Green New Deal

Expanding The Possible, From Below

November 19, 2024 Alexandria Shaner, Resilience. Strategize! climate crisis, Green New Deal, Local Economy, Municipalism

Less than one week after a self-proclaimed dictator, climate change denier, and big oil-funded billionaire (among other equally impressive accolades) took 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.

European Farmers Shun Anti-Green Deal Protest In Brussels

June 1, 2024 Katharina Wecker, DeSmog. Strategize! European Union (EU), Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Green New Deal, Right wing extremism, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Europe’s largest farming unions representing millions of agricultural workers have rejected calls to join next week’s protest against EU green reforms, DeSmog can reveal. Smaller groups have also shunned the demo – some wanting to avoid the prospect of violence, others claiming they didn’t know it was happening. Preparations for the June 4 demo have been ramping up ahead of the start of the EU elections next Thursday, with protesters set to gather in Brussels days before European citizens head to the polls. The hardline Dutch group Farmers Defence Force (FDF) has urged farmer “warriors” to attend the demo, with its spokesperson claiming: “we are defending the rights of farmers and the standards of the European Union as it’s supposed to be”.

The Green New Deal: From Below Or From Above?

April 14, 2024 Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Sustainability Strategize! Green New Deal

The original Green New Deal resolution took as its models not only the original New Deal but also the home front mobilization for World War II. A fully developed Green New Deal will need both the kind of federal initiative and strong federal agencies that transformed the American economy during World War II and the popular participation and decentralized creativity represented by the Green New Deal from Below. The Green New Deal from Below can make a significant difference in reducing greenhouse gas pollution, creating good jobs, and countering injustice.

Students Across The US Launch Green New Deal For Schools

September 28, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Resist! climate crisis, Education, Green New Deal, Schools, Youth Activism

Students at more than 50 high schools across the United States are launching a Green New Deal for Schools campaign, with the hope of getting climate policies enacted that will require school districts to add climate education to their curriculums and plan for climate disasters. The ultimate goal of the initiative, organized by the youth climate justice organization Sunrise Movement, is for federal legislation to be enacted to implement climate education policies in schools nationwide. “The Green New Deal for Schools will transform public schools in America to face the climate crisis and ensure all students receive safe and high-quality education – no matter their zip code or the color of their skin,” said 17-year-old Adah Crandall.

Credit Unions Are Taking The Lead To Un-Redline The Green New Deal

July 26, 2023 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. Create! Credit Unions, Energy, Finance and the Economy, Green New Deal

Terri Mickelsen and about 7,500 of her friends aren’t waiting to jump into the green revolution. They’re members of Clean Energy Credit Union, where Mickelsen is CEO, and since 2017 they’ve already invested around $200 million in clean energy or other green loans for member households across the country, offsetting an estimated 700,000 tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions so far — equivalent to taking 152,000 gas-powered vehicles off the road permanently. Every month, they make another $6-8 million in green loans. “I am kind of a credit union nerd who got together with some clean energy nerds as we were chartering a new credit union,” says Mickelsen.

A Public Power Victory In New York State

June 14, 2023 Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, The Bullet. Organize! Green New Deal, Labor Unions, New York (NY), Public utility, Renewable Energy

On May 2, New York became the first US state to pass a major Green New Deal policy following four years of organizing by the Public Power NY coalition and allies. The Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), now New York State law, empowers and directs the state’s public power provider – the New York Power Authority (NYPA) – to plan, build, and operate renewable energy projects across New York State. Organizers are now focusing on growing the movement for Public Power from coast to coast. Public Power NY was launched in 2019 by the Ecosocialist Working Group of the NY City’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Martin Luther King Day Special Encore Program: Restructuring The Edifice That Produces Poverty

January 16, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Green New Deal, Human Rights, Martin Luther King Jr, Poverty

In celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, Clearing the FOG brought back an interview from ten years ago with Cheri Honkala of the Poor People's Economic and Human Rights Campaign and Robert Pollin of the Political Economy Research Institute. The program is centered on Dr. King's speech before the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in August 1967, "Where Do We Go From Here?" The guests, along with co-host Kevin Zeese discuss the current economic challenges and efforts to bring transformation at the local and national levels. That conversation is relevant today as we continue to face multiple crises, including climate chaos, the pandemic and a global war. King's warning that it is the system that must be changed reminds us of the important task at hand.

