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green new deal
Out-of-Control Canadian Wildfires Prompt Calls for 'Nuremberg Trials for Big Oil'
“Climate change isn’t a tragedy, it’s a crime. The fossil fuel industry are arsonists at a global scale. It’s their pollution that’s fueling these horrific wildfires," one climate advocate told Common Dreams.
Jul 16, 2026
As wildfires raged across Canada on Thursday, sending dangerous smoke across the border into major US cities, climate advocates called for accountability for the fossil fuel industry, which knew for decades that its products were largely responsible for the climate crisis, yet chose to push climate denial instead.
While fire is a natural part of the lifecycle of Canada's boreal forests, the heating of the atmosphere due to the burning of oil, gas, and coal has made fires more frequent and extreme.
"We need Nuremberg trials for Big Oil," the youth-led Sunrise Movement wrote on social media in response to the fires.
We need Nuremberg trials for Big Oil. https://t.co/nHhbDXB06X
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) July 16, 2026
Climate Defiance agreed, posting, "Nuremberg-style trials are in order for the fossil fuel executives who knew what they were doing to our children’s futures and did anyway."
There were 884 fires burning in Canada on Thursday, with 124 out of control, according to the country's national wildland fire summary. Over 100 fires were raging in Ontario alone, where they have forced the evacuation of at least 15 rural communities; destroyed homes in the Indigenous community of Collins First Nation, or Namaygoosisagagun; and polluted the skies over parts of the upper Midwest and Northeastern US.
As of Thursday evening Eastern time, the four cities with the worst air quality in the world were Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Toronto, according to IQAir.
People have shared dramatic footage of the fires on social media. One video shows a train moving through a blaze near Armstrong, Ontario. Thankfully, all crew members were evacuated safely, The Guardian reported.
This is near Armstrong, Ontario.
When will the Canadian National Railway Company make a statement about this incident? pic.twitter.com/6bKJYugeR0
— Sol Mamakwa (@solmamakwa) July 14, 2026
Indigenous photographer Nadya Kwandibens shared images of flames rising over a lake with the words, "“My family hometown, Collins Ontario, is GONE."
Residents of the community fled the blaze in boats before the flames damaged and destroyed several homes and other structures, according to CBC News.
“Collins has burned to the ground. This is a tragedy and we are grateful that everyone got out safely,” Lise Vaugeois, the provincial representative for the region, said, as The Guardian reported. “Fires are part of a natural cycle, but the extreme temperatures we are experiencing across the county and the growing severity of weather events are indicators of climate change.”
Laura Chasmer, a professor of geography and the environment at the University of Western Ontario, noted that fires in Canada like the ones raging across Ontario have increased since 2015.
"This is associated with some of the extreme climate warming that we've been seeing, and the atmospheric drying of the surface," she told BBC News.
Brandi Morin, a Cree-Iroquois-French journalist from Treaty 6 territory in Alberta, noted in her Substack that Canada was warming at twice the global average. Despite this, the Canadian government has made progress on three major fossil fuel pipelines this July.
"Every barrel these new pipelines are built to move adds to the exact warming that’s turning our boreal forests into tinder," Morin wrote.
On the other side of the border, Michigan regulators late Wednesday approved important permits from the controversial Enbridge Line 5 pipeline.
Political leaders and climate advocates responded to the fires and smoke with calls to abandon fossil fuel projects, transition to renewable energy, and hold oil and gas companies accountable for the harms they have caused.
"We have the technology and the policy roadmap to replace fossil fuels with green energy extremely rapidly. The only thing stopping us is a handful of billionaires getting rich while our world burns," the Sunrise Movement said.
We have the technology and the policy roadmap to replace fossil fuels with green energy extremely rapidly.
The only thing stopping us is a handful of billionaires getting rich while our world burns. https://t.co/6oqGxoC8m3
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) July 16, 2026
As smoke drifted over Boston on Wednesday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote on social media: "Look outside in Massachusetts right now. The climate crisis is here. Wildfire smoke is suffocating our communities and our children are breathing dirty air. We need a Green New Deal."
Look outside in Massachusetts right now. The climate crisis is here. Wildfire smoke is suffocating our communities and our children are breathing dirty air. We need a Green New Deal. https://t.co/pXo5XOOt0q
— Ed Markey (@EdMarkey) July 15, 2026
“Climate change isn’t a tragedy, it’s a crime. The fossil fuel industry are arsonists at a global scale. It’s their pollution that’s fueling these horrific wildfires," Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, told Common Dreams. "Instead of approving new pipelines, the Canadian government should be holding the industry accountable and using their record profits to help communities on the frontlines of this crisis.”
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Cut the Pentagon, Save the Planet: The $1.5 Trillion Climate Solution We Can’t Ignore
What could we do with that money instead?
Jul 09, 2026
Last week, millions of people around the world were subjected to record-breaking heatwaves. At least 25 deaths in the U.S. from this heat dome were reported. The French government also counted over 2,000 excess deaths during the June heatwaves. At the same time, this past weekend, a devastating super typhoon hit the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam, leaving islands like Rota, where 2,000 people live, without running water and most buildings impacted.
In both cases, the people least responsible for the climate crisis are the most vulnerable to its effects. And in both cases, people’s ability to withstand crises has been made dramatically worse by militarization. Those most threatened by heatwaves are too often in neighborhoods subjected to militarized policing, economic abandonment, and the exploitation of their communities. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are occupied by the U.S. military and subjected to environmentally destructive bases and training exercises.
These climate disasters are not new, but they are coming at a moment when we have an opportunity to do something about them. Congress will soon vote on the Pentagon budget. This year’s proposed budget is an obscene $1.5 trillion, and the cumulative amount of military spending would be even higher. For the first time in years, there will likely be a notable number of Democratic Party votes against it. Senator Ed Markey has also introduced a bill to cut it in half. Cutting this budget could be one of the only pieces of climate policy that can meet the speed and scale of the climate crisis. Fighting it could open up new organizing terrains and break down movement silos that have prevented traction for so long.
Even without redistributing that $1.5 trillion, cutting the Pentagon’s budget could do wonders for the planet. The Pentagon is the world’s largest institutional polluter. It has over 800 bases worldwide. Each base acts as part of the permanent enforcement mechanism for the fossil fuel industry, driving ecocidal resource wars and entrenching U.S. corporate dominance in oil- and mineral-rich regions. This budget also opens a direct line of funding for more data centers that poison communities and drive further resource wars to power them. At least $30 billion is requested for direct Department of War-owned data centers, over $58 billion is requested for AI capabilities more broadly, and over half of the proposed budget is going to private weapons contractors whose AI programs are directly supported by the data centers being developed around the country. Companies building these centers, like OpenAI, Meta, and Amazon Web Services, have all passed their own multi-billion-dollar deals with the Pentagon.
What could we do with that money instead? The scale of the Pentagon’s environmental destruction and its financial power is unfathomable; each of those 800 bases has generations of stories of destruction, displacement, and long-term illness. Each transaction covers multiple continents. And so the scale of possibility — what we could do alternatively with these resources — is equally immense.
According to the National Priorities Project, the current $1 trillion Pentagon budget could fund a year’s solar electricity for 1.92 billion homes, for instance. And according to the Climate and Community Institute (CCI), the proposed $500 billion increase alone could cover 60% of U.S. homes. $500 billion could also end the wildfire crisis in California and restore 100 million acres of forest. Of course, the current oil-motivated wars, like the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran, are quite costly. The CCI report estimates that as of early April 2026, the $37 billion that the U.S. had spent on the assault on Iran could have paid for pre-k for every four-year-old in the country, green retrofits for 2,000 public schools, and over double the cost of restoring Trump’s cuts to SNAP benefits.
