understanding that a just and joyous climate future is possible through our collective action.
So many forces in our contemporary society are at work to atomize people — from the gig economy where everybody’s got their own hustle to society’s movement away from shared workspace to the isolation of internet culture. For the last two years, we’ve been even more isolated as a result of the pandemic. There’s a lot to keep people apart from each other and when people are forced apart it’s only natural that we feel powerless. Our hope is that in coming together at the gathering folks will feel their power and see that change is possible. We want folks to know they’re not alone in knowing that things need to change and we want them to find an organizing home in Gulf South for a Green New Deal.
How does the gathering fit into the legacy of resistance in the Gulf South?
Our region is home of the Civil Rights movement; the German Coast Uprising, the largest rebellion of enslaved people in U.S. history; Native resistance; marronage; anti-colonial efforts; and more. Throughout history, our ancestors have stood up to oppressive systems. Gulf South for a Green New Deal, as a Black- and Indigenous-led formation, draws on that rich legacy of liberation.
And like movements before, ours is centered in joy and hope for a brighter future.
In the United States, the public and politicians are moving in opposite directions on climate change. Grassroots environmental activism is spreading on the local state, regional and national levels, while Congress generally continues with a “business-as-usual” approach, rejecting the foremost way to avoid the worst consequences of global warming: the Green New Deal.
While the Green New Deal remains aspirational in the U.S., it has been adopted by the European Union, and scores of countries around the world have committed to pursuing its goals.
Among the many organizations in the U.S. fighting for environmental sustainability and a just transition toward clean, renewable energy is Native Movement, an organization dedicated to building people power for transformative change and imagining a world without fossil fuels.
In the United States, the public and politicians are moving in opposite directions on climate change. Grassroots environmental activism is spreading on the local state, regional and national levels, while Congress generally continues with a “business-as-usual” approach, rejecting the foremost way to avoid the worst consequences of global warming: the Green New Deal.
While the Green New Deal remains aspirational in the U.S., it has been adopted by the European Union, and scores of countries around the world have committed to pursuing its goals.
Among the many organizations in the U.S. fighting for environmental sustainability and a just transition toward clean, renewable energy is Native Movement, an organization dedicated to building people power for transformative change and imagining a world without fossil fuels.
“There is no future at all with continued oil and gas extraction,” says Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller, Native Movement’s climate justice director, in this exclusive interview for Truthout. “We must eliminate fossil fuel extraction now through a just transition that guarantees justice for workers and for the lands.”
Miller is a Dena’ina Athabascan and Ashkenazi Jewish woman. She works toward Indigenous rights advocacy and is a member of the Alaska Just Transition Collective and the Alaska Climate Alliance.
C.J. Polychroniou: Ruth, what does a just transition, from a Native and Indigenous perspective, look like in Alaska?
Ruth Miller: A just transition is a journey of returning to economies, governance structures and social contracts that are not new, but built on Indigenous wisdoms and place-based knowledge to create a truly regenerative economy. A just transition will be built on a values framework of anti-racism and decolonization, deep reciprocity, and respect for all lands, waters and air.
Any just transition for Alaska must be rooted in Indigenous perspectives, because it is Alaska’s Native nations who have lived in harmony with these lands for over 30,000 years, and whose deep connections, encyclopedic knowledge and spiritual interconnectivity will heal the wounds of the past 100 years of colonization and extractive capitalism. For this reason, we refer to this shift in resource extraction, governance, labor practices and culture as “remembering forward,” first translated in 2020 in the Behnti Kengaga language as “Kohtr’elneyh,” and in 2022 in the Dena’ina language as “Nughelnik.”
In Alaska this takes many forms. It includes deep democracy, which actively seeks to incorporate minority voices as well as those in the majority and requires the diversification of elected leaders. It includes an end to all oil and gas extraction, as well as irresponsible mining and other development projects. It means a return to responsible land management practices, including timber and fisheries management, and it means returning stewardship of lands and waters back to their original and eternal caretakers. It includes supporting Alaska Native language and cultural revitalizations while supporting unimpeachable subsistence hunting and fishing rights. It means all workers will have their fair pay and rights protected through strong unions, while communities will be empowered to support themselves through mutual aid networks and non-predatory community loan funds for moving toward clean and efficient energy.
A just transition for Alaska means investing in regenerative industries like sustainable mariculture and ocean-healing crops such as kelp, while also supporting culturally informed eco-tourism that elevates local business with local returns. As we have previously written for Non-Profit Quarterly, “To achieve [a Just Transition], resources must be acquired through regenerative practices, labor must be organized through voluntary cooperation and decolonial mindsets, culture must be based on caring and sacred relationships, and governance must reflect deep democracy and relocalization.”
Why is the complete elimination of fossil fuel extraction needed to secure a just transition?
