On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

by Naomi Klein

The future isn’t cast into one inevitable course. On the contrary, we could cause the sixth great mass extinction event in Earth’s history, or we could create a prosperous civilization, sustainable over the long haul. Either is possible starting from now. —KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

Oceans are warming 40 percent faster than the United Nations predicted just five years ago.

million species of animals and plants are at risk of extinction.

It has been over three decades since governments and scientists started officially meeting to discuss the need to lower greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the dangers of climate breakdown.

since those government meetings began in 1988, global CO2 emissions have risen by well over 40 percent, and they continue to rise.

the last time there was this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, humans didn’t exist.

They know what they think of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Scott Morrison in Australia and all the other leaders who torch the planet with defiant glee while denying science so basic that these kids could grasp it easily at age eight.

It was madness: the world was on fire, and yet everywhere Greta looked, people were gossiping about celebrities, taking pictures of themselves imitating celebrities, buying new cars and new clothes they didn’t need—as if they had all the time in the world to douse the flames.

what is the point of learning facts in the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly means nothing to our politicians and our society.”

“Greta Thunberg may have been the spark, but we’re the wildfire.”

It’s a story that begins with people stolen from Africa and lands stolen from Indigenous peoples, two practices of brutal expropriation that were so dizzyingly profitable that they generated the excess capital and power to launch the age of fossil fuel–led industrial revolution and, with it, the beginning of human-driven climate change.

“racial capitalism.”

“rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

There was finally a big and bold “yes” to pair with the climate movement’s many “no’s,” a story of what the world could look like after we embraced deep transformation, and a plan for how to get there.

The plan is pretty straightforward: elect a strong supporter of the Green New Deal in the Democratic primaries; take the White House, the House, and the Senate in 2020; and start rolling it out on day one of the new administration

None of this means that every climate policy must dismantle capitalism or else it should be dismissed (as some critics have absurdly claimed)—we need every action possible to bring down emissions, and we need them now. But it does mean, as the IPCC has so forcefully confirmed, that we will not get the job done unless we are willing to embrace systemic economic and social change.

“there is no historical precedent for the scale of the necessary transitions, in particular in a socially and economically sustainable way”—a reference to the fact that global emissions have only ever dropped significantly during times of deep economic crisis, such as the Great Depression and after the collapse of the Soviet Union,

no national government of a wealthy country has been willing to have a frank discussion about the need for high consumers to consume less or for fossil fuel companies to pay to clean up the mess they created.

That, most fundamentally, is why the historical precedents from the 1930s through to the 1950s are still useful. They remind us that another approach to profound crisis was always possible and still is today.

Faced with the collective emergencies that punctuated those decades, the response was to enlist entire societies, from individual consumers to workers to large manufacturers to every level of government, in deep transitions with clear common goals.

These historical chapters show us that when ambitious goals and forceful policy mechanisms are aligned, it is possible to change virtually all aspects of society on an extremely tight deadline, just as we need to do in the face of climate breakdown today.

“We’re not doomed (unless we choose to be).”

One warning from the 1930s and ’40s we would be wise to remember is that when systemic crises cause political and ideological vacuums to open up, as they have today, it is not only humane and hopeful ideas like the Green New Deal that find oxygen. Violent and hateful ideas do, too.

Check out this quote.

In the rough and rocky future that has already begun, what kind of people are we going to be? Will we share what’s left and try to look after one another? Or are we instead going to attempt to hoard what’s left, look after “our own,” and lock everyone else out?

rising seas and rising fascism,

If Katrina pulled back the curtain on the reality of racism in America, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle.

“To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?”

Konspirasjon..

For these right-wingers, opposition to climate change has become as central to their worldview as low taxes, gun ownership, and opposition to abortion.

facts and arguments are seen as little more than further attacks, easily deflected.

Climate change is a message, one that is telling us that many of Western culture’s most cherished ideas are no longer viable.

Traditionally, battles to protect the public sphere are cast as conflicts between irresponsible leftists who want to spend without limit and practical realists who understand that we are living beyond our economic means. But the gravity of the climate crisis cries out for a radically new conception of realism, and a very different understanding of limits.

This is a crucial point to understand: it is not opposition to the scientific facts of climate change that drives denialists, but rather, opposition to the real-world implications of those facts.

those with strong “hierarchical” and “individualistic” worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus.

it is always easier to deny reality than to watch your worldview get shattered,

Overwhelmingly, climate deniers are not only conservative but also white and male, a group with higher-than-average incomes. And they are more likely than other adults to be highly confident in their views, no matter how demonstrably false.

most leftists have yet to realize that climate science has handed them the most powerful argument against capitalism

many people have been hungering for this kind of transformation on many fronts, from the practical to the spiritual.

This deliberate attempt to shift cultural values is not about lifestyle politics; nor is it a distraction from the “real” struggles. Because in the rocky future we have already made inevitable, an unshakable belief in the equal rights of all people and a capacity for deep empathy will be the only things standing between humanity and barbarism.

Climate change, by putting us on a firm deadline, can serve as the catalyst for precisely this profound social and ecological transformation.

the disturbing repercussions of geoengineering: once we start deliberately interfering with the earth’s climate systems, whether by dimming the sun or fertilizing the seas, all natural events can begin to take on an unnatural tinge.

Geoengineering offers the tantalizing promise of a climate change fix that would allow us to continue our resource-exhausting way of life, indefinitely.

“Geoengineering says, ‘we’ll just do it, and you’ll live with the effects.’ ”

Wouldn’t it be better to change our behavior, to reduce our use of fossil fuels, before we begin fiddling with the planet’s basic life-support systems?

global capitalism had made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient, and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” were becoming dangerously unstable in response.

mass uprisings of people (along the lines of the abolition movement, the civil rights movement, or Occupy Wall Street) represent the likeliest source of “friction” to slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control.

Some scientists need no convincing. The godfather of modern climate science, James Hansen, is a formidable activist, having been arrested some half-dozen times for resisting mountaintop removal coal mining and tar sands pipelines. (He even left his job at NASA this year in part to have more time for campaigning.)

our entire economic paradigm is a threat to ecological stability. And, indeed, that challenging this economic paradigm, through mass movement counterpressure, is humanity’s best shot at avoiding catastrophe.

we have lost so much time to political stalling and weak climate policies—all while global consumption (and emissions) ballooned—that we are now facing cuts so drastic that they challenge the fundamental logic of prioritizing GDP growth above all else.

!!

cuts above 1 percent per year “have historically been associated only with economic recession or upheaval,”

“radical and immediate de-growth strategies in the US, EU and other wealthy nations.”