We can also point to other pathways for addressing the climate crisis: Instead of funding missile development, we could fund clean technology development. The land taken up by massive, sprawling, and toxic bases could be cleaned up and devoted to cultural sites, schools, agro-ecological farms, regenerative production, and the return of land to indigenous sovereignty and stewardship. New jobs and training programs could be created in all of these areas while, of course, avoiding false solutions such as carbon credits, carbon capture technology, and nuclear energy.
Without more money to new bases increasingly encircling China, we could collaborate on green technology instead of starting a new ecocidal cold war, and we could stop trampling on the sovereignty of countries throughout the Asia-Pacific like the Northern Mariana Islands. We could move toward a fossil fuel treaty and work with extremely vulnerable countries being occupied and sanctioned, like Cuba, to move their own holistic climate adaptation plans forward.
Fossil fuel supply chains are global, as is the impact of the U.S. military. Many states in the Global South continue to be dominant producers of fossil fuels due to debt traps and sanctions. Global climate finance could help alleviate that debt and fund a transition to truly renewable energy, free from the reproduction of violent extraction often enacted through the mining of so-called “critical” minerals (often deemed “critical” for the sake of military usage), also carried out in states like New Mexico and on indigenous territory.
This is, of course, just a sliver of what is possible, based on projects, blueprints, and visions already developed by those on the front lines of the climate crisis for decades. In recent years, these visions have been defined and revised in the People’s Agreement of Cochabamba, The Red Deal, and A People’s Green New Deal. This year’s People’s Declaration for a Rapid, Just, and Equitable Transition was developed from a global summit made up of 900 civil society organizations in Santa Marta, Colombia. Notably, its 12th principle emphasizes the irreplaceable and central role of dismantling U.S. imperialism and militarism globally within the much larger framework for confronting the climate crisis — we can and should be just as clear-eyed in our organizing.
When we cut the Pentagon budget, we can be imaginative. We can see a world where the iron claw of extraction is weakened, and we can begin building something new in its place. The Pentagon budget is a clear target, with the potential to address rising environmental, economic, and public health crises globally. At a time when most environmental policy is almost impossible to pass at the federal level, we can fight against this Pentagon budget and choose to breathe new life into our movements and our world.
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How Democrats Can Win on Climate and Energy Affordability
The party can lead by clearly explaining why electricity prices are rising and who bears responsibility, or they can surrender the narrative to corporate pundits and technocrats increasingly aligned with Big Tech.
Mar 20, 2026
The climate change conversation is shifting globally, especially in the United States, and Democrats need to get ahead of it. This is happening against the backdrop of US emissions rising by 2.4% in 2025, reversing a previous downward trend. President Donald Trump has reshaped the debate by waging an irrational crusade against wind and solar energy while maintaining deep financial ties to the fossil fuel industry. But Democrats face a political reality they can no longer sidestep: Electricity bills are rising, and working and middle-class Americans are feeling the squeeze.
Democrats have a choice, and they need to make it now. They can lead by clearly explaining why electricity prices are rising and who bears responsibility, or they can surrender the narrative to corporate pundits and technocrats increasingly aligned with Big Tech. That industry, with a long history of extraction and exploitation, is now racing to power massive AI data centers as quickly as possible, even if doing so locks in new fossil fuel infrastructure for decades.
The Truth About Rising Electricity Bills
The truth is more nuanced than fossil fuel lobby talking points suggest, and Democrats should convey it to voters clearly. Over the past three years, utility bills have risen largely because utilities have poured money into grid infrastructure, replacing aging poles and wires and repairing damage from increasingly frequent climate disasters. Generation costs, by contrast, have fallen. Roughly 90-94% of new electricity generation added in recent years has been fossil free, coming from wind, solar, and battery storage. The capital costs of all three technologies have declined exponentially.
Bills have also increased because regulatory barriers, permitting, and interconnection delays slow clean energy deployment, particularly in blue states. But this is not simply a matter of "bureaucracy." Corrupt politicians and captured regulators, often far too close to monopoly utilities like Duke Energy and AES, also share the blame. And in 2025, the problem is intensifying: Explosive demand from AI data centers is straining regional grids like PJM and pushing prices higher. Big Tech can absorb premium electricity rates. Working Americans cannot.
A modern Green New Deal framework can address affordability and climate simultaneously, and this is the platform Democrats should run on.
Geopolitics compound the problem. Electricity prices remain tethered to globally traded fossil fuels like oil and gas, leaving Americans exposed to price volatility beyond their control, such as recently as the war in Iran.
How Trump Is Making It Worse
Trump is not solving these problems. He is making them worse, and Democrats should make sure voters know it.
His vendetta against wind energy has already raised electricity prices in New England while eliminating thousands of well-paying union jobs. His efforts to gut clean energy tax credits have slowed deployment just as electricity demand surges, increasing pollution and locking the country into a feedback loop of climate disasters and rising costs. Coal, one of the most expensive sources of electricity, remains on life support in states like Michigan for purely political reasons. Meanwhile, the systematic undermining of climate science by fossil fuel propagandists at the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, and NASA will only accelerate climate-driven inflation, affecting not just electricity prices but also food costs and insurance premiums.
Trump's closeness to fossil fuel executives makes his "drill, baby, drill" rhetoric politically convenient but economically hollow, and Democrats should call it out as such. Expanding domestic drilling or seizing Venezuelan oil will not lower electricity bills, because Big Oil has no incentive to sacrifice profits. Under the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission found that American oil companies colluded with OPEC to inflate gas prices, costing families roughly $3,000 more per year. At the same time, Trump has signaled deregulation of AI-driven electricity demand, as the same Big Tech oligarchs who funded his campaign are now calling the shots. If policymakers want real affordability, they must confront corporate consolidation and enforce regulations that protect consumers.
The Platform Democrats Should Run On
Despite earlier missteps, particularly President Joe Biden's dismissal of inflation concerns in 2024, Democrats now hold favorable polling ratings on both climate and affordability. Voters want leadership. If Democrats fail to provide it, they risk ceding the narrative to technocrats, Silicon Valley “abundance” ideologues, and fossil fuel interests offering false solutions: more drilling and the same broken status quo.
Warning signs are already visible. Pipeline revivals in New York and climate backsliding in North Carolina and California now masquerade as "affordability" measures. Democrats must reject this framing. Abandoning climate goals will not make energy cheaper. It will make it more volatile, more polluted, and more unjust.
Democrats have never excelled at confronting oligarchs, utilities, and monopolies. But if the party wants to win on affordability and build a durable governing coalition, this is the only path forward.
A modern Green New Deal framework can address affordability and climate simultaneously, and this is the platform Democrats should run on. We know what works. Leaders like Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York and Gov. Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey have shown that linking climate action to cost of living is a winning strategy. Democrats can tax the wealthy and corporate polluters to fund clean energy at scale. They can invoke the Defense Production Act to manufacture heat pumps, grid components, and other critical infrastructure domestically. They can streamline permitting for clean energy and transmission lines without dismantling environmental protections.
Polluters like Exxon and Chevron must also pay their fair share. "Make polluters pay" is not merely a campaign slogan. It is a practical funding mechanism for grid resilience, climate adaptation, and public health, and a message that resonates.