The simple truth is that the oil and gas industry is one of the largest contributors to climate change, spewing greenhouse gas emissions to the point at which we are now in the sixth great extinction — one which has been entirely caused by recent human activity. The Arctic, being bled dry for its non-renewable resources, is now experiencing a climate crisis at two to four times the rate as the rest of the globe.
In Alaska, thawing permafrost is not only destabilizing Arctic infrastructure, but the thawing of eons-old organic material leads to the accelerated release of methane, a gas more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. The same thawing is leading to coastal and riverbed erosion, causing more and more communities to be forced to relocate. Already less Arctic sea ice returns in the winter than past generations remember, putting coastal communities at increased risk of damage by winter storms.
With a global temperature rise of 2.5 degrees Celsius or higher (which we are projected to reach within the decade without drastic international action now), it is expected we will have an entirely ice-free Arctic Ocean at least once every eight years. Beyond their climate effects, extractive projects are already causing extreme and irreversible devastation to lands, waters and food systems.
The ecological harm caused by such projects leaves toxic waste, pollution and contamination, harming the health of Alaska Native peoples who live closest with the land. Near the sites of extractive projects, high rates of cancers, birth defects, respiratory illnesses, and more health impacts have been observed for decades. Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit relatives suffer increased rates of homicide, disappearance and domestic violence in and around the man camps that supply labor to extractive development projects.
There is no future at all with continued oil and gas extraction…. We must eliminate fossil fuel extraction now through a just transition that guarantees justice for workers and for the lands.
What are the main obstacles for Alaska to overcome its oil extraction and how would this impact Alaskans?
The dominant story of Alaska began as the “last frontier,” ready to be settled and exploited by colonizers. The same narrative now tells the public that the Alaskan economy is dependent on oil and gas, and that we would be left bereft if we challenged those industries. Dark money streams, particularly from the Koch brothers, flow into Alaska to purchase elections for extractive industries.
This is a hurdle we are poised to overcome. These stories are nothing more than myths meant to erase Indigenous history and excellence and undermine any visioning toward a truly regenerative economy for our state. Colonial distortions of history poison our education system and prevent real conversation about the past and future of our state and its people. We are seeking deep decolonization and truth-telling to confront the disempowerment and marginalization of Native people in the name of resource extraction. Ending oil extraction requires questioning the systems that rely on it and healing the wounds of our communities so we may envision a collective future together. As the boom-and-bust cycle of resource extraction continues to enrich the elite few at the cost of the public, Alaskans are awakening to the power and potential of a better economy — one that is just, regenerative and sustainable.
Already communities are showing ingenuity and resilience as they develop place-based economies that support livelihoods and healthy living — small-scale hydroelectric turbines in Igiugig village to move the community off diesel, high-tunnel greenhouses for year-round produce in the interior of Alaska, mariculture and kelp farming in the Southcentral and Southeast regions. Grassroots efforts across the state (many Black, Indigenous and people of color-led and in rural communities) are leading the way, through renewable energy, local food systems, eco-tourism, sustainable recreation, and much more. Strong unions like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are already providing apprenticeship programs to invest in worker transition, while other groups like the Fairbanks Women Carpenters Union, UNITE HERE are pursuing worker health and safety.
The burden of transformation is on the state of Alaska and the federal government to catch up to the progress already happening across Alaska. Alaskans are designing our collective future and taking our story into our own hands.
What is the Alaska Just Transition Collective and who are the communities it is accountable to? How does it bring folks together in action to advance a shared vision for Alaska’s future?
The Alaska Just Transition Collective is a group of Alaska-based organizations with a spectrum of focuses working to support Alaska along a path toward a post-oil economy, an Indigenized Regenerative Economy. Alaska Just Transition facilitates intersectional collaboration to build critical thinking around economic and social transition. The Alaska Just Transition Collective is currently comprised of a number of organizations, including Native Movement, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Alaska Public Interest Research Group, Native Peoples Action, The Alaska Center, Alaska Poor People’s Campaign and Native Conservancy. However, the just transition community is significantly broader and ever-expanding.
In January of 2020, the first Alaska Just Transition Summit was held on the lands of the Lower Tanana Dené peoples. Kohtr’elneyh (“Remembering Forward” in Benhti kanaga) was a groundbreaking gathering in Alaska that brought together community organizers, tribal leaders, artists, union members, faith leaders, investors, elected officials, educators, small business owners, renewable energy industry leaders, and many more from critical sectors. Alaskans shared, brainstormed and strategized a collective path toward a post-oil economy built on just values frameworks with a home for all. We dived deep into the healing necessary to move toward decolonization, and centered Indigenous voices to move with place-based wisdom and ancestral imperative.
