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The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet
An engaging conversation with our most respected public intellectual around how a global Green New Deal has the potential to save humanity and the planet.
The environmental crisis under way is unique in human history. It is a true existential crisis. Those alive today will decide the fate of humanity. Meanwhile, the leaders of the most powerful state in human history are dedicating themselves with passion to destroying the prospects for organized human life. At the same time, there is a solution at hand, which is the Green New Deal. Putting meat on the bones of the Green New Deal starts with a single simple idea: we have to absolutely stop burning fossil fuels to produce energy within the next 30 years at most; and we have to do this in a way that also supports rising living standards and expanding opportunities for working people and the poor throughout the world. This version of a Green New Deal program is, in fact, entirely realistic in terms of its purely economic and technical features. The real question is whether it is politically feasible. Chomsky and Pollin examine how we can build the political force to make a global Green New Deal a reality.
The environmental crisis under way is unique in human history. It is a true existential crisis. Those alive today will decide the fate of humanity. Meanwhile, the leaders of the most powerful state in human history are dedicating themselves with passion to destroying the prospects for organized human life. At the same time, there is a solution at hand, which is the Green New Deal. Putting meat on the bones of the Green New Deal starts with a single simple idea: we have to absolutely stop burning fossil fuels to produce energy within the next 30 years at most; and we have to do this in a way that also supports rising living standards and expanding opportunities for working people and the poor throughout the world. This version of a Green New Deal program is, in fact, entirely realistic in terms of its purely economic and technical features. The real question is whether it is politically feasible. Chomsky and Pollin examine how we can build the political force to make a global Green New Deal a reality.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
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About the author
Noam Chomsky
977 books17.4k followersAvram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.
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February 6, 2024
Chomsky in 2020: still prioritizing the most dire issues
Preamble:
--2022 update: I first read this in 2021 as a primer to a global Green New Deal (with number-crunching by the economist co-author Robert Pollin), having only read more social-critique intro’s like Naomi Klein’s (On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal). For my 2nd read, I have since followed up on the questions/concerns I originally raised, which I will update below.
--Taking a step back, Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance was the nonfiction book that shook me out of childhood. Eventually, I went on to explore political economy more closely, but it wasn’t because I excommunicated Chomsky in an internet-Left manner. The niche “Michael Parenti > Chomsky” memes are worth a chuckle (I do love Parenti). The “gate-keeper” allegations (ex. supporting voting-for-the-lesser-evil Hillary/Biden vs. Trump) are a distraction.
…As for the mess of how-to-frame-real-world-socialism, I point to Vijay Prashad still collaborating with Chomsky (and Yanis Varoufakis) despite disagreements on Lenin/USSR/China, etc. etc. Who are these other leftists with all the answers? I can hardly agree with myself day-to-day; the world is full of contradictions (as the best of Marx carefully examines)…
--Why return to Chomsky? He reads and synthesizes so much, lending a helpful hand in the arduous climb of the growing mountain of books. This topic is #1 in priority. My critique is mostly directly towards progressive economist co-author Pollin (who apparently contributed to the green energy portion of Obama’s 2009 Stimulus, hmmm….).
Highlights:
--The 2 existential issues raised in Chomsky’s 2013 Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe have only escalated. Nuclear weapons proliferation is sadly even more hidden (see: whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner).
--This 2020 book follows up on the latter crisis. Both Chomsky books mentioned are transcripts of interviews, thus overviews with useful references. The 4 sections are:
1) Climate Change:
--Brief overview provided (as neither authors are climate scientists); the focus is on the climate crisis (carbon emissions), with acknowledgement that the existential environmental crisis is broader. For a primer on the broader Earth Systems Science, I prefer an ecosocialist framework that centers the economic driver of our destructive relations with nature, i.e. capitalism (Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System), rather than more liberal-technocratic sciences that obscures capitalism and slips down “human nature”/“overpopulation” traps, i.e. the “Limits to Growth” systems-science folks (Thinking in Systems: A Primer), and the more-vague Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction). Ecosocialist critique of “overpopulation” framing: Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
--I was impressed capitalist agriculture was featured: “Corporate industrial agriculture is a major driver of climate change, responsible for roughly 25 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide, the three main greenhouse gases.”. We can flesh this out: capitalist agriculture (esp. factory meat production) is an unimaginable nightmare on a colossal scale that we hide behind concrete walls, with morbid spillovers (beyond sheer depravity of animals/workers) from biodiversity collapse to new diseases (Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19). The capitalist economics are maddening too, with tremendous overproduction/waste on one side (including dumping good food to maintain profitable prices), while the other side starves (capitalism is a global system; global starvation is in the millions annually).
--But most censored is how capitalist agriculture starves the Global South. Global North (esp. US) corporate agriculture is heavily-subsidized, while Global South petty-producers are forced to compete on the volatile global market but prevented from their own state protection (the cruel trap + hypocrisy of “free trade” imperialism). Global South petty-producers are wiped out, losing their land from debt/corporate land-grabs and flooding into urban slums (Planet of Slums) and militarized borders (Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism).
...Global North trade policy forces the Global South to:
(i) Export exotic cash crops to feed the Global North’s all-season-all-variety appetite (thus losing land to produce food staples to feed oneself), so as to…
(ii) Import Global North’s heavily-subsidized food staples production, enforcing dependency.
- A People’s Green New Deal : crucial next-step for Green New Deal to actually address Global South demands (esp. petty producers).
-The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry: must-read intro on how the Global South is starved to feed Global North capitalism. A more general overview: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance: deeper dive, esp. the chapter on World Bank/IMF; Hudson provides the economics of how the World Bank the “most evil organization in modern history”: https://youtu.be/paUgY6SGlgY
2) Capitalism and Climate Change:
--The reason I departed from Chomsky was to read more closely into political economy, as Chomsky usually only makes brief references (indeed, he seems to cite mainstream economics’ misuse of Adam Smith more than he explains Marx’s critique of capitalism).
…So you can imagine my surprise when Chomsky references Marx. Twice. The only thing I previously learned about Marx from Chomsky that I can remember was “Marx had some interesting ideas about how capitalism works, but he didn’t write much on socialism.” These brief references of Marx were:
(i) Metabolic rift: an obscure Marxian; I only encountered a few passages of this in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 on capitalist urbanization (to concentrate production/accumulation) disrupting nature’s metabolism esp. waste recycling for soil fertility, and how England had to resort to guano (seabird excrement) from colonized islands as fertilizer. Ecosocialists like John Bellamy Foster provide elaborations.