The Courage to Confront Corporate Power
Just as importantly, Democrats must confront corporate power directly and truly build on recent wins in New York to expand building power capacity. Regulators who prioritize shareholder returns over the public interest must face accountability. Policymakers must regulate Big Tech's AI build-out and require companies to pay for the grid upgrades their data centers demand. Innovative clean energy procurement, such as Google's early efforts to match data center demand with carbon-free power and flexible load management, should set the baseline, not serve as the exception. Early collaboration among utilities, the DOE, and regulatory bodies like the Federa Energy Regulatory Commission can also create incentives to use AI to modernize the grid, streamline clean energy interconnection and permitting, discover new battery materials, and predict climate disasters.
None of this happens without political courage. Democrats have never excelled at confronting oligarchs, utilities, and monopolies. But if the party wants to win on affordability and build a durable governing coalition, this is the only path forward. The 2026 midterm elections are already shaping up to be a crucial test, with some candidates taking the lead by addressing voters' real concerns about data center build-outs and rising electricity prices in their communities. Democrats have a golden opportunity to win on this. The playbook is right here. Will they use it?
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What My Jewish Family’s Holocaust Experience Teaches Me About an Appalachian Mamdani
Sam Rasoul, a Palestinian-American State Legislator in Virginia, campaigns on affordability amid false charges of anti-Semitism.
Oct 31, 2025
In 2019, I visited my ancestral home in a small town in northwestern Germany named Prussian Oldendorf. Through genealogical research, I had learned that my Jewish ancestors—I am 100% Ashkenazi Jew genetically, as well as a proud Jew by upbringing and choice—had lived there for centuries, until my great-great-grandmother, Rosalie Cahen, a single mother with six children, fled persecution by the German authorities and immigrated to America in 1859.
I had read that there was a Jewish cemetery just outside of town that had been made intentionally hard to find because neo-Nazis had desecrated it in the 1980s. I found the cemetery and saw that many of the gravestones were my direct ancestors with the last name of Cahen, my mother’s maiden name. I also found the gravesite for Philipp Cahen, Rosalie’s husband and my great-great-grandfather.
Additionally, with the help of an old college friend from Germany who lives close to Prussian Oldendorf and who did much of the research necessary to make my visit possible, I found the retired pastor of the town’s 500-year-old Lutheran church who had restored the Jewish cemetery after its desecration. The pastor, who had protected and maintained the cemetery for decades, had come to Prussian Oldendorf at the end of World War II, having fled the Red Army as it rolled west as part of the destruction of the Third Reich. The pastor told me he had spoken out—to the great dismay of many of his parishioners—about how the townsfolk had remained silent during the Holocaust as their Jewish neighbors were disappeared.
According to the pastor, every single Jew in that town—save for one—was sent to the extermination camps and murdered by the Nazis.
As I was getting ready to leave Prussian Oldendorf, I walked past the Lutheran church, and something caught my eye on the ground.
There were small square stones, which I later learned were known across Europe as Stolpersteine or stumbling stones, embedded in the cobblestone courtyard surrounding the church. Inscribed upon the stumbling stones were the names of the townsfolk who were sent to the camps, when they had died, and the names of the camps.
Treblinka
Terezin
Sobibor
Auschwitz
Many of those stumbling stones bore our family name, Cahen.
Seeing these stones, I crumbled to the ground and cried, right there outside the church. When I was finally able to compose myself, I did two things. First, I quietly cursed the monsters who committed these atrocities: “You bastards.”
And then I thanked my great-great-grandmother Rosalie for having had the courage to leave some 80 years before the Holocaust because, if she had stayed, her descendants surely would have been exterminated. Suddenly, the old saying, “There but for the grace of God go I,” had a special and very tangible resonance.
Which brings me to Sam Rasoul, a proud Palestinian-American state legislator who has represented southwestern Virginia and Roanoke City in the Virginia General Assembly since 2014. Like Zohran Mamdani, a fellow Muslim state legislator who is campaigning on a platform of affordability for working people and who is poised to become the next Mayor of New York City, Rasoul leans into speaking out against injustices, including in Palestine. However, he does so not because he is Muslim nor because of his Palestinian heritage—he speaks out because he believes in intersectional justice for all, as evidenced by his work for the communities he represents.
As Rasoul puts it:
In my 11 years in the General Assembly, I have worked to lower healthcare costs, pushed for intersectional justice through a Green New Deal, advanced the socioemotional health of our children, fought to raise teacher pay to the national average, and advocated for good government in limiting the influence of special interests in our government.
I have worked closely with Delegate Rasoul for almost 10 years in environmental justice fights in Virginia that he has helped to foster and lead, most particularly the fight to save the historic African American community of Union Hill in Buckingham County. Union Hill was under assault by Dominion Energy, the state’s monopoly utility company, which wanted to build a massive pipeline compressor station there as part of the now-cancelled Atlantic Coast Pipeline. That fight was won through a relentless coalition-building campaign that brought together diverse communities from across the Commonwealth, and with the help of national civil rights organizations.
Delegate Rasoul was at the forefront of what would become the winning fight to save Union Hill, and he helped bring along most of his Democratic colleagues to join that fight. During that campaign, I watched as, at first, Rasoul worked quietly behind the scenes to garner support from his colleagues in the House for Union Hill, and then as he galvanized national support for the fight, travelling out of state to meet with Karenna Gore, a prominent environmental justice advocate and the daughter of former Vice President Al Gore, also an environmental champion. Rasoul’s work complemented the work of many others, particularly those who lived in the frontline community of Union Hill, and their efforts culminated in a large rally in Buckingham County featuring former Vice President Gore and civil rights leader Rev. William Barber II.
I came to know Delegate Sam Rasoul—his given name, Salam Rasoul, means “peace messenger”—as a kind and decent family man and a relentlessly positive and inclusive politician.
Rasoul is now running for reelection, and he has been attacked by his Republican-turned-“independent” opponent as “consumed with hate,” a laughably false smear, as anyone who has actually met or knows Rasoul can attest. Some in his own party have even chimed in, citing his outspoken denunciation of what Israel has done to Gaza for the past three years.
So let me say this as directly as I can—as a proud Jew who was not only brought up in a Zionist household, but whose relatives were exterminated in one of the greatest genocides in human history.
Let me say this as someone who understands the lessons of my own family heritage, that “never again” means never again—for anyone.
Israel has committed, and continues to commit, unspeakable war crimes against innocent civilians, mostly women and children—in Gaza.
Israel has committed, and continues to commit, genocide in Gaza, and is now moving to the West Bank.
As with the Holocaust, the years that follow will show who was on the right side of history, who spoke out, and who remained silent. I believe I am on the right side of history, and many proud Jews like me are not only on the right side of history but are helping to lead the worldwide movement to stop the genocide.
Delegate Rasoul is also on the right side of history.
But Rasoul is not running for reelection in Appalachia because Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Rasoul is running so he can continue to do what he has always done: fight injustice, and deliver for the people he represents in Roanoke—on pocketbook issues, affordability, healthcare, education, utility bills, environmental justice, and more.
If Rasoul prevails on November 4, it will represent a defeat for the politics of cynicism and demonization and a victory for the politics of inclusivity and lifting up communities.
It will send a message from Appalachia and beautiful Southwest Virginia all the way to New York and Washington, DC and around the world, that denouncing a genocide is a moral imperative, born of generations of tragedy, for all communities.
Most importantly, if Rasoul wins, it will prove that “never again” truly means never again for anyone, and that we should not only tolerate, but encourage, politicians denouncing injustice while simultaneously fighting for the basic needs of the communities they represent.
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Progressive Activist Avi Lewis Launches Bid for NDP Leadership in Canada
Lewis said NDP must “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
Sep 25, 2025
The longtime progressive activist Avi Lewis officially launched his bid for leadership of Canada's New Democratic Party, which he aims to revitalize with a platform of economic populism.