Once the pandemic was upon us, we shifted to online offerings that dove into the intricacies of just transition in a four-part webinar series, and later convened “Fireside Chats” to explore national policy options for Alaska, following the pillars of the THRIVE Agenda (thriveagenda.com) and making the national approaches relatable and visible to Alaskans. Through these online gatherings we reengaged with the hundreds of community members that joined us in person in 2020, as well as expanded our community and tended to new and exciting relationships with more sectors and local leaders.
This year we gather once more in person, on Dena’ina lands, proudly bearing the name Nughelnik (“It is remembered within us” in Dena’ina qenaga). This summit will work to address the pains of the past two years, while also diving deeper into real strategy and active examples of just transition already taking place in Alaska. A just transition does not exist without the leadership and sovereignty of the communities that are deeply impacted by economic transition. Without including the voices of Black, Brown, Indigenous, people of color, disabled, queer, immigrant communities, for example, we are missing key leadership in our path forward. We are working to elevate voices that were regretfully not as visible in our first summit, and to make invitations for all identities to feel stewardship and ownership over our collective space.
As organizers, we hope that the next iteration will be regional and local just transition plans that will ripple across the state and be stewarded by local community members. Through this approach, our partnered organizations will continue to offer support and convening space for community members to lead us forward.
The Just Transition Collective is uplifting Indigenous place-based knowledge systems and ways of life while shaping regenerative economies, stewarding lands and waters, and building more just and equitable communities for all. Can you share the specific principles and aims guiding this vision?
We as a collective honor the Jemez Principles of Democratic Organizing, which in summation includes deep inclusion of all voices and identities; an emphasis of community-driven organizing, which means we engage when tribal sovereigns and communities most impacted by issues invite us; allowing people to speak for themselves; working together in solidarity and mutuality by understanding that we are deeply interconnected and must transform together; building just relationships among ourselves, modeling just workplace practices that reflect compassion and humanity; and commitment to self-transformation.
Uplift a matriarchal, decentralized, and marginalized leadership.
Grow an inclusive movement for all.
Create space for people to speak for themselves.
Work together in unity, solidarity, and accountability to each other.
Strive to build just relationships in our organizing.
Uplifting marginalized & oppressed voices that align with these values.
Commit to a just and equitable transition away from an extractive, oppressive economy toward a regenerative, holistic, living worldview.
Acknowledge that we exist in a tangible system of racial injustice and that it is our responsibility to dismantle it.
Be soulful.
While we carry these principles through all our work as organizations, our tangible vision for just transition is articulated through these goals of our recently held summit, which will shine the light toward future work:
“Remember Forward through Grief and Celebration”: This means recognizing that for many communities, the pandemic surfaced previously unspoken imbalances wrought by capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy, while many other communities have been acutely aware of their struggle to survive and regain balance since the onset of colonization. As outlined in the 2022 Alaska Just Transition Guide, this goal is about our effort to “reconnect healing as an essential strategy, as we share tools and practices as we move through tumultuous times.”
“Shape Community and Post-Pandemic Economy”: This means developing “a meaningful and reciprocal plan of action to support communities, extend care, and articulate long-term healing needed for Alaska’s economy and culture.”
“Reimagine Community in a Post-Extractive Economy”: This involves creating a space for our community “to align around a shared vision for a fundamental transformation in Alaska and beyond” and to turn this vision into action by identifying goals and sharing strategies.
“Weave Storytelling to Illuminate the Path”: This involves an effort to “highlight Alaskan stories of day-to-day challenges and celebrations on the path of visionary planning.”
Participants of the 2022 Alaska Just Transition Summit: Vol II gather for a group photo.Tanner Johnson
What strategies have you discovered work best for bringing grassroots and frontline perspectives to bear on national policies like the Green New Deal?
Our theory of engagement with national policy requires translating policy into accessible formats but also empowering our Native frontline communities to speak back to national policy.
Policy work must be reflective of those it is meant to help but also must grow from the ground and answer the needs of communities while honoring their expertise. Therefore, our work is twofold: Firstly, as is the case with the Green New Deal, we were involved in early stages to edit initial drafts of National Economic Recovery Plan proposals to ensure that Alaskan interests were protected, but also that there was unique language that accommodated both our tribal sovereign governments and our complex social services distribution, often through Alaska Native corporations.
We worked with our national partners to ensure that Alaskans could see themselves in the proposals and had many opportunities for consultation. Concurrently, we also elevated examples of Alaskan leadership, where our local initiatives were not just supporting national policy but truly driving it with visionary action: We drafted the “Alaska’s Time to THRIVE” zine to illustrate how regenerative economy is already taking hold across our state, in all aspects of a just transition. This document and the accompanying “Fireside Chats” allowed for deep consultation on these policies from an abundance mindset, where Alaskans were already positioned to lead.
