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A review by dcjones
A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Alyssa Battistoni, Thea Riofrancos, Kate Aronoff
5.0
We live in strange times. We're trapped inside a political and economic system that is set on a course towards endless catastrophe. In the US, the official response is one of two flavors of denial: one political party outright denies what's happening, the other makes a great show of "believing in science" while rejecting any action commensurate with the size of the problem.
This book plots one possible off-ramp towards a livable future: a radical Green New Deal. The guiding principle here is that we can't keep living the way we are (not all of us, anyway), but the austerity necessary in our private lives can be offset with public luxury. We may not be able to drive everywhere and load up on consumer electronics, but with extensive and comfortable free public transit, and beautiful public spaces, we can find alternative ways of living that need not resemble the grim hovel-dwelling future imagined by extreme degrowthers.
I found the fourth section ("Recharging Internationalism") particularly compelling because its so ignored in US politics. That non-Americans deserve our solidarity is not a sentiment that's frequently expressed in stump speeches. There are some real contradictions between the socialist ideal of internationalism and the desire (or maybe just the political necessity) of the US retaining a high standard of living. The authors confront this admirably in the section discussing lithium mining. We're going to need a lot of the stuff to decarbonize (85% of what's currently accessible, shockingly), and run the risk of giving in to the temptations of eco-imperialism, taking what we need from the global South while letting them suffer the brunt of climate change. Still, even if Chile nationalizes its resources, there's no guarantee the indigenous populations most affected by mining will be any less brutalized by it. This isn't easily resolved, but some compromise between material interests is going to need to be negotiated, and it's great to see some attention payed to this conundrum.
The book avoids being a gloom and doom story, so it deemphasizes the trouble we're in. Much of the program described is not currently politically viable, and we've largely run out of time. Something is going to give though, and most roads seem to lead towards border walls, militarized police, ethnonationalism, and further economic domination (i.e. eco-fascism), so let's hope the vision described here offers a viable alternative.
This book plots one possible off-ramp towards a livable future: a radical Green New Deal. The guiding principle here is that we can't keep living the way we are (not all of us, anyway), but the austerity necessary in our private lives can be offset with public luxury. We may not be able to drive everywhere and load up on consumer electronics, but with extensive and comfortable free public transit, and beautiful public spaces, we can find alternative ways of living that need not resemble the grim hovel-dwelling future imagined by extreme degrowthers.
I found the fourth section ("Recharging Internationalism") particularly compelling because its so ignored in US politics. That non-Americans deserve our solidarity is not a sentiment that's frequently expressed in stump speeches. There are some real contradictions between the socialist ideal of internationalism and the desire (or maybe just the political necessity) of the US retaining a high standard of living. The authors confront this admirably in the section discussing lithium mining. We're going to need a lot of the stuff to decarbonize (85% of what's currently accessible, shockingly), and run the risk of giving in to the temptations of eco-imperialism, taking what we need from the global South while letting them suffer the brunt of climate change. Still, even if Chile nationalizes its resources, there's no guarantee the indigenous populations most affected by mining will be any less brutalized by it. This isn't easily resolved, but some compromise between material interests is going to need to be negotiated, and it's great to see some attention payed to this conundrum.
The book avoids being a gloom and doom story, so it deemphasizes the trouble we're in. Much of the program described is not currently politically viable, and we've largely run out of time. Something is going to give though, and most roads seem to lead towards border walls, militarized police, ethnonationalism, and further economic domination (i.e. eco-fascism), so let's hope the vision described here offers a viable alternative.