(ii) “Reserve army of labour”: a much more foundational Marxian concept, on how capitalist accumulation disposes/discards workers (just think of today’s rust belts/opioid crises/ghettos in the richest countries, not to mention Global South’s expanding urban slums), and how surplus labour is used for capitalist class power to discipline workers. The Patnaiks bring in historical geopolitics to distinguish the role of the Global South’s reserve army under imperialism: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present.
--I was also reminded of how “anarchist” Chomsky is so proficient at debunking “free market” fundamentalism by detailing the crucial role of state-sponsored research & development (it helps when you’ve spent your life teaching at a major R&D institute like MIT, since 1955, not to mention the “Military Keynesianism” of the US Military Industrial Complex). Useful discussion between Chomsky + Varoufakis: https://youtu.be/szIGZVrSAyc?t=393
--Useful critiques on REDD (conservation aimed at deforestation) being abused via carbon offsets by corporations, but did I miss a critique on the mainstream “net zero” also being abused via carbon offsets? I.e. corporations can continue emissions, while balancing the emissions accounting (“net”) with tree planting (thus land-grabs on indigenous/marginalized/Global South) + non-existent carbon capture & storage technologies (i.e. BECCS).
3) Global Green New Deal:
--Pollin brushes through the technological debates as he’s an economist, citing works like Energy Revolution: The Physics and the Promise of Efficient Technology.
--For industrial policies, the focus is on state intervention reminiscent of the nurturing of the Internet by the military. For the Green New Deal, this means state investment/purchases, feed-in tariffs (contracts to guarantee stable prices for long-term investments), carbon caps and carbon taxes.
--For financial policies, there are 4 major components with Pollin’s big-picture accounting numbers:
(i) Carbon Tax: the emphasis here is that there must be a public rebate that proportionally corrects for regressive taxation (poor should not be punished for the rich’s pathological consumption). Otherwise, Yellow Vests protests.
(ii) Transfer funds from military spending: even a relatively small redirection of funds is a lot of money considering how much military spending sustains US capitalism! We seriously need to rebuild anti-war/anti-nuclear weapons movement (connect defund the militarized police/Prison Industrial Complex + fund-healthcare-not-bombs, and unite it with environmental movements, i.e. “The US military is the world’s largest polluter”, etc.).
(iii) Green bonds from Feds/ECB: this is a fraction of the trillions conjured by the Feds from the 2008 crisis to bailout financial criminals. Of course, both the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are captured by finance, so these are key battlegrounds for the public banking we need. For creative strategies, see Another Now.
(iv) Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies: also requires rebate.
4) Political Mobilization:
--Since this was written in 2020, there are reflections on COVID. Pollin’s reflection on Obama’s 2009 Stimulus was that back then there were not enough green projects ready for immediate deployment. Regardless of validity, leftists should always be planning for various scenarios, as reactionaries certainly are (the “Patriot Act” didn't magically appear days after the attacks).
--On “Ecosocialism”/dismantling capitalism, Chomsky highlighted the urgency of the climate crisis's time-frame and the need for a parallel approach with labour, inspired by Tony Mazzocchi’s US Labor Party aspirations as a challenge to the corporate Democrats/2-party 1 rule system (The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi). Pollin focused on full employment/long-term consumer savings (especially incorporating a just-transition employment guarantee for fossil fuel workers/communities, as well as the aforementioned public rebates) to counter status quo austerity + rising neofascism.
--Note: the authors pragmatism does collide with some theories they cite, ex. full employment policy vs. capitalism’s reserve army of labour. The one period full employment policy was implemented (at least in the richer capitalist countries) was the post-WWII Bretton Woods period (“Golden Age of Capitalism”). This welfare state compromise was won only after the combined social crises of:
(i) General crisis of capitalism (Great Depression)
(ii) Greatest war in human history (WWII), where communism/labour organized to fight fascism; thus, British organized labour were able to kick out “war hero” conservative Churchill after the war.
(iii) Victory of USSR communism over fascism.
(iv) Third World decolonization.
...See comments #11 and #12 below for the rest of the review (critique of Pollin!)...
Preamble:
--2022 update: I first read this in 2021 as a primer to a global Green New Deal (with number-crunching by the economist co-author Robert Pollin), having only read more social-critique intro’s like Naomi Klein’s (On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal). For my 2nd read, I have since followed up on the questions/concerns I originally raised, which I will update below.
--Taking a step back, Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance was the nonfiction book that shook me out of childhood. Eventually, I went on to explore political economy more closely, but it wasn’t because I excommunicated Chomsky in an internet-Left manner. The niche “Michael Parenti > Chomsky” memes are worth a chuckle (I do love Parenti). The “gate-keeper” allegations (ex. supporting voting-for-the-lesser-evil Hillary/Biden vs. Trump) are a distraction.
…As for the mess of how-to-frame-real-world-socialism, I point to Vijay Prashad still collaborating with Chomsky (and Yanis Varoufakis) despite disagreements on Lenin/USSR/China, etc. etc. Who are these other leftists with all the answers? I can hardly agree with myself day-to-day; the world is full of contradictions (as the best of Marx carefully examines)…
--Why return to Chomsky? He reads and synthesizes so much, lending a helpful hand in the arduous climb of the growing mountain of books. This topic is #1 in priority. My critique is mostly directly towards progressive economist co-author Pollin (who apparently contributed to the green energy portion of Obama’s 2009 Stimulus, hmmm….).
Highlights:
--The 2 existential issues raised in Chomsky’s 2013 Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe have only escalated. Nuclear weapons proliferation is sadly even more hidden (see: whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner).
--This 2020 book follows up on the latter crisis. Both Chomsky books mentioned are transcripts of interviews, thus overviews with useful references. The 4 sections are:
1) Climate Change:
--Brief overview provided (as neither authors are climate scientists); the focus is on the climate crisis (carbon emissions), with acknowledgement that the existential environmental crisis is broader. For a primer on the broader Earth Systems Science, I prefer an ecosocialist framework that centers the economic driver of our destructive relations with nature, i.e. capitalism (Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System), rather than more liberal-technocratic sciences that obscures capitalism and slips down “human nature”/“overpopulation” traps, i.e. the “Limits to Growth” systems-science folks (Thinking in Systems: A Primer), and the more-vague Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction). Ecosocialist critique of “overpopulation” framing: Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
--I was impressed capitalist agriculture was featured: “Corporate industrial agriculture is a major driver of climate change, responsible for roughly 25 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide, the three main greenhouse gases.”. We can flesh this out: capitalist agriculture (esp. factory meat production) is an unimaginable nightmare on a colossal scale that we hide behind concrete walls, with morbid spillovers (beyond sheer depravity of animals/workers) from biodiversity collapse to new diseases (Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19). The capitalist economics are maddening too, with tremendous overproduction/waste on one side (including dumping good food to maintain profitable prices), while the other side starves (capitalism is a global system; global starvation is in the millions annually).