Additionally, we work diligently with community members to elevate local stories from the land, and to empower narrative sovereignty — the ability to tell one’s own story with integrity and authenticity. Through storytelling skills-building and video projects, stories from community members and from the land are able to speak for themselves. We can offer our organizations as conduits to uplift and share these stories widely, particularly within national and international decision-making spaces.
One example of this initiative was our Fall 2021 Indigenous Filmmakers Intensive. Native Movement partnered with the University of Alaska Fairbanks to offer an intense curriculum guided by faculty members and Indigenous film industry professionals, as well as filmmaking gear as students wrote, directed and produced stories of climate justice from their rural communities. These stories were later showcased at the United Nations global climate negotiations at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, and will soon be shown at the Anchorage Museum. Through these techniques, we are able to deepen the sovereignty and self-determination of our communities while sharing their wisdom and leadership with national and international policy makers.
Although the war in Ukraine has put climate action on the back burner for many policy makers, the global climate crisis is spinning out of control. Various climate records were smashed in 2021, and greenhouse gas emissions are on course to hit record levels in 2023. In the face of such dramatic developments, political inaction on the climate front could portend an imminent environmental catastrophe.
In the interview that follows, world-renowned progressive economist Robert Pollin discusses the latest developments on the climate crisis, starting with Biden’s broken promises to provide leadership in the fight against the climate emergency, and the problems of soaring energy costs and inflation. He also refutes the arguments in favor of nuclear energy, as well as the claims that there is very little we can do to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Pollin is distinguished professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he has authored many climate stabilization projects for different U.S. states. He is also the author of many books, including Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (co-authored with Noam Chomsky).
C.J. Polychroniou: Bob, why did Biden break his promise on no new leasing on federal lands? Aren’t there other ways to fight soaring energy costs besides a “drill, baby, drill” policy? And will record high gas prices actually be solved by drilling more?
Robert Pollin: The Biden administration announced last April 15 that it would lift the executive order it had established in January 2020 that imposed a temporary ban on auctioning off federal lands for oil and gas leasing. This is despite the fact that, as a presidential candidate, Biden pledged, “And by the way, no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.” So much for even Biden’s most emphatic campaign promises.
One excuse that the administration has given for Biden’s flip-flop is that a federal judge in Louisiana had struck down the January 2020 executive order. However, Biden could have easily delayed the awarding of new drilling permits indefinitely by fighting the judge’s order in court. Biden chose not to do this. The administration’s excuse here is that, in the immediate, Biden has had to focus on pushing down energy prices and overall inflation. The administration claims that opening up federal lands for drilling will increase oil and gas supply and thereby counteract the sharp oil and gas price increases that have prevailed since over the past year.
Specifically, the average retail price of gasoline has risen nearly 150 percent over the past year, from an average of $1.77 per gallon over May 2021 to $4.23 from May 1–23 this year. This spike in gasoline prices, along with rise in heating oil prices, has, in turn, been the single biggest driver causing overall U.S. inflation to rise by 8.3 percent over the past year, the highest U.S. inflation rate in 40 years.
Without question, we face serious problems with surging oil and gas prices and overall U.S. inflation. But it is also obvious that expanding drilling on public lands will have precisely zero impact on oil prices over the next year or two, if at all. This is because any supplies that could be produced through new drilling on federal lands will not become available in the retail energy market for at least 1 to 2 years. In addition, the amount of new oil and gas supplies that could ever come onstream from these projects would be minuscule as a share of the overall global energy market.
The Biden administration certainly must know all this. Their policy reversal is therefore all about optics — they want to convey the impression that they are taking strong measures to fight high gas prices, even while, in fact, they are doing no such thing. This Biden strategy is especially damaging since, rather than straining now so ineptly to manipulate public opinion, they could instead get serious to enact effective measures that can both fight climate change and protect people’s living standards against the vagaries of the global oil market.
Getting serious has to begin with the recognition that if we are going to have any chance of meeting the goals of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for climate stabilization — i.e., a 50 percent reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030 and zero CO2 emissions by 2050 — then we have to maintain a hard commitment to phasing out fossil fuel consumption every year, with no backsliding permitted — i.e., “period, period, period.” This is because burning oil, coal and natural gas to produce energy is by far the largest source of CO2 emissions globally and therefore the biggest driver of climate change. At the same time, the world now depends on fossil fuels to meet 80 percent of global energy demand. We should therefore assume that short-term crises will regularly emerge in which, similar to the current situation, the imperatives of climate stabilization will appear less pressing than keeping energy supplies abundant and prices low. We need to be prepared to meet these inevitable short-term crises without ending up, each time, clinging to our current dependency on fossil fuels.