Lewis, a journalist and documentarian whose grandfather helped to found the NDP in 1961, says the way to bring the party back to relevance amid an electoral low point is to “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
At a kickoff party in Toronto on Wednesday, the former parliamentary candidate from Vancouver railed against the “Liberal-Conservative alliance” that dominates Canadian politics. The two major parties' leaders, Lewis said, "compete fiercely in public, while behind the scenes, they collude to boost corporate profits."
"In the name of protecting the country, the government is rapidly passing and proposing legislation that will change the culture and character of Canada," Lewis said. "From sweeping aside Indigenous rights and environmental protections for so-called nation-building projects, to rolling back higher taxes on the uberwealthy and digital giants, to the generational austerity of 15% cuts to public spending, to the $9 billion that materialized in an instant for the military this year, ramping up to $150 billion a year a decade from now—the changes afoot are extreme."
Lewis pledged to “build a government that is an instrument for the people, not for corporate Canada.”
The NDP—once Canada's third-largest national political party—has been ailing of late after a dismal showing in the nation's most recent parliamentary elections. The party, which held over 100 seats 14 years ago, dropped to a new low of just seven seats in 2025, not enough to even be recognized for committee assignments or federal funding.
The humiliating showing resulted in the resignation of Jagmeet Singh, who'd led the party for eight years, but was widely criticized by those on the left for his coziness with the establishment of the dominant Liberal Party and his failure to keep the NDP competitive. It is in this state of "political wilderness" that Lewis has emerged with an ambitious change agenda.
(Video: Avi Lewis for NDP Leader)
"Life in Canada today feels on the edge," Lewis said in a video released last week announcing his leadership run. "Everyone seeking a little stability, everyone being told 'You're all on your own.'"
He identified several causes of that precarity. One was the "economic attack" from US President Donald Trump, whom Lewis described as sending "disruption grenades" in the form of steep tariffs and annexation threats. But Lewis said that Trump merely "magnifies... the everyday emergency of trying to get by in an impossible economy."
According to one survey conducted in July, 57% of Canadians said their current incomes did not allow them to afford basic necessities like housing, groceries, energy, and cell phone plans.
"Working hard doesn't earn you a living," Lewis said.
"These days, every politician claims to be shocked by the costs," he continued. "What they don't talk about is why: The billions in profits for the tiny group of corporations that control every part of our economy. Three phone providers, three grocery giants, five oil companies, and the five big banks that fund them."
Lewis' plan to confront corporate power is years in the making. Alongside his wife, the acclaimed journalist and author Naomi Klein, Lewis rolled out the Leap Manifesto in 2015 as an agenda for the NDP. Leap focused on confronting the climate crisis, but its contents formed the basis of what he now refers to as a "Green New Deal." The accelerating climate emergency remains at the center of his agenda in 2025.
"Oil and gas CEOs," he said in the video, are "not just hoarding extreme wealth," but "foreclosing on our shared future."
Lewis has never held a parliamentary office, though he has run for a federal Vancouver-area seat twice before and achieved two third-place finishes, receiving 26% of the vote in 2021 and 12.5% in 2025.
In his bid to lead NDP, he has so far leaned heavily into his family legacy and his reputation as a lifelong activist who has "butted heads with the powerful," over issues like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the privatization of healthcare and public transit.
"For four decades," he said, "I have stood with workers, telling stories of working-class heroes and organizing for dignity in factories and fields, classrooms and care homes, shop floors and fishing fleets."
Lewis, who also identified free trade deals as job killers, proposed a "Green New Deal" as a means to revive Canadian industry and create "millions of good-paying jobs."
He has also proposed a wealth tax, a national cap on rent increases, a public option for groceries, and expanded universal healthcare that covers "medication to mental health."
During his speech Wednesday night, Lewis described NDP as "the only party that can accurately diagnose the cause of our everyday emergency, and offer solutions as big as the crises we face."
"The federal government has the power, the resources, and the responsibility to ensure the fundamentals of a good life—healthy food, truly affordable housing, functioning public transit, and hey, maybe a proper vacation once in a while," he said. "But we won’t get it if we don’t fight for it. And that’s where the NDP comes in. After all, the NDP is the original party of workers’ struggle. And in this moment of epic change and uncertainty, the party is needed as never before."
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Climate Experts Urge Democrats to Embrace 'Green Economic Populism' for 2028
"We must replace the Prius economy with one focused on affordable green housing, higher wages, cheap clean energy, lower commuting costs, and expanded mass transit. States, cities, and towns can get the ball rolling."
Jan 07, 2025
Amid reflections on Democrats' November losses and fears of what the Republican-controlled federal government will mean for economic justice and climate chaos, a pair of professors on Tuesday published a New York Times opinion piece connecting future U.S. elections, the transition away from fossil fuels, and working people's priorities.
"If Democrats want to win voters with policies that avert catastrophic climate change, they need to bring immediate, material benefits to the working class," Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos wrote in the Times. "That means folding climate policies into an agenda that tackles the cost-of-living crisis. This is green economic populism."
Cohen, an assistant professor of sociology and director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative at the University of California, Berkeley, explained on social media that the piece with Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College, emerged from a project with Climate & Community Institute "articulating the links between climate crisis, economic struggles, and the imperative to end genocide and forever wars."
If we're going to secure a livable future, cities and states need to tether the green economy to changes that everyone can see and touch, not just the 1%. Thanks @aldasky.bsky.social and @triofrancos.bsky.social for making the case and getting it out on a big platform
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— Alex Miller ( @notamiller.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Their essay followed Republicans taking control of both chambers of Congress on Friday and came less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House. Cohen and Riofrancos made the case that "even under Mr. Trump, progressives can build momentum around this agenda" at the local level while planning for the future.
Biden campaigned as a "climate president" during the 2020 cycle. His major legislative achievements on that front—the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—were watered down due to narrow congressional majorities and obstructionist right-wing Democrats who later left the party.
"The problem with the Inflation Reduction Act was that it was an awkward compromise between neoliberal, market-based policy and government intervention. By mobilizing public investment through tax credits and other incentives, it effectively asked companies and affluent consumers to lead the transition," Cohen and Riofrancos wrote, citing statistics on electric vehicle purchases, job creation, and rooftop solar.
Gustavo Gordillo of the Democratic Socialist of America's New York City chapter called that an "excellent description of the IRA, and by extension current Democratic Party orthodoxy."
The professors continued:
The law's all-of-the-above approach also supports oil and gas extraction. Under Mr. Biden, the United States cemented its status as the world's largest oil producer.
All told, this looks less like an equitable green transition than what we call a Prius economy—a hybrid model of green energy and fossil fuels, wedged together side by side. Like hybrid cars, which can't run on electricity alone, the Prius economy yields some climate progress while holding back more ambitious change. And it puts the burden of transforming sprawling energy infrastructures onto companies' balance sheets and consumers' bank accounts.
While acknowledging the long-term benefits of the IRA's investments, Cohen and Riofrancos stressed that securing the political support needed to achieve the swift, sweeping reforms that scientists say are necessary for a livable future will require "a green economic populism that helps voters more easily get from one paycheck to the next."
Working people, held back by limited wage growth, face high prices for food, housing, transportation, and utilities—and fossil fuel-driven climate breakdown exacerbates those costs. According to the professors: "We must replace the Prius economy with one focused on affordable green housing, higher wages, cheap clean energy, lower commuting costs, and expanded mass transit. States, cities, and towns can get the ball rolling."