--But most censored is how capitalist agriculture starves the Global South. Global North (esp. US) corporate agriculture is heavily-subsidized, while Global South petty-producers are forced to compete on the volatile global market but prevented from their own state protection (the cruel trap + hypocrisy of “free trade” imperialism). Global South petty-producers are wiped out, losing their land from debt/corporate land-grabs and flooding into urban slums (Planet of Slums) and militarized borders (Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism).
...Global North trade policy forces the Global South to:
(i) Export exotic cash crops to feed the Global North’s all-season-all-variety appetite (thus losing land to produce food staples to feed oneself), so as to…
(ii) Import Global North’s heavily-subsidized food staples production, enforcing dependency.
- A People’s Green New Deal : crucial next-step for Green New Deal to actually address Global South demands (esp. petty producers).
-The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry: must-read intro on how the Global South is starved to feed Global North capitalism. A more general overview: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance: deeper dive, esp. the chapter on World Bank/IMF; Hudson provides the economics of how the World Bank the “most evil organization in modern history”: https://youtu.be/paUgY6SGlgY
2) Capitalism and Climate Change:
--The reason I departed from Chomsky was to read more closely into political economy, as Chomsky usually only makes brief references (indeed, he seems to cite mainstream economics’ misuse of Adam Smith more than he explains Marx’s critique of capitalism).
…So you can imagine my surprise when Chomsky references Marx. Twice. The only thing I previously learned about Marx from Chomsky that I can remember was “Marx had some interesting ideas about how capitalism works, but he didn’t write much on socialism.” These brief references of Marx were:
(i) Metabolic rift: an obscure Marxian; I only encountered a few passages of this in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 on capitalist urbanization (to concentrate production/accumulation) disrupting nature’s metabolism esp. waste recycling for soil fertility, and how England had to resort to guano (seabird excrement) from colonized islands as fertilizer. Ecosocialists like John Bellamy Foster provide elaborations.
(ii) “Reserve army of labour”: a much more foundational Marxian concept, on how capitalist accumulation disposes/discards workers (just think of today’s rust belts/opioid crises/ghettos in the richest countries, not to mention Global South’s expanding urban slums), and how surplus labour is used for capitalist class power to discipline workers. The Patnaiks bring in historical geopolitics to distinguish the role of the Global South’s reserve army under imperialism: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present.
--I was also reminded of how “anarchist” Chomsky is so proficient at debunking “free market” fundamentalism by detailing the crucial role of state-sponsored research & development (it helps when you’ve spent your life teaching at a major R&D institute like MIT, since 1955, not to mention the “Military Keynesianism” of the US Military Industrial Complex). Useful discussion between Chomsky + Varoufakis: https://youtu.be/szIGZVrSAyc?t=393
--Useful critiques on REDD (conservation aimed at deforestation) being abused via carbon offsets by corporations, but did I miss a critique on the mainstream “net zero” also being abused via carbon offsets? I.e. corporations can continue emissions, while balancing the emissions accounting (“net”) with tree planting (thus land-grabs on indigenous/marginalized/Global South) + non-existent carbon capture & storage technologies (i.e. BECCS).
3) Global Green New Deal:
--Pollin brushes through the technological debates as he’s an economist, citing works like Energy Revolution: The Physics and the Promise of Efficient Technology.
--For industrial policies, the focus is on state intervention reminiscent of the nurturing of the Internet by the military. For the Green New Deal, this means state investment/purchases, feed-in tariffs (contracts to guarantee stable prices for long-term investments), carbon caps and carbon taxes.
--For financial policies, there are 4 major components with Pollin’s big-picture accounting numbers:
(i) Carbon Tax: the emphasis here is that there must be a public rebate that proportionally corrects for regressive taxation (poor should not be punished for the rich’s pathological consumption). Otherwise, Yellow Vests protests.
(ii) Transfer funds from military spending: even a relatively small redirection of funds is a lot of money considering how much military spending sustains US capitalism! We seriously need to rebuild anti-war/anti-nuclear weapons movement (connect defund the militarized police/Prison Industrial Complex + fund-healthcare-not-bombs, and unite it with environmental movements, i.e. “The US military is the world’s largest polluter”, etc.).
(iii) Green bonds from Feds/ECB: this is a fraction of the trillions conjured by the Feds from the 2008 crisis to bailout financial criminals. Of course, both the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are captured by finance, so these are key battlegrounds for the public banking we need. For creative strategies, see Another Now.
(iv) Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies: also requires rebate.
4) Political Mobilization:
--Since this was written in 2020, there are reflections on COVID. Pollin’s reflection on Obama’s 2009 Stimulus was that back then there were not enough green projects ready for immediate deployment. Regardless of validity, leftists should always be planning for various scenarios, as reactionaries certainly are (the “Patriot Act” didn't magically appear days after the attacks).
--On “Ecosocialism”/dismantling capitalism, Chomsky highlighted the urgency of the climate crisis's time-frame and the need for a parallel approach with labour, inspired by Tony Mazzocchi’s US Labor Party aspirations as a challenge to the corporate Democrats/2-party 1 rule system (The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi). Pollin focused on full employment/long-term consumer savings (especially incorporating a just-transition employment guarantee for fossil fuel workers/communities, as well as the aforementioned public rebates) to counter status quo austerity + rising neofascism.
--Note: the authors pragmatism does collide with some theories they cite, ex. full employment policy vs. capitalism’s reserve army of labour. The one period full employment policy was implemented (at least in the richer capitalist countries) was the post-WWII Bretton Woods period (“Golden Age of Capitalism”). This welfare state compromise was won only after the combined social crises of:
(i) General crisis of capitalism (Great Depression)
(ii) Greatest war in human history (WWII), where communism/labour organized to fight fascism; thus, British organized labour were able to kick out “war hero” conservative Churchill after the war.
(iii) Victory of USSR communism over fascism.