Within this context, any measure now to push fossil fuel prices back down would be moving us in the wrong direction, since lower fossil fuel prices will encourage greater fossil fuel consumption. Rather, on behalf of saving the planet, we actually need all fossil fuel prices to remain high, and indeed, if anything, to increase still further. This is because high prices for oil, natural gas and coal will discourage consumers from buying fossil fuels to meet their energy needs. High fossil fuel prices will also incentivize efforts to build a new energy infrastructure, whose two pillars will be high efficiency and renewable energy, in particular solar and wind power. A high-efficiency renewable energy-dominant infrastructure will, among other things, deliver cheaper energy than our current fossil fuel-dominant system. But that cannot happen in an instant. In the meantime, we cannot allow working class and middle-class people to experience cuts in their living standards right now through high fossil fuel prices while oil companies’ profits explode. How can we effectively address these equally valid, though competing, considerations?
For the immediate, the federal government should provide people with energy tax rebates to compensate them against the impacts of any temporary spikes in energy prices. One specific proposal along these lines that has been introduced in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives is a “windfall profits tax” on the oil companies’ current levels of outsized profits resulting from the price spikes. Under the Senate version of this measure introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the oil companies would be taxed at half the difference between the current retail oil prices and the average pre-pandemic price between 2015 and 2019.
The average price of gasoline between 2015 and 2019 was $2.37 per gallon. Based on the average market price of $4.23 per gallon between May 1-23, the Senate version of the tax would amount to 93 cents per gallon (i.e. ($4.23 – $2.37)/2 = $0.93. This calculation assumes no further adjustment for inflation). Over a year, the tax would generate a total of roughly $130 billion based on current gasoline consumption levels, according to my calculations. These revenues would then be channeled into compensating consumers for the spike in their energy bills. Every U.S. resident would receive nearly $400 if revenues from the tax were distributed equally to everyone. A family of four, including, for example, an infant and a grandma, would therefore receive almost $1,600 in rebates.
A still more basic solution here would be for the government to take over the U.S. fossil fuel industry. Under a nationalized fossil fuel industry, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source can proceed in an orderly fashion. The government could then set fossil fuel energy prices to reflect the needs of both consumers and the imperatives of the clean energy transition. At present, the U.S. government could purchase controlling interest in the three dominant U.S. oil and gas companies — Exxon/Mobil, Chevron and Conoco — for about $350 billion. This would be less than 10 percent of the $4 trillion that the Federal Reserve pumped into Wall Street during the COVID crisis. More generally, these costs should be understood as trivial because nationalization would end these corporations’ relentless campaign of sabotaging the clean energy transition.
The economic and ecological logic of oil nationalization are straightforward. But clearly, the politics of actually pulling this off now are nearly impossible. By contrast, the windfall profit tax approach is within the outer reaches of current political feasibility.
The war in Ukraine has generated interest in nuclear energy. In fact, the EU has opted to label nuclear, as well as gas, as green energy investments. While it takes a bizarre leap to label an energy source associated with risks as sustainable, what about nuclear energy’s economic aspects? Are there economic benefits?
In terms of advancing a viable climate stabilization project, nuclear energy does provide the important benefit that it can produce electricity in abundance without generating CO2 emissions or air pollution of any kind. But even allowing for this benefit, we need to first consider the risks you mention with nuclear energy. Because these risks are so severe, addressing them must supersede any economic considerations.
These risks were brought into sharp focus in the early phases of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That is, in one of its first offensive operations on February 24, the Russian military seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which is located about 60 miles north of Kyiv in Ukraine. In 1986, when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union, Chernobyl was the site of the most severe nuclear power plant accident in history. An explosion blew the lid off of one of the plant’s four operating nuclear reactors. This released radioactive materials into the atmosphere that spread throughout the region. Despite this disaster, the other three reactors at Chernobyl continued operating until 2000.
The other three reactors did cease operating in 2000. But the site still houses more than 20,000 spent fuel rods. These rods must be constantly cooled, with the cooling system operating on electricity. If the system’s electrical power source were to malfunction, the spent fuel rods could become exposed to the air and catch fire. This would release radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Once released, the radioactive materials could again spread throughout the region and beyond, as they did in 1986. This is low-probability but by no means a zero-probability scenario.
On March 3, the Russian miliary also took control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest in Europe. According to a March 11 report on NPR, “Russian forces repeatedly fired heavy weapons in the direction of the plant’s massive reactor buildings, which housed dangerous nuclear fuel.” All military actions at or near the plant create further danger of the plant’s operations becoming compromised. As with Chernobyl, this could then lead to radioactive materials being released into the atmosphere.