The pair highlighted recent examples at the local and state level, including: tribe-owned companies' development of renewable energy; New York City's rezoning policy and rent regulations; New York state's Build Public Renewables Act; Pennsylvania's Whole Homes Repair program; Illinois' restrictions on utility shutoffs during extreme heat; and California's funding for electric vehicle chargers.
"To be sure, local governments' role is relatively limited. Some of their best policies depend on federal funds, which may be cut under the Trump administration," they noted. "Still, local governments can help fold green economic populism into a broader agenda for economic security—from a $17 minimum wage floor to universal health insurance to universal prekindergarten and affordable childcare. Ideally, governments would coordinate countrywide, as some have done around protecting undocumented migrants and abortion access. If progressives win a national governing coalition for these ideas in 2028, they can hit the ground running."
Tying the climate emergency to the economic concerns of working people is not new—for example, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) first introduced a Green New Deal resolution in Congress in 2019 and the Green Party was campaigning on the concept years earlier—but there is an urgency in the current moment, in the wake of the hottest year on record and the November victory of Big Oil-backed Trump.
The essay came as political observers as well as critics and members of the Democratic Party—including Ocasio-Cortez—are urging leadership to learn from losses in the last cycle. Based on dozens of national surveys of likely voters, the left-leaning think tank Data for Progress concluded in December that "by branding itself as an active party of economic populism that fights for needed changes for the working class the Democratic Party can put itself in a position to regain the support of the voters it lost in 2024."
That potential path has some right-wingers scared. Victoria Coates, a former Trump adviser who is now a vice president at the Heritage Foundation, shared Cohen and Riofrancos' essay on social media Tuesday and said, "Thank heavens the hands of the radical environmentalists have been removed from the levers of power but this should serve as a cautionary tale of what they intend to do if reelected."
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To Confront Trump and the Climate Crisis, Democrats Must Stand Up for Working People
Taking on corporate power and putting workers at the center of the party's agenda is the best defense against the divide-and-conquer strategy of the populist right. That means backing policies like Medicare for All, creating green union jobs, and raising the minimum wage.
Dec 11, 2024
The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. To defeat Trump and those who back him, the Democratic Party must change course and fight for working-class people. With the climate crisis bearing down, this task is incredibly urgent and important. The cost of failure is planetary catastrophe.
For the first time in years, Democrats won with voters who made over $100,000 and lost those making less than that. The Republican Party made huge gains among working-class people of color and those without a college degree. Youth turnout dropped eight points from 2020. Harris won only 54% of the youth vote and was the first Democratic nominee since 2004 not to win young voters by at least 60%.
The Democratic Party urgently needs to take the right lessons away from this election, or they risk handing elections to Trump-like candidates for years to come, and burning away any chance of stopping catastrophic climate change. In the first days after the election, I had a lot of hope this would be a turning point when the Democratic Party shifted to embrace populist, people-centered policies that took on corporate power and addressed voters’ economic pain. News coverage focused on how swing voters didn’t trust Democrats on the economy and how Senate candidates like Ruben Gallego and Sherrod Brown who ran on an anti-corporate message outperformed Harris. Mainstream politicians like Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy were echoing this argument.
The Democratic Party must loudly and vocally fight for populist, people-centered policies and take on corporate power in our democracy.
But, then the spin from corporate consultants and pundits began. They have flooded the opinion pages and podcasts with a medley of reasons why Democrats lost the election. They have argued that “woke politics” and groups like Sunrise pushed Democrats too far left on social issues. They have argued that the campaign was poorly run, or that Biden should have dropped sooner. Conveniently, this analysis often leaves out the economy and doesn’t challenge the corporate donors that bankroll many of the candidates and consultants.
This is an incredibly dangerous interpretation that misses the forest for the trees. If Democrats’ takeaway is: “be less woke,” they will continue to fracture their coalition and set the GOP on the path to electoral majorities for years to come.
For the sake of our democracy and our planet, Democrats must tackle the underlying reasons they are losing working-class voters, young voters, and voters of color. They need to proudly take on corporate interests and fight for an economy and politics that works for all of us.
That starts with listening to what voters are saying. This year, Sunrise made over four million voter contacts. Again and again, we heard young people saying they were struggling to afford groceries and rent, anxious about job prospects, and grappling with the economic uncertainty that has made the American Dream feel out of reach.
In 2024, simply being "Not Trump" wasn't enough to win, especially among young voters. If you turned 18 this year, you were just 9 years old when Trump first descended the golden escalator to launch his campaign. Trump in politics is all they know. So, Harris’ closing message of “I’m not Trump” didn’t hold up against Trump’s message about remaking the economy and upending business as usual.
Seeing this, we dug in with people, talking about the Inflation Reduction Act and capping of insulin prices. We pointed out Trump’s allegiance to his fellow billionaires. But, those conversations often only got so far — people didn’t trust that Democrats actually understood their struggles. They had seen Biden and Harris on TV for years celebrating how the economy was good, but that wasn’t how it felt to them in the day-to-day. If people don’t feel understood and respected by a political party, it’s hard to get them to believe that party will actually do something to help them.
For the sake of our democracy and our planet, Democrats must tackle the underlying reasons they are losing working-class voters, young voters, and voters of color. They need to proudly take on corporate interests and fight for an economy and politics that works for all of us.
Trump, on the other hand, hardly went a minute without talking about how prices were rising and the economy wasn’t fair. He managed to convince people he understood their pain and would act on it — despite being a billionaire championing regressive economic policies.
This isn’t to say that social issues were irrelevant in this election. However, Harris’ inability to gain the trust of voters on the economy made these attacks from the right more potent. When people can't afford rent or food, they look for people to blame. Trump and far-right politicians have told people to blame immigrants or trans people or people of color. That was a core part of Trump's closing message: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Trump is for you.” Pundits are spending a lot of time talking about the first half and missing the 2nd half. If Democrats can’t convince working-class voters and young voters that they will fight for them, it’s going to continue to be hard to fight back against these attacks.
The Democratic Party must loudly and vocally fight for populist, people-centered policies and take on corporate power in our democracy. It’s the way to win back the trust of young voters, working-class voters, and disillusioned voters. And it’s the best defense against the divide-and-conquer strategy of the populist right. That means backing policies like Medicare for All, creating green union jobs, and raising the minimum wage. And, it means challenging Trump for the populist mantle by pledging to shake up the status quo and make it work better for everyday people.
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Defeating Trumpism With a People's Agenda
We should raise walls of resistance as much as we can. More important, though, we should demand from the democratic forces to adopt a socio-economic agenda that puts people’s needs above corporate interests.
Nov 27, 2024
A clear consensus has emerged that the economy was the key factor behind Trump’s stunning victory. However, that may not be a very accurate description about what led a disaffected electorate wanting to see Trump back in the White House as the U.S. economy had been in a rather good shape from the second quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2024 and was in fact outperforming all other advanced economies by a wide margin. Indeed, surveys had consistently shown that the majority of voters had negative views on the economy at large, thus revealing a disconnect between economic numbers and public sentiment. Unemployment was the lowest it had been in decades, consumer spending was up, and inflation had cooled off. Yet voters still thought the economy was trash.
The U.S economic system does stink, no matter what the numbers show, and the political system is totally dysfunctional, which explains why so many voters were not fazed by Democrats’ core message that Trump posed a threat to democracy. They were probably wondering where democracy was to be found when economic elites run the show. Forty-five years of neoliberal economics have exacerbated capitalism’s inherent tendencies toward economic inequality, created a permanent state of economic insecurity, and led to the rise of an oligarchy.