(iv) Third World decolonization.
...See comments #11 and #12 below for the rest of the review (critique of Pollin!)...
November 2, 2020
For someone who has mainly devoted his ecological reading to old carbon-tax discussions and the grandiosity of a total ecological disaster (in many books), I feel as if I'm coming into the Global Green New Deal topic rather late.
You know, because so many other things have been going on. Like social inequality, the rise of fascism, possible nuclear winter, global pandemics... the list is huge. And pressing. And because of all that, when we hear about the need to put our collective political will in gear to fix a problem that is going to affect our children and our children's children HARD, and much harder than we're feeling it now with the rising heat and massive fires, we all tend think... hey... well... yeah, it's bad (when we're not being climate change deniers) but it's FAR AWAY and HARD.
Ahem.
Yeah.
Well.
It's going to be even harder when none of us can afford the electric bill for our air conditioner when what we really need is 14 air conditioners for a single apartment. And that's not even bringing up the subject of mass deaths across the world because it's just too hot. Period.
So what, exactly, is THIS book about?
It's a straightforward interview including both Naom Chomsky and Robert Pollin. Pollin is the expert on the topic of getting ourselves into a good position to achieve the ecological goals. Naom Chomsky is just a brilliant man who happens to remember everything he's read and has been at the forefront of two fields: Linguistics and, later in life, politics and current events and how they apply to wonderfully analyzed trends.
Having read and watched many documentaries with Naom Chomsky, I'm something of a huge fan and believe that everyone should pay close attention to all that he says. He breaks things down in ways that are stunningly clear. And he also refuses to shy away from voicing his own opinions while being very clear that they are just opinions. He doesn't conflate analysis with subjectivity.
As for Pollin, I learned a lot of interesting facts about the Global Green New Deal. First of all, it takes its name from FDR's New Deal stance. Mobilizing a HUGE portion of society toward one end. It's possible. It may even be likely at the eleventh hour, when all hope has been lost, that we might even GO THERE. But then, the book does give equal time to the HOPEFULLNESS and logical steps that governments and political movements to pressure those governments would have to take in order to move toward a task that would still take 10 to 30 years to even accomplish, and it also gives time to the absolute absurdity of what we CURRENTLY HAVE.
Some high points:
Dropping oil and logging is not an apocalypse. There is a LOT of financial opportunities in alternative energy. And I'm not just talking about the existing economic giants getting on board, but for all the existing workers who make a living in the old industry. Making money and selling alternative energy is CURRENTLY on par with oil. Careers AND the price in the end-products.
Things have changed from 15 years ago.
Being knowledgeable about the current field is NOT a luxury we can forgo. Living with the fear that everything is going to hell kinda begs the question: WHY are we living with a fear of change when the change is all for our benefit? We all need to drop the old assumptions and look toward re-tooling ourselves en-masse.
It really is a global concern. It affects everyone of every political motive. And yet, like the pandemic, people are turning it into a selling point. It should never have been a bone of contention.
It is POSSIBLE to pull it off. Unfortunately, we need EVERYONE on board.
You know, because so many other things have been going on. Like social inequality, the rise of fascism, possible nuclear winter, global pandemics... the list is huge. And pressing. And because of all that, when we hear about the need to put our collective political will in gear to fix a problem that is going to affect our children and our children's children HARD, and much harder than we're feeling it now with the rising heat and massive fires, we all tend think... hey... well... yeah, it's bad (when we're not being climate change deniers) but it's FAR AWAY and HARD.
Ahem.
Yeah.
Well.
It's going to be even harder when none of us can afford the electric bill for our air conditioner when what we really need is 14 air conditioners for a single apartment. And that's not even bringing up the subject of mass deaths across the world because it's just too hot. Period.
So what, exactly, is THIS book about?
It's a straightforward interview including both Naom Chomsky and Robert Pollin. Pollin is the expert on the topic of getting ourselves into a good position to achieve the ecological goals. Naom Chomsky is just a brilliant man who happens to remember everything he's read and has been at the forefront of two fields: Linguistics and, later in life, politics and current events and how they apply to wonderfully analyzed trends.
Having read and watched many documentaries with Naom Chomsky, I'm something of a huge fan and believe that everyone should pay close attention to all that he says. He breaks things down in ways that are stunningly clear. And he also refuses to shy away from voicing his own opinions while being very clear that they are just opinions. He doesn't conflate analysis with subjectivity.
As for Pollin, I learned a lot of interesting facts about the Global Green New Deal. First of all, it takes its name from FDR's New Deal stance. Mobilizing a HUGE portion of society toward one end. It's possible. It may even be likely at the eleventh hour, when all hope has been lost, that we might even GO THERE. But then, the book does give equal time to the HOPEFULLNESS and logical steps that governments and political movements to pressure those governments would have to take in order to move toward a task that would still take 10 to 30 years to even accomplish, and it also gives time to the absolute absurdity of what we CURRENTLY HAVE.
Some high points:
Dropping oil and logging is not an apocalypse. There is a LOT of financial opportunities in alternative energy. And I'm not just talking about the existing economic giants getting on board, but for all the existing workers who make a living in the old industry. Making money and selling alternative energy is CURRENTLY on par with oil. Careers AND the price in the end-products.
Things have changed from 15 years ago.
Being knowledgeable about the current field is NOT a luxury we can forgo. Living with the fear that everything is going to hell kinda begs the question: WHY are we living with a fear of change when the change is all for our benefit? We all need to drop the old assumptions and look toward re-tooling ourselves en-masse.
It really is a global concern. It affects everyone of every political motive. And yet, like the pandemic, people are turning it into a selling point. It should never have been a bone of contention.
It is POSSIBLE to pull it off. Unfortunately, we need EVERYONE on board.
September 2, 2022
The critical question is what constitutes a realistic and sustainable project for achieving zero-emission energy resources by 2050 that can overcome existing political, economic, and even cultural resistance to a “green economy.”
Engaging an intellectual and a political economist in a debate about climate change is really interesting, especially as it reveals quite starkly how complex and interlinked all of these issues are. One might think the answer is simple: Decarbonisation by set target dates. But the inherent inequality of the world in terms of resources and capital means that the undeveloped world is (a) going to lag behind such global efforts and (b) be exposed to the worst ravages of climate change anyway.
I am surprised that one of the criticisms of this book is that it lacks an action plan. Pollin crunches the numbers and concludes that all we need is a small fraction of the GDP that was devoted to World War II. I am unsure if by ‘we’ he is referring exclusively to the US, but I suppose that is a safe assumption.