Nuclear disasters at both Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia are therefore active threats right now. In addition, the war is compromising the security systems that operate to protect both sites. The fact that both sites have become combat zones means that they are more vulnerable to attacks from non-state actors, including terrorist organizations of any variety. The aim of such organizations in breaching security at Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia would almost certainly include gaining access to materials that would enable them to produce homemade nuclear weapons. At the least, they would be positioned to threaten the release of radioactive materials.
Even given these unavoidable dangers, we still might want to prioritize nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels if the economic benefits were overwhelming. In fact, according to the U.S. Energy Department, the costs of generating a kilowatt hour of electricity from nuclear energy are now more than twice as high as those from solar panels or onshore wind. Moreover, the costs of renewables, especially solar, have been falling sharply over the past decade, with further large cost reductions likely. By contrast, nuclear is on a “negative learning curve” — i.e., the costs of nuclear energy have been rising over time. This is mostly because minimizing the risks with nuclear as much as possible requires spending billions of dollars on safety provisions for a single average-sized reactor. This is why the huge multinational firm Westinghouse, which, for decades, had been the global leader in building nuclear plants, was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2017.
In short, there is no viable economic case in support of nuclear energy as an alternative to building a new global energy system whose foundations are high efficiency and renewables. There are significant challenges to address in creating a high-efficiency and renewable-dominant system, starting with the problems created by solar and wind intermittency — i.e., the fact that wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine all day at any given location. But none of these problems are insurmountable, and certainly none of them create anything like the existential risks that we inevitably face with nuclear energy.
There are certain scientists out there who contend that it is unrealistic for the world to expect to halve emissions by 2030, as the latest UN climate report states that we must do if we are to avert catastrophic global heating. Is this really an unrealistic goal, as someone like Vaclav Smil claims it is? And what about the argument, made by Smil and others, that if we abandoned the use of fossil fuels, we would end up with a global energy crisis?
The New York Timesrecently published an extensive interview with the environmental scientist Vaclav Smil titled “This Eminent Scientist Says Climate Activists Need to Get Real.” By “getting real,” Smil argues that climate activists, and everyone else, need to face the fact that we will never hit the IPCC’s emission reduction targets — the 50 percent CO2 emissions cut by 2030 and reaching zero emissions by 2050. This is because, as Smil puts it, “People will eat pork bellies and drink a liter of alcohol every day because the joy of eating pork belly and drinking surpasses the possible bad payoff 30 years down the road.” And further: “There are billions of people who want to burn more fossil fuel. There is very little you can do about that. They will burn it unless you give them something different. But who will give them something different?”
Smil’s perspective gives no credence to at least two huge and obvious points, which makes it especially odd that the Times would give his views such prominence. The first is that the IPCC’s emissions reduction targets can hardly be considered as in any way analogous to lifestyle choices like eating pork bellies and drinking alcohol. The IPCC established these targets based on the body of scientific evidence, which concludes that the targets must be achieved for us, the human race, to have any chance of avoiding the most severe consequences of climate change. With daytime temperatures in parts of India and Pakistan currently reaching 120-1240 Fahrenheit, do we need any more reminders of what we are facing right now with climate change?
The second point is that advancing a global clean energy transformation is certainly technically and economically feasible, as we have discussed at length many times.
It can be accomplished within a viable global Green New Deal project that can also deliver expanding decent work opportunities, rising mass living standards, and dramatic reductions in poverty in all regions of the world. It is true that we cannot eliminate fossil fuels immediately, given that they currently supply 80 percent of all global energy needs. But we can eliminate fossil fuels entirely within 20 to 25 years through the global Green New Deal. It is simply a matter of political will. To build that political will, we cannot be distracted by empty pronouncements from the likes of Vaclav Smil, just as we cannot permit politicians, starting with Joe Biden, to toss aside their promises on climate action whenever such promises become temporarily inconvenient.
In 2015, countries participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change rallied around preventing the rise in average global temperatures beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. With an average rise of 1.5–2.0 degrees, scientists predict 70–90% loss of coral reefs globally, an explosion of natural disaster–related deaths, and displacement of up to 1.2 billion people by 2050.
We already stand at an increase in average global temperatures of 1.2 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution and, according to the World Meteorological Organization, there is now a 40% chance that the world will see average global temperatures increase to 1.5 degrees in the next five years. As the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded last year, the world missed its opportunity to prevent many of these devastating impacts and can only hope to prevent the “most harrowing” possibilities — but we need to take decisive action, and we need to do it now.
The ongoing war in Ukraine does not bode well for the future of peace and sustainability on planet Earth. As Noam Chomsky said in a recent interview for Truthout, “We are at a crucial point in human history. It cannot be denied. It cannot be ignored.” The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released on February 28, spells out the dire consequences of inaction to human-induced climate change. So, where do we stand in the fight against global warming? Is the Green New Deal project making inroads?