It is the disastrous socio-economic and political consequences of neoliberalism that produce feelings of neglect, powerlessness and anger and lead voters in turn to cast their ballots for demagogues like Donald Trump...
The United States is the most unequal society in the developed world. The rich are growing richer with every passing year while the middle class shrinks, and the poor are left to their own fate for survival. Massive social inequalities and economic disparities destroy trust and confidence in government and leave people thinking that the future is unavoidably grim. This is the primary reason for the rise of ethno-nationalism and authoritarian populism in the developed world, including of course Trumpism in the United States. It is the disastrous socio-economic and political consequences of neoliberalism that produce feelings of neglect, powerlessness and anger and lead voters in turn to cast their ballots for demagogues like Donald Trump who promise a return to a golden era.
The irony is that while Trump is an authoritarian bully who wishes to use the iron fist of the state to rollback immigration and crush social agendas and even those who oppose him, his economic views are overall staunchly pro-market and outrageously neoliberal. In that regard, there is nothing fascistic about Trump when it comes to the economy. Statism lies at the heart of fascist ideology. The state is the all-powerful entity for fascists. The question of state-controlled planning of the economy is of paramount importance to fascism. For fascists, the state should not control all the means of production, as is the case with traditional socialism, but should dominate them.
The irony is that while Trump is an authoritarian bully who wishes to use the iron fist of the state to rollback immigration and crush social agendas and even those who oppose him, his economic views are overall staunchly pro-market and outrageously neoliberal.
Trump’s proposals for the economy are seen as a mixed bag. That’s because while he has proclaimed himself a champion for deregulation, he is in favor of protectionist trade policies. But Trump’s trade policy should not fool people that he is not a neoliberal. With protectionist trade policies, Trump, as with the way he runs his own business, only sees the short-term advantages in economic policy. Moreover, protectionist trade policy does not depart from neoliberalism. As has been acutely pointed out by British political economist Tom Wraight, Trump simply uses “the coercive power of the state to force other nations to conform to market-based economic logic.”
Trump has promised an anti-regulation blitz from Day One upon his return to the White House on virtually all aspects of the economy, including environmental and public health regulations. After spending months lying to voters about his knowledge of Project 2025, Trump has picked scores of people who worked on this ultra-reactionary policy manifesto for top posts in his administration. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda for the economy, if fully implemented, would create a far more unequal and harsher society as it entails policies that will lead to massive cuts on all social programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and food assistance, and calls for massive disinvestment in public services and a host of new tax cuts for wealthy households and corporations.
Project 2025 is the ultra-right wing game plan for the full completion of the neoliberal economic vision and political nightmare that started nearly half a century ago. It will produce far greater social dislocation and greater economic anxiety than any other time since the onset of the neoliberal counterrevolution. Most of those who voted for Trump on the basis of their perceptions about the direction of the economy and their belief that the country is on the wrong track will be deeply disturbed by the new economic and social realities that will emerge in the United States during the second Trump reign and will hopefully rethink their support for Trumpism. The problem is that the Democratic Party is either incapable or unwilling to offer citizens a new vision for the United States, one that will end the rule of oligarchy, restore democracy, and put people and the planet above profit.
Here are some policies that should be included in a socio-economic agenda for the specific needs of the people in the twentieth-first century United States of America:
1. Implementing Universal Health Coverage (UHC). That is, a publicly administered system that guarantees that all people have access to the full range of quality health services when and where they need them. Financing of UHC could come entirely from broad-based tax revenues. Coverage would be universal and automatic. Covered services would include inpatient, outpatient, dental, mental health, and long-term health, as well as prescription drugs. All three levels of the U.S. government (federal, state, and local) would be involved in the health care system.
2. Getting rid of all challenges and obstacles of union organizing, which include making illegal threats to close a plant if workers select a union to represent them and threatening workers with loss of jobs or benefits if they join a union. Current U.S. law makes it difficult for workers to join unions and even excludes certain categories of workers.
3. An industry-level approach to collective bargaining with active participation in social dialogue. An industry-level approach to collective bargaining will secure the best economic compensation possible for workers.
4. Undertaking a large-scale federal program of social housing construction. The United States faces a deep and persistent housing affordability crisis that demands active government intervention. It is beyond naïve belief to think that the market can fix the housing crisis. Repairing the house market with market-oriented solutions such as liberalizing zoning rules and other regulations have never worked. They do not lead to a major increase in housing supply or in more affordable housing. A strong housing safety net should also be introduced to address the problem of homelessness and ensure home security for the most vulnerable.
5. Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 or even $20 per hour. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has been stagnant since 2009 and maintaining it is a scandal of grand proportions. No decent society, let alone the richest country in the world, should accept having such a thing as the “working poor.”
6.Fighting poverty and inequality. Poverty should not be defined one-dimensionally based on income alone. Poverty should be seen as access to a variety of resources, such as education, health, energy, jobs, rights and personal security. The task of eliminating poverty should include both short-term (cash handouts) and long-term approaches (delivering social services and addressing the structural causes of poverty with initiatives such as the guaranteed-jobs program).
7. Implementing the Green New Deal. Greening the economy is a vital and urgent task to save humanity and the planet from the impacts of global warming but also provides a macro-economic approach to sustainable economic growth. It’s a win-win situation and only vested interests (fossil fuel industry, banks, oil-producing nations) and lack of political stand on the way to transitioning to a green economy.
8. Cutting military spending. The United States spent $820 billion on national defense during the fiscal year 2023. It spends nearly 8.4 times as much on its military as Russia does and more than three times the amount of China. While the U.S. comprises just over 4 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for nearly 40 percent of global military spending. Between 2001 and 2022, the U.S. spent $8 trillion on war. The notion that such enormous defense spending is important for national security questions is utterly absurd. The U.S. homeland has never been invaded and no nation threatens U.S. national security. The obscene amount of money that the U.S. spends on defense, which different methodologies estimated to be above $1.5 trillion for the fiscal year 2022, is for the building and maintenance of the U.S. empire. The U.S has over 750 overseas military bases, which only provoke geopolitical tensions and harm the United States, as David Vine demonstrates in his book Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. Money saved from cuts in the defense budget can go towards supporting social programs and/or for reducing the national debt. Arguing for reforms in Social Security and Medicare when the country spends so much money on the military is morally indefensible and will become politically unacceptable if people realize how wasteful and harmful military sending is.
At the heart of the neoliberal vision is a societal order based on the prioritization of corporate power and free markets and the abandonment of public services. The neoliberal claim is that economies would perform more effectively, producing greater wealth and economic prosperity for all, if markets were allowed to perform their functions without government intervention. This claim is predicated on the idea that free markets are inherently just and can create effective low-cost ways to produce consumer goods and services. It is all rubbish, of course; nothing but an ideological pretext to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Neoliberalism is indeed not simply an economic doctrine but also a socio-political ideology that places individual self-interest before the common good, displays indifference to social inequalities and economic disparities and subsequently justifies plutocracy.
At the heart of the neoliberal vision is a societal order based on the prioritization of corporate power and free markets and the abandonment of public services.
Trump’s approach to government and corporate interests, which he will undertake with an extra heavy authoritarian twist, will magnify all aspects of the neoliberal nightmare that has engulfed the United States under both Republican and Democratic administrations for the past several decades. Unfortunately, a majority of the U.S. electorate refused to see what Trump really stands for and was duped into believing that their great leader is the one to take on the detestable liberal/neoliberal establishment and create in turn a system that works for the average citizens, not just the rich.