Chomsky said in October 2020 interview with TNR about the calculation: “We could meet the conditions that the International Panel on Climate Change has specified of reduction of emissions substantially by 2030 and up to net-zero emissions by 2050. Sachs and Pollin have estimated it would take about 2% to 3% of GDP, which is much less than the Second World War and much less in terms of human mobilisation. I am old enough to remember the Second World War very well, and the whole society was geared to war production.”
He adds: “We have a couple of decades—maybe 20, 30 years—to make the decisions that will determine whether organized human life on Earth can survive, literally. That’s way beyond World War II. And with a fraction of the expenditures, we know how to deal with it. In fact, Bob Pollin’s calculations indicate that with a fraction of the money that the Treasury Department has poured into trying to sustain the economy after the Covid-19 crisis, with a fraction of that, we could meet these goals.”
Chomsky’s main focus in this book is what is termed the Just Energy Transition. This refers to a gradual (dare one say sustainable) move away from coal, oil and gas-based energy sources to lower carbon technologies in a manner that does not negatively impact society. Of course, there is a whole world of discussion in what ‘negatively impact’ exactly means.
As with most books about the climate crisis, this one preaches a bit to the converted. You will not learn anything radical here if you simply keep up with the news, and the almost daily litany of extreme weather events from around the globe.
What this book does do very well is provide a succinct and forceful summation of all the arguments (for and against), the prevailing evidence, the looming global financial implications (because the New Green Deal affects the entire planet) and the moral imperative for acting now.
Engaging an intellectual and a political economist in a debate about climate change is really interesting, especially as it reveals quite starkly how complex and interlinked all of these issues are. One might think the answer is simple: Decarbonisation by set target dates. But the inherent inequality of the world in terms of resources and capital means that the undeveloped world is (a) going to lag behind such global efforts and (b) be exposed to the worst ravages of climate change anyway.
I am surprised that one of the criticisms of this book is that it lacks an action plan. Pollin crunches the numbers and concludes that all we need is a small fraction of the GDP that was devoted to World War II. I am unsure if by ‘we’ he is referring exclusively to the US, but I suppose that is a safe assumption.
Chomsky said in October 2020 interview with TNR about the calculation: “We could meet the conditions that the International Panel on Climate Change has specified of reduction of emissions substantially by 2030 and up to net-zero emissions by 2050. Sachs and Pollin have estimated it would take about 2% to 3% of GDP, which is much less than the Second World War and much less in terms of human mobilisation. I am old enough to remember the Second World War very well, and the whole society was geared to war production.”
He adds: “We have a couple of decades—maybe 20, 30 years—to make the decisions that will determine whether organized human life on Earth can survive, literally. That’s way beyond World War II. And with a fraction of the expenditures, we know how to deal with it. In fact, Bob Pollin’s calculations indicate that with a fraction of the money that the Treasury Department has poured into trying to sustain the economy after the Covid-19 crisis, with a fraction of that, we could meet these goals.”
Chomsky’s main focus in this book is what is termed the Just Energy Transition. This refers to a gradual (dare one say sustainable) move away from coal, oil and gas-based energy sources to lower carbon technologies in a manner that does not negatively impact society. Of course, there is a whole world of discussion in what ‘negatively impact’ exactly means.
As with most books about the climate crisis, this one preaches a bit to the converted. You will not learn anything radical here if you simply keep up with the news, and the almost daily litany of extreme weather events from around the globe.
What this book does do very well is provide a succinct and forceful summation of all the arguments (for and against), the prevailing evidence, the looming global financial implications (because the New Green Deal affects the entire planet) and the moral imperative for acting now.
June 4, 2020
If Noam Chomsky is willing to plunge into the Green New Deal (GND) debate, I am certainly willing to read it. Unfortunately, Chomsky’s comments are mostly the same as in his political criticism. He defers to experts for environmental issues. Robert Pollin is that expert, and the two of them answer questions about the Green New Deal from Chronis Polychroniou in Climate Crisis and Global Green New Deal. Sadly, the questions are softball lobs meant only to advance the narrative, and no three-way argument ever takes shape. The book never heats up beyond tepid on the GND.
Chomsky is no fan of Donald Trump. In one of his first answers, he diverts to Trump in language he normally saves for linguists who disagree with his theories of language acquisition or generative grammar, where he is, to put it mildly, biting. “The Chief is an infantile megalomaniac, and very effective conman, who couldn’t care less if the world burns or explodes, as long as he can pretend to be the winner as he two-steps over the cliff waving his little red hat triumphantly.” That sets the stage for Chomsky’s criticisms of the US government’s activities in things environmental.
Just one example: In 2018 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a 500 page environmental impact statement on vehicle emissions. It said that since temperatures will rise by more than four degrees Celsius anyway, the amount of emissions from vehicles will make no significant difference. “If one can find a comparable document of similar malevolence in the historical record, I would be interested in knowing about it.” Classic Chomsky. Classic Trump administration. But he is not nearly as sharp, informed or focused on the Green New Deal, and that’s what the book is supposed to be about.
Pollin is more on topic. In fact, the whole nub of the book is his analysis of how to pay for the Green New Deal. It appears halfway through, and he is able to show it is most doable. If there is the political will.
The four funding sources are:
1, A carbon tax in which 75% of the proceeds are rebated to the public, and 25% into clean energy projects.
2. A transfer of funds out of the military budgets globally
3. A Green Bond lending program from the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank
4. The end of all fossil fuel subsidies, with 25% of amount channeled into clean energy projects.
Pollin backs them up with stats. In 2019 Credit Suisse calculated the total value of global financial assets at $317 trillion. The Green New Deal requires $2.4 trillion a year (at first). This is just 7/10 of one percent of those financial assets. He says the $1.3 trillion from public contribution net investment is all of 2.5% of GDP. That would allow the world to reach zero emissions by 2050, without breaking the bank. He does this for all four sources. Getting governments to agree however, is out of scope.
Sadly, rather reducing the 33 billion tons of carbon dumped into the ecosphere annually, we are still increasing. We’re now looking at 38 billion tons a year. With perhaps a temporary dip from the coronavirus pandemic.