In the interview that follows, two leading climate activists — Margaret Kwateng, a national Green New Deal organizer at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and Ebony Twilley Martin, co-executive director of Greenpeace USA — discuss the significance of the Green New Deal project and its potential power as a transformative policy for saving the planet and creating a more fair and just social order.
C.J. Polychroniou: What would achieving the Green New Deal look like, and can it be accomplished in the next decade given the current political climate in the U.S.?
Margaret Kwateng: We are living in a moment where nearly all of our lives are being deeply impacted by the climate crisis — especially frontline communities around the world. From extreme droughts to floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires, whole communities are being devastated. The IPCC just released its latest global assessment of climate impacts that proclaimed the climate crisis is happening now, faster and more intensely than we expected. People are more aware than ever of the urgent need to stop the burning of the planet. The colliding crisis of climate change and the global pandemic has demonstrated that tragedies do not happen in a vacuum; rather, a crisis in one sector has ripple effects throughout our economy and touches on numerous parts of people’s lives. The real solutions to the climate crisis require a transformation of the extractive economy (away from fossil fuel and other resource extraction, labor exploitation and corporate profiteering) that has brought us to this breaking point.
We envision a decade of the Green New Deal because we know this scale of global crisis will require more profound change than we have seen in years. Our movements are stepping forward with a vision and a demand focused on the reorganizing of our economy to center life and well-being.
In this way, the Green New Deal is not one law or policy. The Green New Deal is a whole set of transformative policies that are able to address multiple crises at once. The THRIVE Act, which the Green New Deal Network (GNDN) worked with congressmembers to introduce in 2021, called for a $10 trillion investment to mobilize our economy and confront climate chaos, racial injustice and economic inequality. This is the floor of what is required to confront these crises, not the ceiling.
A realized Green New Deal would grow union jobs in renewables; build affordable housing and expand clean accessible public transportation; divest from brutal systems like prisons and the military; and invest in community infrastructure. The goal is not to simply regenerate the fabric of our society but to also create a national community that values the essential labor of care workers like domestic workers, home care workers and teachers; actualizes justice for communities that have long been left behind; and reduces the ripple effect when global, local or personal crises strike.
Our current conjuncture of overlapping crises — continued pandemic, climate chaos, chronic racial injustice, democracy under attack and escalating militarization — poses both turbulent terrain to pass bold visionary policies and also the ripe opportunity for intersectional solutions that address these crises together. We need to divest from the billions of dollars going to war and violent policing of our communities, and redirect investment to renewable energy, clean transportation, affordable housing and the care sector.
Our work is not to accept the intransigence of our governments and obstructionist politicians, but to shift the political landscape entirely by demanding the full scale of what we need to survive and to offer an irresistible vision of a future in which we all thrive. That is the power and potential of our movements mobilized together behind a truly transformative Green New Deal.
What was the impetus for diverse sectors of the climate justice movement, including labor, care workers, racial justice groups and Indigenous groups to come together to form the Green New Deal Network, and what role is the GNDN playing in achieving a Green New Deal?
Kwateng: While the demand for a Green New Deal and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal resolution have dramatically shifted the national debate on climate change policy since 2018, the vision at the heart of a Green New Deal has been around for much longer.
Many communities have been working to make Green New Deal-like shifts a reality for decades, under other banners like climate justice and a just transition. For example, when miners realized coal jobs were leaving Kentucky and community members were fed up with the contaminated water resulting from those same mines, they decided to launch Appalachia’s Bright Future, creating plans for how to move away from disease-causing, environment-degrading fossil fuel extraction to an alternative future together.
Despite this level of on-the-ground expertise, many communities on the front lines of the climate crisis have been left out of larger conversations on how to address it. The vision for the Green New Deal Network is to be an intersectional coalition that brings together workers, community groups, activists, and Black and Indigenous organizations, particularly those on the front lines of crises, in the fight for visionary climate, care, jobs and justice policies.
The work of organizations like the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) has pushed the scope of the Green New Deal vision beyond just switching out gas cars for electric ones and, instead, toward centering racial justice and social, economic and ecological transformation. Just last October, IEN and allies descended on the capital to say that real climate justice means both respecting Indigenous sovereignty and stopping fossil fuel extraction.
In addition, groups like the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and Service Employees International Union are at the table to advocate for a robust and dignified care economy as a critical component of a Green New Deal. Care workers are on the front lines of the climate crisis, and they are the backbone of a sector that will need to expand as climate crises intensify.
Because there are groups ranging from the Movement for Black Lives, to the Center for Popular Democracy, to the Working Families Party at the Green New Deal Network, we are building a united front capable of creating a Green New Deal that doesn’t replicate historically exclusive policies — in leaving out communities like women and Black folks — and instead is able to tackle the multiple crises we are facing. We are generating shared policy, electing progressives and holding them accountable, and organizing to change the social and political landscape to make the kind of change where communities across the country can thrive.