The next four years promise to be one of severe cruelty for the most vulnerable people in the United States and a nightmare for the environment. We should raise walls of resistance as much as we can. More important, though, we should demand from the democratic forces to adopt a socio-economic agenda that puts people’s needs above corporate interests and consigns neoliberal capitalism to the dustbin of history.Keep ReadingShow Less
How We Can Keep the Green New Deal Alive Despite Trump’s Fossil Fuel Authoritarianism
The Green New Deal is being created right now by flesh-and- blood people under real-life conditions. It is being created in communities, cities, states, and regions—from below.
Nov 21, 2024
To resist and eventually overcome the looming authoritarian national government, we need to create bastions of what the Polish activists who overthrew their country’s dictatorship called “social self-defense.” That will involve many methods, including mutual aid, on-the-ground protection of those under attack, intelligence sharing, and many other forms of solidarity. For the past five years, I have been studying initiatives that are realizing the principles and policies of the Green New Deal—what I have called “The Green New Deal from Below.” I believe these Green New Deal from Below initiatives can be a critical component of our social self-defense.
The Green New Deal is a visionary program designed to protect the Earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Its core principle is to unite the necessity for climate protection with the goals of full employment and social justice.
The Green New Deal erupted into public attention as a proposal for national legislation. But there has also emerged a little-noticed wave of initiatives from community groups, unions, city and state governments, tribes, and other nonfederal actors designed to contribute to the climate protection and social justice goals of the Green New Deal. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez (AOC), who helped initiate the campaign for a Green New Deal, has called it “a Green New Deal from Below.”'
The Green New Deal from Below is showing that it is possible to challenge the powers that are imposing climate change, inequality, and oppression.
The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of Green New Deal from Below initiatives in many different arenas and locations. These initiatives encompass a broad range of the programs already under way and in development. The projects of Green New Dealers recounted here should provide inspiration for thousands more that can create the foundation for local, national, and even global mobilization—and reconstruction.
The Green New Deal is happening, and whatever happens is possible. The Green New Deal is not an impossible leftist fantasy, or something that could never win popular support, or a dream that couldn’t possibly be realized in practice, or something that would bring disaster if it were realized. The Green New Deal is being created right now by flesh-and- blood people under real-life conditions. It is being created in communities, cities, states, and regions—from below.
Of course, only a limited proportion of U.S. geographies and institutions have fully developed Green New Deals. But efforts to create Green New Deals are ubiquitous; an article in Popular Science magazine soon after the first Green New Deal proposal in Congress found that plans and first steps to realize Green New Deals were happening in every state in the union. Today the Green New Deal from Below, dispersed throughout the United States, is transforming the realities where it is—and creating models for broader transformation everywhere.
Green New Deals in cities like Boston and Los Angeles are reducing the greenhouse gases that are destroying our climate. They are creating jobs that protect the climate and training workers to fill them. They are mobilizing city resources to reduce poverty. They are investing in climate- protecting buildings and technologies in low-income neighborhoods. They are expanding cheap or free public transit to reconnect isolated neighborhoods, provide people who lack cars with access to jobs, and reduce greenhouse gas pollution.
In states like Illinois, California, and New York, Green New Deal-style programs are shifting major resources to climate-safe energy development. They are setting targets for greenhouse gas reduction and schedules for shutting down fossil fuel-producing and using facilities—and implementing them. They are reducing fossil fuel use by increasing the energy efficiency of buildings, transportation, agriculture, and other energy users. They are investing in infrastructure to correct historical injustices like polluting facilities concentrated in poor communities. They are creating jobs in the green economy with high labor rights and standards and providing job training, jobs, and job ladders for people who have been marginalized in the labor market.
Unions like the IBEW are promoting programs to expand renewable energy production, building coalitions to support them, training the workers needed to realize them, and monitoring the results to ensure that they produce good union jobs. Unions of educators and nurses are fighting for—and winning—green schools and hospitals.
The Green New Deal from Below is showing that it is possible to challenge the powers that are imposing climate change, inequality, and oppression. That it is possible to formulate realistic alternatives. And that those alternatives can actually be implemented.
Perhaps someone could look at the diverse projects, programs, and initiatives of the Green New Deal from Below and see them as simply scattered, unconnected, one-off phenomena. But that would be like saying, I see the students, the classrooms, and the football field, but where is the university? The Green New Deal from Below is indeed composed of many parts, but that does not prevent it from being a real entity as a whole.
The Green New Deal transformed America’s political imagination. It transgressed the neoliberal, market-only assumptions that dominated public discourse for four decades. It proposed the long-disparaged notion of using government to solve problems. It refused to accept the growing inequality that had reshaped American society. It advocated tackling rather than ignoring the climate emergency. To paraphrase Green New Deal mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, it shifted “the sense of what was possible.” It thereby expanded the limits of what was possible.
This transformation flows from the core concepts of the Green New Deal. These core concepts integrate multiple concerns rather than addressing them in separate “silos” or adding them together in “laundry lists.” They unite the urgent and universal need for climate protection with the economic and social needs of disadvantaged groups and of working people. They do so by articulating a strategy for rapid greenhouse gas reduction that prioritizes programs that create jobs and reduce injustice. This strategy provides a new way of integrating the interests of previously disconnected or antagonistic constituencies.
The Green New Deal is not just a slogan, a list of demands, or a menu of policies. The Green New Deal provides a framework for moving beyond piecemeal policies to a set of integrated strategies. Like the original New Deal, it makes seemingly antagonistic policies and constituencies complementary by transcending the limitations of established assumptions. It pro-poses a set of changes in the social framework that meet both the common and the distinct needs of those affected. It thereby constructs a common interest that incorporates the particular interests of different groups. This allows needs and interests that may currently appear incompatible—for example, between jobs and environment—to become compatible or even synergistic.
The Green New Deal integrates such distinct elements in two ways. First, it integrates different kinds of needs and their solutions. Front and center is its integration of the need for climate protection, the need for good jobs, and the need for greater equality. But it integrates other needs as well. For example, it combines policies that attack entrenched forms of discrimination and injustice with ones that increase the power of workers on the job by strengthening their right to organize and engage in concerted action. Legislation in Connecticut and other states exemplifies this by requiring that offshore wind clean energy projects provide both project labor agreements ensuring union wage standards and conditions and community benefit agreements providing access to jobs for communities and demographics often deprived of that access.
Second, the Green New Deal integrates the needs of different constituencies. For example, two separate coalitions backing different bills developed in Illinois to shape climate legislation. One, the Illinois Clean Jobs coalition, was rooted in the environmental movement and local social justice organizations. The other, the Climate Jobs Illinois coalition, was based in the state’s labor unions. After considerable tension and extended negotiations, the two united on a common program that included the demands of each—laying the basis for the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, described by one journalist as a “Green New Deal” for Illinois.
Integrating programs and integrating people go hand in hand. For example, the Green New Deal tames the purported conflict between employment and climate protection. It challenges the “jobs vs. environment” frame. At a local and state level, the Green New Deal from Below has therefore been able to unite often-divided labor, environmental, and climate justice advocates.
The Green New Deal is driven by a sense of urgency. There is the urgency of the climate emergency. There is also the urgency of people who are suffering and even dying as a result of injustice. The original Green New Deal proposal responded to this urgency by calling for a 10-year mobilization that would reconstruct American society and economy as dramatically as the New Deal and mobilization for World War II.
The Green New Deal arose in a sea of hopelessness and despair. It pointed the way toward viable alternatives to realities that evoked that hopelessness and despair. The Green New Deal from Below provides people a way to start building those alternatives day by day where they live and work.