In other words, there is no political will to accomplish anything at all. All of the Paris COP21 nations have failed to live up to their commitments. What is needed is a Franklin Delano Roosevelt to implement the New Deal by directing the entire government to focus on it. FDR mobilized the country to climb out of the Depression and then again to produce everything needed to win World War II. Both Chomsky and Pollin consider the ecological disaster to be an emergency of at least the same magnitude as the ones FDR faced. Like his program, the Green New Deal will create jobs and increase wealth – just not in fossil fuels. But short of an FDR in charge, this book shows no path to avoid oblivion at all.
If all it is is the four funding sources, this would have been better much received as a magazine article. It is not enough for a book.
David Wineberg
Chomsky is no fan of Donald Trump. In one of his first answers, he diverts to Trump in language he normally saves for linguists who disagree with his theories of language acquisition or generative grammar, where he is, to put it mildly, biting. “The Chief is an infantile megalomaniac, and very effective conman, who couldn’t care less if the world burns or explodes, as long as he can pretend to be the winner as he two-steps over the cliff waving his little red hat triumphantly.” That sets the stage for Chomsky’s criticisms of the US government’s activities in things environmental.
Just one example: In 2018 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a 500 page environmental impact statement on vehicle emissions. It said that since temperatures will rise by more than four degrees Celsius anyway, the amount of emissions from vehicles will make no significant difference. “If one can find a comparable document of similar malevolence in the historical record, I would be interested in knowing about it.” Classic Chomsky. Classic Trump administration. But he is not nearly as sharp, informed or focused on the Green New Deal, and that’s what the book is supposed to be about.
Pollin is more on topic. In fact, the whole nub of the book is his analysis of how to pay for the Green New Deal. It appears halfway through, and he is able to show it is most doable. If there is the political will.
The four funding sources are:
1, A carbon tax in which 75% of the proceeds are rebated to the public, and 25% into clean energy projects.
2. A transfer of funds out of the military budgets globally
3. A Green Bond lending program from the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank
4. The end of all fossil fuel subsidies, with 25% of amount channeled into clean energy projects.
Pollin backs them up with stats. In 2019 Credit Suisse calculated the total value of global financial assets at $317 trillion. The Green New Deal requires $2.4 trillion a year (at first). This is just 7/10 of one percent of those financial assets. He says the $1.3 trillion from public contribution net investment is all of 2.5% of GDP. That would allow the world to reach zero emissions by 2050, without breaking the bank. He does this for all four sources. Getting governments to agree however, is out of scope.
Sadly, rather reducing the 33 billion tons of carbon dumped into the ecosphere annually, we are still increasing. We’re now looking at 38 billion tons a year. With perhaps a temporary dip from the coronavirus pandemic.
In other words, there is no political will to accomplish anything at all. All of the Paris COP21 nations have failed to live up to their commitments. What is needed is a Franklin Delano Roosevelt to implement the New Deal by directing the entire government to focus on it. FDR mobilized the country to climb out of the Depression and then again to produce everything needed to win World War II. Both Chomsky and Pollin consider the ecological disaster to be an emergency of at least the same magnitude as the ones FDR faced. Like his program, the Green New Deal will create jobs and increase wealth – just not in fossil fuels. But short of an FDR in charge, this book shows no path to avoid oblivion at all.
If all it is is the four funding sources, this would have been better much received as a magazine article. It is not enough for a book.
David Wineberg
February 14, 2022
An equivalence of a Stephen King’s novel, but in this scenario, it is reality.
I think everyone should probably read this book.
Actual rating: 4.2/5 ☆
I think everyone should probably read this book.
Actual rating: 4.2/5 ☆
May 25, 2020
This is a book of two halves. The disappointing half, unfortunately, is the contribution of Noam Chomsky. Ranting, railing and rabble rousing – when he is not just regurgitating the works of eminent climatologists that is – Chomsky’s contribution is more a propaganda for his left leaning thinking than a discourse on saving the Planet by employing rational means. The much acclaimed thinker once again exhibits his laughably inadequate and puerile views on India’s internal affairs concerning Kashmir by equating Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, the BJP with ‘Hindutva’ extremism.
Whatever Chomsky derails, Robert Pollin redeems. An American economist, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and founding co-director of its Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), Pollin provides an impeccably measured view of what he terms the Global Green New Deal – an ambitious target to mitigate if not downright obliterate the perils of Climate Change.
As Pollin informs his readers, in its Fourth Assessment Report issued in 2007, the IPCC proclaimed that if the global average mean temperature was to be stabilized at 2.0 Degrees Centigrade above the pre-industrial average, annual CO2 emissions needed to fall, roughly speaking, between, 4 and 13 billion metric tons by 2050. But as Pollin proceeds to illustrate the premier organisation for protecting our Planet began oscillating in its assessment when, in its Fifth Assessment Report released in 2014, the IPCC reduced the range of necessary emission reductions at 36 – 76 percent (from an earlier 60 – 88 percent), to achieve the same 2.0 Degree Centigrade stabilization point. If this makes your head reel, then digest this: in 2018, the IPCC shifted goal posts yet again, this time reverting to a more urgent and alarmist position!
To a great extent, the trajectory that climate policies take in the modern world, are driven by the philosophy of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, in a departure from orthodox Economics, represents the nexus between governments and giant corporations where the former allows the latter to pursue the profit element with gay abandon. In the event, the profits of the corporations are adversely impacted or impaired, the governments step in with generous largesse in the form of bail outs.
Then there is also the scourge of what Pollin terms, ‘Industrial Agriculture.’ The use of Industrial Agriculture, according to the International Labour Organisation, contributes to, “soil degradation (the loss of organic matter as a result of over exploitation and mismanagement), Desertification and freshwater scarcity (through inadequate crop and land management), biodiversity loss, pest resistance and water pollution (resulting from change in land use eutrophication [i.e. over enrichment of water with minerals and nutrients, which induces excessive growth of algae], run-off and improper nutrient management.”
As Pollin highlights, Industrial Agriculture also results in four major inter-related channels:
Deforestation;
The use of land for cattle farming, consuming far more of the available earth’s surface than any other purpose, including growing crops for food;
Heavy reliance on natural gas based nitrogen fertilizers along with synthetic pesticides and herbicides to increase land productivity; and
The huge amounts of food that is grown but wasted
So is there any way to break this inextricable linkage between Capitalism and Corporation that would ensure preservation of the environment? Pollin proposes a New Green Deal that would ensure a zero carbon emission by 2050. In 2019, Credit Suisse had estimated that the total value of global financial assets was $317 trillion. Investments into clean energy to attain a zero carbon emission scenario by 2050 would involve a sum of $2.4 trillion dollars to be invested over a period of time beginning 2021. This represents 0.7% of the total value of the global financial wealth.