What are the barriers to bring about a Green New Deal this decade, and how do we break them down?
Ebony Twilley Martin: The Green New Deal is built on the vision of a world in which all people have what they need to thrive and the boundaries of the planet are respected. One of the biggest barriers to realizing this future is the profit-driven economic system in which massive corporations and a few wealthy elites control and exploit land, communities and legislation. This system prioritizes profits over the well-being of families while also driving the continued extraction from and commodification of the Earth. As you can see in the latest IPCC report, this is drastically upsetting the balance of life on the planet.
Unity is key in breaking down this barrier. But unity is not always easy. As we look to recover from COVID-19, address the climate crisis, advance racial justice and build an economy that puts people first, corporate overlords and those who do their bidding in Congress continually try to pit these priorities against each other in an attempt to divide us. We saw this play out last year when corporations lobbied against the Build Back Better Act attempting to put climate action, health care, workers’ rights and child care on the chopping block, despite all being overwhelmingly popular with the majority of Americans. The Green New Deal Network provides a space where organizations and communities can work together across priorities to establish a unified front. We know these crises are interconnected, and to solve one, we must address them all.
Disinformation is also a huge barrier that needs to be addressed. For years, corporations have offered us a false choice between a healthy economy or a healthy planet and communities. Oil and gas companies, in particular, like to hide behind the prospect of jobs and stability to justify their destructive “business as usual.” The truth is, we have a better chance at creating millions of good-paying, stable, union jobs with renewable energy than we do with fossil fuels. Just before the pandemic struck, clean energy jobs outnumbered fossil fuel jobs nearly three to one, totaling about 3.3 million jobs and growing 70 percent faster than the economy overall. And the clean energy industry proved resilient through 2020, too: Despite the pandemic and resulting economic crisis, 2020 was a record year for solar and wind installations, as the industry continued to attract investorinterest.
Making this the decade of the Green New Deal will address these threats to our health and safety by transitioning off of fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform recently held hearings on the fossil fuel industry’s role in spreading disinformation, and at Greenpeace USA, we filed acomplaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Chevron for greenwashing. People are starting to wise up to these tactics, but both government and private companies need to take measures to stop the spread of disinformation, and those who spread it need to be held accountable.
Why should people care about the work of the Green New Deal Network? How will this work benefit everyday people?
Martin: This question cuts to one area where we can certainly improve, and that’s how we communicate the goals and ambitions of a Green New Deal to our communities, families and friends. I know when a lot of my friends and family hear “Green New Deal,” they recognize the term, but don’t know what it includes or what it would do for them personally. Most of what is contained in the Green New Deal is extremely popular and would improve the livelihoods of everyday people. Things like clean energy and job investments, affordable housing, paid family and medical leave, and reducing child poverty — all regularly see support of around 60 percent and above in polls. It is our job as the Green New Deal Network to better help people to understand that the Green New Deal is the pathway to securing a better future.
At its core, the Green New Deal is about caring and uplifting one another. As we talked about earlier, we can overcome these challenges through unity. The Green New Deal Network is envisioned as a coalition that embodies this unity. Since the Green New Deal Network has both national and state-based priorities, our work covers everything from large federal legislation in Washington, D.C., to local fights in our communities. Whether your passion is preventing pollution, improving workers’ rights, building a fairer economy or improving the health care system, there is a space for people to get involved with the state coalitions and the organizations that are part of the Green New Deal Network.
If all of us in the Green New Deal Network can succeed in enacting the vision of a Green New Deal into federal, state, tribal and local governments across the country, then people throughout the U.S. will feel some relief from the oppressive, exploitative and downright violent forces that exist in everyday life. For some folks, these forces are outside their direct lived experience and exist only on the edges. For others, these are examples happening every day.
The Green New Deal will not solve all our problems — but it will show us that solutions are possible and that a transformation toward a more just, fair, green and equitable society is within our power to make a reality.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
The spread of COVID-19 in classrooms has revealed an infrastructure problem made worse by the way the United States finances improvements to school buildings.
With time quickly running out to prevent a greenhouse apocalypse, activists need to reorganize and unite efforts to build massive public support and political will for climate action. In this context, much is to be gained by looking at the work of ReImagine Appalachia, which is promoting a Green New Deal blueprint for the Ohio Valley region. This is the focus of the following exclusive interview for Truthout with Amanda Woodrum, senior researcher at Policy Matters Ohio and co-director of project ReImagine Appalachia.
Jeremy Brecher’s new book, The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy, is a timely and important contribution for organizers and anyone thinking about rebuilding the world from the bottom up.
