breakdown will happen—how quickly coral reefs die, glaciers melt, seas rise, and storms strengthen. What we do know is that the less heating, the better. The faster we act, the better.
Carbon pollution, moreover, is just the most urgent indicator of a broader ecological crisis: mass extinction, polluted freshwater, widespread contamination from plastics, systemic soil exhaustion, insect Armageddon, ecosystem collapse—the list goes on. All these are threats to the vitality of the living world around us and to countless human lives.
But despite the erudite self-loathing of so much climate writing in the liberal press, the enemy isn’t us. Humans aren’t tainted by original sin—apples are nutritious and low-carbon, have another. Nor are we doomed to self-destruction. We’re creative, complicated beings stuck in a capitalist economic system where a tiny number of people direct most major investments to maximize profits, and they shape government action accordingly. That system externalizes costs onto communities and ecosystems, and prioritizes the gilded retirement of CEOs over the long-term habitability of the planet, and the lives of those on it.
Ultimately, capitalism is incompatible with environmental sustainability. That said, we have just over a decade to cut global carbon emissions in half. We don’t imagine ending capitalism quite that quickly. In any case, you don’t need to share our overall analysis to read the climate science the same way we do: we need drastic change now. As we’ll argue through this book, the most effective way to slash emissions and cope with climate impacts in the next decade is through egalitarian policies that prioritize public goals over corporate profits, and target investments in poor, working class, and racialized communities. Today’s champions of a Green New Deal remind us that in the United States in the 1930s and early 1940s, during the New Deal and subsequent war mobilization, the federal government put millions of people to work on socially beneficial projects, directing investment toward public works and astonishingly rapid arms building. The point isn’t to repeat the past, but to remember what concerted public action can do.
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