The world historian Arnold Toynbee once delineated how great civilizational changes occur. Existing leaders of existing institutions face new challenges—but fail to change to meet them. Their civilizations thereby become vulnerable to collapse. In such a setting, however, a creative minority may arise that proposes—and begins to implement—new solutions. Surely climate change represents such a civilizational challenge, and just as surely our existing institutions and their leaders are failing to make the changes it requires. But at the grassroots a creative minority is at work establishing new solutions that are reconstructing society on new principles. Their work is manifested in the Green New Deal from Below.
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Capitalism Is Killing Us, But You Won't Hear a Whisper of It at the Democratic Convention
Out of some sort of atavistic hope, I watched the Democratic Party convention searching for some glimmer of rational wisdom. How stupid of me! I ought to know by now that the soul of democracy is made out of marshmallow fluff.
Aug 22, 2024
Neither politicians (across the continuum) nor corporate media pundits engage in meaningful public discourse on climate and the environment. They choose not to acknowledge the scope of the threat or to sincerely analyze real means of addressing the gathering onslaught. The bogus dialogue on climate is all smoke and mirrors, feeding the masses fatuous illusions—promising future technological triumphs—and wielding uncertainty as a means to disarm public ire. Our popular discussions about the environment are almost never about capitalism precisely because (in the real world, as opposed to the world of mass fantasy) it is always and obviously about capitalism.
The wealth of information on climate available at the click of a computer may be staggering, but only a few stilted, corporate approved narratives leak into the popular climate conversations featured in political debates or commercial media. Our climate stories have been mutilated, distorted or subtly degraded by the money and influence of those whose profits come from environmental destruction.
The major political parties avoid an honest evaluation of our environmental crises in the manner of a vampire cringing before a clove of garlic. Don't hold your breath waiting for Kohei Saito or Jason Hickel to be interviewed on CNN or Fox News. Extinction Rebellion (XR) has demanded that governments tell the truth about climate overheating, but XR might as well insist that the cow jump over the moon. If the U.S. government were to voice even a timidly honest approximation of our environmental realities it would open the floodgates of its own complicity. Here are some truths that governments will never tell:
1) There is no adequate climate mitigation currently in practice anywhere on earth, and no plan to initiate any. Fossil fuels are being extracted and burned at all-time highs with no adequate regulation.
2) The sixth extinction is well underway, with species die offs now proceeding at a velocity unprecedented in geological history. (The Chicxulub meteor (Alvarez Impact Theory) would have created an even more abrupt mass extinction, however, Gerta Keller's rebuttal to Alvarez, compellingly argues that Deccan Traps volcanism (and not a meteor) did in the dinosaurs. Until the Alvarez/Keller dispute resolves into a clear verdict, our sixth extinction ought to be awarded the interim title for murdering life on earth swiftly.)
3) CO2 concentrations are increasing at least ten times faster than during the greatest mass extinction in earth's history—the "End Permian." In 2023, atmospheric CO2 increased by an astonishing 4.7 parts per million.
4) Climate ruin in the Global South will create more than a billion climate refugees in the next few decades, driving fascist movements and increasing the risk of famine, genocide, and war.
5) Temperature increases as high as 5 degrees Celsius are very possible by the end of the century if governments do not cooperate and radically change course globally. It must be said, they show no signs of even considering this. A 5°C rise in temperatures transpiring over the course of a mere two centuries would make our planet uninhabitable for human civilization as we know it. Bear in mind that the volcanism driving all five mass extinctions of deep time (I am giving the nod to Gerta Keller here) transpired across hundreds of thousands of years in each instance. Capitalism can obliterate millions of species in a geological nanosecond.
6) Sea level rise could be as much as seven feet by the end of the century, displacing billions of people in coastal areas.
7) The immediate future will feature anoxic oceans, slowing of ocean currents, massive dead zones, bleached coral reefs, and the cataclysmic die-off of fish. Inland, 120,000 square kilometers turn into desert annually.
A piece by Clayton Page Aldern just published in Aeon magazine details the ways that heat impinges on neurological functioning. We have just been sent reeling by the Covid-19 pandemic that, uniquely among pathogens, has a propensity to diminish cognition. Lead, the mother of all neurotoxins, is still ubiquitous in U.S. cities thanks to austerity that prioritizes military spending and government handouts to fossil fuel companies while gutting infrastructure spending.
Leaded gasoline, banned several decades ago, caused tens of millions of global deaths and created a worldwide epidemic of brain damage simply because General Motors held the patent on tetraethyl lead and blocked the use of cheap alternatives. Many survivors of leaded gasoline, including myself, now have the task of using our injured brains to come up with a solution to our environmental crises. Increasingly brain damaged people now must tackle increasingly unsolvable environmental assaults.
Factor in pesticides, plastics, mercury and a host of agricultural contaminants that make it difficult to think straight. The bruised remnants of our minds gravitate toward the immediate relief of addictive substances. The biggest of all addictions in a capitalist universe is spending and material consumption. We can't think about complex issues, but we can buy stuff created by fossil fuels.
With capitalism driving humanity toward a warp speed plunge into planetary ruin, our democratic systems have distilled the climate narrative into a bifurcated choice between Republican psychosis and Democratic hopium.
The Republican Party environmental narrative holds that climate change is either a complete hoax or an over-hyped inconvenience spurred by alarmists looking for academic funding. The Democratic Party narrative optimistically assumes that we merely need to defer to the free market and allow green industries to build the windmills and solar panels needed to make oil, coal, and gas obsolete. In other words, we face a certain apocalypse armed only with surrealistic fantasies.
Out of some sort of atavistic hope, I watched the Democratic Party convention searching for some glimmer of rational wisdom. How stupid of me! Conventions promote empty oratory as a matter of tradition. I ought to know by now that the soul of democracy is made out of marshmallow fluff.
There were no speeches suggesting that our politicians have been in touch with our scientists. No one mentioned the trajectory of atmospheric carbon, the future certainty of catastrophic weather or the looming extinction of myriads of species, including humanity. Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama did not mention climate—even in passing.
A couple of millennia ago, Nero allegedly "fiddled while Rome burned," and we still do not forgive him. Thousands of years in the future no one will be alive to hold our orchestra members accountable. For the record, Bernie Sanders did state that nothing in the Democratic Party platform is radical but "allowing polluters to destroy the planet" (he was talking about Republicans) is radical. Alexandra Ocasio - Cortez offered that Americans need "the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water." Barack Obama mentioned something about "America protecting the world from climate change," but with no elaboration. None of these one-liners counts as climate policy. Real climate policy for either party is greenwash and burn it down.
There was no talk about nationalizing fossil fuels, mobilizing all of the nation's resources for an all-out struggle against mass extinction. None of the feel-good slogans and platitudes had been aimed at climate. I will leave the readers with an important quote:
"From this angle, it becomes clear that capitalism is highly inefficient when it comes to meeting human needs; it produces so much, and yet leaves 60% of the human population without access to even the most basic goods. Why? Because a huge portion of commodity production (and all the energy and materials it requires) is irrelevant to human well-being. Consider this thought experiment: Portugal has significantly better social outcomes than the United States, with 65% less GDP per capita. This means that $38,000 of US per capita income is effectively ‘wasted’. That adds up to $13 trillion per year for the US economy as a whole; $13 trillion worth of extraction and production and consumption each year, and $13 trillion worth of ecological pressure, that adds nothing, in and of itself, to human well-being. It is damage without gain."
This quote is not from Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or Tim Walz. No, it is from Jason Hickel, perhaps the most lucid and charismatic voice in the movement for degrowth. He was not invited to speak at the DNC convention, and I have no reason to quote him. Forgive me.
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