Rebellion Against The Legalized Robbery

November 27, 2022 Yanis Varoufakis, The Bullet. Strategize! Capitalism, climate crisis, Green New Deal, Transformation

The following commentary was written by Marxist economist, politician and former Finance Minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis. He follows the first part of the debate “Ecological Catastrophe, Collapse, Democracy and Socialism” between the renowned American intellectual Noam Chomsky, the Chilean exponent of the new ideology of Collapsist Marxism Miguel Fuentes and climate scientist Guy McPherson. One of the main characteristics of Varoufakis’ comment (who describes himself as a “Libertarian Marxist”) is offering a balanced review of some of the main ideas expressed earlier in this debate. The latter from the perspective of the implications of current geopolitical events such as the Russo-Ukrainian war and what Vafourakis has defined as the beginning of a new Cold War. Varoufakis’ commentary thus constitutes both a necessary update and an informed closure of the first part of this ongoing discussion.

Unions Making A Green New Deal From Below

June 13, 2022 Jeremy Brecher, Labor 4 Sustainability. Organize! Energy, Green New Deal, Just transition, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

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.

Indigenous Organizers In Alaska Lead The Way Toward Livable Climate Future

June 1, 2022 C. J. Polychroniou, Truthout. Create! Alaska, climate crisis, Green New Deal, Indigenous Peoples

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.

If Degrowth Is Coming, What Does It Propose For Workers?

May 21, 2022 Hannah Hubbard, On Labor. Create! climate crisis, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Green New Deal

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.

Why The World Needs Eco-Socialism

March 14, 2022 Max Ajl, Green New Deal Media. Create! climate crisis, Climate Justice, Ecosocialism, Green New Deal

Climate change affects everyone, but it does not affect everyone the same way. It hammers a capitalist world rampant with inequality and exploitation. This is the case because capitalism neither exploits nor develops evenly. Some nation-states are centers for accumulating wealth and development. Some nation-states are peripheries, and are underdeveloped. Development and underdevelopment are two sides of the same process: accumulation on a world scale. Climate change, in turn, is a human-made process, a product and accelerator of uneven accumulation. Because it is human-made, some states (as well as some within those states) are more responsible than others. And the very poorest simply bear no culpability at all.

Appalachians Are Building A Green New Deal Blueprint For Themselves

February 4, 2022 C. J. Polychroniou, Truthout. Create! climate crisis, Environment, Green New Deal, West Virginia

The Green New Deal proposal is one of the only effective, broadly recognized pathways to tackle the climate crisis and address its social and economic consequences. It is technologically possible and economically sustainable. Yet although the Green New Deal project is already under way in some shape or form in various states, it has yet to be scaled up to the national level. In fact, climate policy as a whole has been stalled in Congress, and the Biden administration has so far engaged more in symbolic gestures than in living policy processes. 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.

Activists To Delaware Legislators: Sign Green New Year’s Resolutions

January 11, 2022 Delaware Coalition, Popular Resistance. Create! Delaware, Fossil Fuels, Green New Deal, State legislature

Dover, DE - A coalition of progressives and environmental groups are challenging lawmakers to sign on to a set of green New Year’s resolutions to kick off the 2022 session. Says participant Phillip Bannowsky, “this is a way to separate the committed from the compromised.” The activists claim in their text that confronting the climate crisis “has been impeded by the short-sighted interests of powerful economic players.” Specifically, they call for a Green Amendment to the Delaware Constitution and support current legislation in the pipeline, including HB 259, requiring an emergency alert system to inform citizens when disasters like Croda’s November 25, 2018, toxic leak erupted, which injured workers at their Atlas Point plant as well as neighbors and motorists on the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

The Green New Deal From Below

October 31, 2021 Jeremy Brecher, Labor 4 Sustainability. Create! Cooperatives, Green New Deal, Just transition, Municipalization

The Green New Deal is a visionary program to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Its core principle is to use the necessity for climate protection as a basis for realizing full employment and social justice. The Green New Deal first emerged as a proposal for national legislation, and the struggle to embody it in national legislation is ongoing. But there has also emerged a little-noticed wave of initiatives from community groups, unions, city and state governments, tribes, and other non-federal institutions designed to contribute to the climate protection and social justice goals of the Green New Deal. We will call these the Green New Deal from Below (GNDfB).

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