We know that the scale and speed of change we’re proposing can seem overwhelming. More gradual measures might have worked if we had started decades ago. But we didn’t. By the time climate science was getting regular press in the late 1980s, market fundamentalism had taken over mainstream politics. The results have been dismal. In the past four decades, the rich have gotten richer, wages have stagnated, the cost of living has climbed, and the prison population has skyrocketed. Half the country is poorer now than it was in 1980, and 90 percent of Americans are now poorer than they were before the 2008 crash.1 Meanwhile, carbon emissions have risen unabated, while US fossil fuel extraction has experienced a golden age. Worldwide, over half of the carbon pollution ever released was emitted after 1988. So much for the “end of history.”
We’re now witnessing a deep unraveling of American life, which is especially stark for young people and people of color. It’s visible in the form of rising student debt, bankruptcies driven by medical bills, and an ongoing housing crisis punctuated by evictions, foreclosures, and utility shut-offs. And then there are the waves of climate-linked disasters: In 2017, Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston; then Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, killing 2,975 people. In 2018, the deadliest wildfire in California history tore through the state’s northern forests, killing eighty-five people and destroying thousands of homes—just a month after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that climate effects would be worse than anticipated. Far deadlier storms, droughts, and heat waves have ravaged communities across the Global South. The climate crisis is entwined—objectively, and in our everyday lives—with a broader crisis of capitalism. Gradualism won’t cut it.
Radical change only happens when millions of people are organizing, striking, and marching, shaping politics and the economy from below. Tackling the climate crisis will require action from unions, social movements, Indigenous peoples, racial justice groups, and others to take back public power from the elites who’ve presided over the climate emergency. That’s why the Green New Deal must combine climate action with attacks on social inequalities. Only then can we build enough public support and grassroots organizing to break the stranglehold of the status quo, and give people reasons to keep fighting for more. Who will march for green austerity? For all its flaws, the original New Deal excelled in creating a positive feedback loop between public spending on collective goods and mass mobilization, thus overcoming anti-socialist hostility from the business class and political elites. A Green New Deal would likewise have to make climate action viscerally beneficial, turning victories into organizing tools for yet greater political mobilization—and for ongoing liberation. Done right, investments in climate action could facilitate real freedom for everyone, the kind that only economic security for all makes possible.
While climate narratives often look decades into the future, this short book’s focus is tighter—the pivotal 2020s. We can’t address every topic—food systems and migration are especially big omissions. With limited space, we explore a handful of core climate battlegrounds with fresh eyes. We call for winding down fossil extraction and private utilities, putting both under democratic, public control. We tackle labor, a longtime sticking point for environmental action, arguing for a commitment to guaranteed green jobs and making the case for a larger transformation of work. We connect clean energy to housing, transit, and recreation, arguing for a housing guarantee and dramatically expanded options for leisure. And we show how a radical Green New Deal in the United States can strengthen commitments to egalitarian climate action around the world, starting with solidarity with the communities at the frontlines of the mining for renewable energy inputs.
We know that in this same timeline, Republican intransigence and entrenched antidemocratic mechanisms like the Senate and electoral college are real obstacles. In a best-case scenario, a Democratic nominee supportive of massive climate investment would be elected in late 2020, and we’d see major Green New Deal legislation passed during the first 100 days of the new administration. But even a progressive president would face hostility from courts, corporate-backed legislators, giant corporations, and their own party apparatus. We change that political math not by negotiating in the Beltway, but by building power beyond it—through elections and in the streets. Only mass mobilization will turn out demoralized voters of every color and push a slim Democratic Senate majority to eliminate the filibuster or use budget reconciliation. Only pressure from below can force judges, regulatory agencies, and state and local politicians to go along with a Green New Deal.
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This book is rooted in our reading of the science and social science on climate change, our hands-on research, and our personal and political biographies. Collectively, we’ve spent years researching, writing, and undertaking labor and political organizing. Two of us are children of Latin American immigrants; inspired by Latin American social movements, we’ve lived and worked all over the continent, learning from the achievements and limits of the Left in power.
We’ve all come to the climate fight by different routes. We all see climate change as a grave threat to human flourishing, a clear indictment of our current political and economic system—and an opportunity to do things differently. For most of our lives, climate politics have felt stuck in a loop of abstract reports telling us the window of opportunity is closing and the apocalypse looming. The Green New Deal is the most ambitious and exciting plan we’ve ever seen in mainstream politics. We want to help articulate its vision—and flesh out some details.
While US action is urgent, it’s not enough. Climate breakdown and capitalism are global. But as US residents, this is the political system we have at least some leverage over. The United States is also the belly of the beast. It remains the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, behind China. In per-capita terms, US emissions are over twice as high. And our aggregate historical emissions—over one-fifth of the global total—eclipse every other country’s. The United States has been the single greatest obstacle to global climate action for decades, and today, it’s poised to increase fossil fuel extraction more than any other country.2 A Green New Deal that turns US climate politics around would be transformative. If the United States joined (and prodded) Europe and China in prioritizing climate-friendly green investment, more than half the global economy would be invested in climate action. Our chapter on the Green New Deal’s global implications focuses on how US-based movements might connect to worker and community struggles elsewhere.
A final caveat: This book is full of “shoulds,” and even the occasional “must.” Please forgive our enthusiasm. We don’t mean to lecture, but to enrich debate with clear arguments for what we might accomplish. We hope that in the best case scenario we’ll only be a little bit wrong.
The Road to the Green New Deal
We can start by learning from recent climate policy failures. Many Democratic leaders still simultaneously argue that we should blame the lack of climate action on unwavering Republican climate denial, and that bipartisan compromise is the best hope for getting climate legislation passed. Their track record doesn’t inspire much confidence.
When Barack Obama entered office in 2009 amid the biggest financial crisis since the Depression, he had incredible power to act. But in the early months of his administration, Obama chose to restore the system that had caused the crisis rather than to change it. We know he bailed out the banks instead of nationalizing them, even as 9.3 million households lost their homes. In this context, Obama’s team also nixed the idea of a federally built clean energy grid on the grounds that government shouldn’t crowd out private actors. They rejected proposals for federal green banks that would fund low-energy building upgrades,