We need to act as quickly as possible, and we need to target the root causes of climate change. But we can, and should, do both simultaneously. We can see that environmental destruction is rooted in the imperatives of our existing system of profit-seeking, competition, endless growth, exploitation of humans and nature, and imperial expansion. A better future is possible though, …
Ed Markey on the Green New Deal
Ed Markey When we were drafting the resolution, we looked to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union address, which he delivered in the form of one of his fireside chats. He laid out his plan to guarantee the third unalienable right: the pursuit of happiness. He said that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security. So, because of …
Youth: “We can change it all if we want it all, and we do.”
With Youth Climate Actions Backed by Leading Experts, Latest Round of Protests Highlights Call for Bold and Urgent Action: “We can change it all if we want it all, and we do.” by Andrea Germanos, on Common Dreams April 1 Protesters hold signs at the YouthStrike4Climate student march on April 12, 2019 in London. Students are protesting across the U.K. due to the lack …
Densification to respond to affordable housing, transportation, and air quality needs, as well as climate threats
What is a GND for cities? The passage of the Minneapolis 2040 plan, which will upzone the entire city, and a new effort to pass a statewide transit-oriented development proposal in housing-starved California—may, without meaning to, provide glimpses of what that kind of vision may resemble. As cities confront climate change, is density the answer? Plans to increase urban density may foreshadow how cities respond …
A Lakota historian on what climate organizers can learn from two centuries of indigenous resistance
What we stand for is the continued existence of Indigenous life on this earth — but also the continued existence of life on this earth. The longer-term goal is to continue to develop as a nation of the Oceti Sakowin, with other Indigenous nations, on this path that we were meant to be on — to imagine what it would be like had …
Short book highlights from Concrete Economics, a New Consensus recommendation
Central to Hamilton’s view was protecting America’s infant industries, so up went the tariff, about 25% in 1816 Given the huge costs of shipping in the early 1800s, this was a formidable exercise in protectionism as well as a major source of federal government revenues. And up it stayed, over the opposition of agriculturalists who were buyers, not producers, of …
Labor Network for Sustainability 18 strategies for the GND
The Resolution lists five “Green New Deal goals” to be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization: achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers; create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all; invest in the infrastructure and industry to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st …
Joined at the hip: inequality and our decaying environment
Climate-Striking Young People Get Climate Change. Why Can’t Their Elders? In deeply unequal societies, the rich and powerful never feel the environmental pain. by Sam Pizzigati on Inequality.org, March 15, 2019 Listen to the young people of the worldwide March 15 climate strike and you can feel the frustration. They see us at the brink of climate catastrophe. Why can’t everybody else? …
AOC is asking the questions that activists need to know, and the Green New Deal is the anti-despair program we need to end the addiction crisis
By Abraham Gutman agutman@philly.com The Green New Deal is the anti-despair program we need to end the addiction crisis | March 14, 2019 The Green New Deal, the ambitious plan proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to deal with climate change, has drawn a lot of attention and speculation, including at this week’s big energy conference in Houston. Beyond criticism that actually has nothing to do …
Writing the GND with marginalized voices
By Aaron Ross Coleman, The Nation, March 14, 2019 Reparations have long seemed a politically impossible dream, but the climate crisis may be changing that. As the planet’s weather has shifted radically in recent years, so has the conversation about paying compensation to black America for centuries of economic injustice. Back in 2003, Chappelle’s Show was lampooning the idea of reparations with a skit …