At the heart of Pollin’s Green New Deal lies four large scale funding sources to encourage and support public investments in clean energy. The four sources are:
A Carbon Tax, wherein 75% of the revenues derived from its levy are rebated back to the public. The remaining 25% would be channeled into clean energy investment projects;
A transfer of funds earmarked for the military/defense budgets across the world in general, but the United States, in particular;
A Green Bond lending programme under the aegis of both the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank; and
The elimination of all existing fossil fuel subsidies and the channeling of 25% of those funds into clean energy investments
Although bold in their sweep and innovative in their wake, it is easy to see objections being raised for these plans. Proposal number two above, involving the diversion of budgets earmarked for defense, to clean energy investments, would more than just stir a hornet’s nest. With China ultra-aggressively challenging America’s economic and military hegemony, and actively pursuing a modernization plan of its maritime arsenal especially in the South China Sea, it is predictable as to what the Trump administration’s reaction would be to such a proposal. More so, considering the fact that this is a Government that has almost succeeded in expunging the world ‘climate change’ from all its official correspondence, cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and dragged USA out of the Paris Climate Change Conference.
“Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet” is at once a highly absorbing as well as an informative work. Robert Pollin brings to bear his enviable experience and conflates the principles of economics with that of the environment. This concoction, is, putting it mildly, delectable. The calm, rational and logical postulations of Pollin serves as a perfect antidote to an unending torrent of diatribe that is ‘Chomsky Speak.’
Overall this is one book that makes the reader not just think about the future that the coming generation will inherit but also about the inevitable role which each one of us has an opportunity to exercise in influencing the direction that such a future would assume.
(Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet – Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin with Chronis Polychroniou a Verso Books endeavour in the USA will be published on 22nd September, 2020)
Whatever Chomsky derails, Robert Pollin redeems. An American economist, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and founding co-director of its Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), Pollin provides an impeccably measured view of what he terms the Global Green New Deal – an ambitious target to mitigate if not downright obliterate the perils of Climate Change.
As Pollin informs his readers, in its Fourth Assessment Report issued in 2007, the IPCC proclaimed that if the global average mean temperature was to be stabilized at 2.0 Degrees Centigrade above the pre-industrial average, annual CO2 emissions needed to fall, roughly speaking, between, 4 and 13 billion metric tons by 2050. But as Pollin proceeds to illustrate the premier organisation for protecting our Planet began oscillating in its assessment when, in its Fifth Assessment Report released in 2014, the IPCC reduced the range of necessary emission reductions at 36 – 76 percent (from an earlier 60 – 88 percent), to achieve the same 2.0 Degree Centigrade stabilization point. If this makes your head reel, then digest this: in 2018, the IPCC shifted goal posts yet again, this time reverting to a more urgent and alarmist position!
To a great extent, the trajectory that climate policies take in the modern world, are driven by the philosophy of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, in a departure from orthodox Economics, represents the nexus between governments and giant corporations where the former allows the latter to pursue the profit element with gay abandon. In the event, the profits of the corporations are adversely impacted or impaired, the governments step in with generous largesse in the form of bail outs.
Then there is also the scourge of what Pollin terms, ‘Industrial Agriculture.’ The use of Industrial Agriculture, according to the International Labour Organisation, contributes to, “soil degradation (the loss of organic matter as a result of over exploitation and mismanagement), Desertification and freshwater scarcity (through inadequate crop and land management), biodiversity loss, pest resistance and water pollution (resulting from change in land use eutrophication [i.e. over enrichment of water with minerals and nutrients, which induces excessive growth of algae], run-off and improper nutrient management.”
As Pollin highlights, Industrial Agriculture also results in four major inter-related channels:
Deforestation;
The use of land for cattle farming, consuming far more of the available earth’s surface than any other purpose, including growing crops for food;
Heavy reliance on natural gas based nitrogen fertilizers along with synthetic pesticides and herbicides to increase land productivity; and
The huge amounts of food that is grown but wasted
So is there any way to break this inextricable linkage between Capitalism and Corporation that would ensure preservation of the environment? Pollin proposes a New Green Deal that would ensure a zero carbon emission by 2050. In 2019, Credit Suisse had estimated that the total value of global financial assets was $317 trillion. Investments into clean energy to attain a zero carbon emission scenario by 2050 would involve a sum of $2.4 trillion dollars to be invested over a period of time beginning 2021. This represents 0.7% of the total value of the global financial wealth.
At the heart of Pollin’s Green New Deal lies four large scale funding sources to encourage and support public investments in clean energy. The four sources are:
A Carbon Tax, wherein 75% of the revenues derived from its levy are rebated back to the public. The remaining 25% would be channeled into clean energy investment projects;
A transfer of funds earmarked for the military/defense budgets across the world in general, but the United States, in particular;
A Green Bond lending programme under the aegis of both the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank; and
The elimination of all existing fossil fuel subsidies and the channeling of 25% of those funds into clean energy investments
Although bold in their sweep and innovative in their wake, it is easy to see objections being raised for these plans. Proposal number two above, involving the diversion of budgets earmarked for defense, to clean energy investments, would more than just stir a hornet’s nest. With China ultra-aggressively challenging America’s economic and military hegemony, and actively pursuing a modernization plan of its maritime arsenal especially in the South China Sea, it is predictable as to what the Trump administration’s reaction would be to such a proposal. More so, considering the fact that this is a Government that has almost succeeded in expunging the world ‘climate change’ from all its official correspondence, cut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and dragged USA out of the Paris Climate Change Conference.
“Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet” is at once a highly absorbing as well as an informative work. Robert Pollin brings to bear his enviable experience and conflates the principles of economics with that of the environment. This concoction, is, putting it mildly, delectable. The calm, rational and logical postulations of Pollin serves as a perfect antidote to an unending torrent of diatribe that is ‘Chomsky Speak.’
Overall this is one book that makes the reader not just think about the future that the coming generation will inherit but also about the inevitable role which each one of us has an opportunity to exercise in influencing the direction that such a future would assume.
(Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet – Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin with Chronis Polychroniou a Verso Books endeavour in the USA will be published on 22nd September, 2020)
November 27, 2020
What left me a little cold in this interview was the position that the economy must be allowed to continue to grow so as to be able to afford to pay for an energy transformation (with social justice) within a 10 to 30 year timeframe. This may be pragmatic, but it leaves the coyotes in charge. How this would be better than an ecosocialist model needed further exploration
January 1, 2021
“The survival of humanity” “is seriously at risk on our present course, to quote a leaked internal memo of JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, referring specifically to the bank’s genocidal policy of funding fossil fuel production”. Noam says Republicans are “the only major conservative party to reject anthropogenic climate change – a global anomaly.” Noam says that “dismantling capitalism is impossible within the timeframe necessary for taking urgent action”. “Pessimism of the mind; optimism of the will” – [Antonio Gramsci] Libertarian boy toy Ludwig von Mises “enthusiastically welcomed the crushing of the vibrant Austrian labor movement and social democracy by state violence in 1928 laying the groundwork for Austrian fascism; and in his major work, Liberalism, he praised fascism for saving European civilization”. Noam says, “the foundation of US economic development and of Britain as well was the most vicious system of slavery in human history.” Only 20% of Americans to date “realize” that 90% of climate scientists “accept the overwhelming consensus.”
Noam says Nixon was the last liberal American president; “liberal in the US sense, meaning mildly social democratic”. Canada has health care because it’s unions fought for it and on behalf of all the people of Canada. If Trump doesn’t privately believe in climate change, why did he “appeal to the government of Ireland for permission to build a wall to protect his golf course from rising sea levels”?
Before steam energy, places along the water ruled through free applied use of local energy; after steam energy, it made sense to put that new steam where you have the most willing workers. Finance had seen that development of “the steam engine did not open up new stores of badly needed energy so much as it gave access to exploitable labor.” FDR took over “97% of the synthetic rubber industry, 89% of the aviation industry, 87% of shipbuilding” – The Green New Deal should mobilize and can mobilize along these lines. Marx said in Capital Volume I that “capitalists will oppose full employment precisely because it raises worker’s bargaining power relative to themselves.” Marx refers to this as a “reserve army of labor.”
Robert Pollin says nitrogen fertilizer usage increased 800% between 1961 and 2019. Making it creates the three main greenhouse gases. Nitrogen fertilizer also converts to nitrous oxide when it combines with soil bacteria. What we should of course be doing is crop rotation, animal manure, biological pest control, composting, and planting legumes to restore nitrogen instead of relying on ammonia. 90% of the world breathes unsafe air. “For low-income countries, air pollution is the number one risk factor for death.”
This is a good but light book by Noam. I read everything Noam does but this book was also one half Robert Pollin, whose contribution to this review was six sentences of info and the recommendation to read and review Andreas Malm’s, “Fossil Capital” book.
Noam says Nixon was the last liberal American president; “liberal in the US sense, meaning mildly social democratic”. Canada has health care because it’s unions fought for it and on behalf of all the people of Canada. If Trump doesn’t privately believe in climate change, why did he “appeal to the government of Ireland for permission to build a wall to protect his golf course from rising sea levels”?
Before steam energy, places along the water ruled through free applied use of local energy; after steam energy, it made sense to put that new steam where you have the most willing workers. Finance had seen that development of “the steam engine did not open up new stores of badly needed energy so much as it gave access to exploitable labor.” FDR took over “97% of the synthetic rubber industry, 89% of the aviation industry, 87% of shipbuilding” – The Green New Deal should mobilize and can mobilize along these lines. Marx said in Capital Volume I that “capitalists will oppose full employment precisely because it raises worker’s bargaining power relative to themselves.” Marx refers to this as a “reserve army of labor.”
Robert Pollin says nitrogen fertilizer usage increased 800% between 1961 and 2019. Making it creates the three main greenhouse gases. Nitrogen fertilizer also converts to nitrous oxide when it combines with soil bacteria. What we should of course be doing is crop rotation, animal manure, biological pest control, composting, and planting legumes to restore nitrogen instead of relying on ammonia. 90% of the world breathes unsafe air. “For low-income countries, air pollution is the number one risk factor for death.”
This is a good but light book by Noam. I read everything Noam does but this book was also one half Robert Pollin, whose contribution to this review was six sentences of info and the recommendation to read and review Andreas Malm’s, “Fossil Capital” book.
February 1, 2021
Una chiacchierata fra Chomsky e Pollin su temi di grandissima attualità, forse messi un po' da parte con l'avvento della pandemia. Un libro necessario, che non aggiunge moltissimo a chi ha già fatto propri quei temi e che sarebbe indispensabile a chi questo libro non lo leggerà mai.
February 28, 2025
Will admit, lost my way a little bit towards the end here. Chomsky and Pollin are absolute monsters in the political science world, but I couldn’t help but think that these great ideas are revolutionary, and would lack the thing that the climate emergency needs the most: political will. For example, as part of the Green new deal, a suggestion was to transfer funds from defence to the climate fund for redistribution for climate (a mere 6% was suggested for palatability). This was only one of the examples, and although I find it hard to see a US Congress consider such measures, especially if it came at the expense of defence appropriation, maybe that’s the intent of the proposals. For a crisis as imminent as climate change, the only way to mitigate or adapt to the effects is to progress with these innovative ideas.
I enjoyed the earlier chapters also, learning how the political spectrum has shifted to the hard right in West, mainly in response to the neoliberal years of Reagan and Thatcher from the 70s-90s was revealing. It was mentioned that Eisenhower, in comparison, would be considered a social democrat, given his views on worker’s rights, women’s rights and general push for workers. The American right now has shifted so far that anthropogenic acceleration of climate change is believed by a mere 20% of the population regardless of it being ascertained by >80% of scientists.
A bit of a bleak read, dense at times, but would read again.
I enjoyed the earlier chapters also, learning how the political spectrum has shifted to the hard right in West, mainly in response to the neoliberal years of Reagan and Thatcher from the 70s-90s was revealing. It was mentioned that Eisenhower, in comparison, would be considered a social democrat, given his views on worker’s rights, women’s rights and general push for workers. The American right now has shifted so far that anthropogenic acceleration of climate change is believed by a mere 20% of the population regardless of it being ascertained by >80% of scientists.
A bit of a bleak read, dense at times, but would read again.
May 20, 2021
A little too unspecific for my taste. But it’s a decent primer for climate change and policy needed for change to happen.
I feel most books about climate change these days are too general. Also too much goes into repeating research that human induced climate change is real and that action is needed (wouldn’t think the audience of this book needs convicing, a climate denier isn’t going to pick up a book by Chomsky). I maybe had the wrong expectations for this book going in, as I was looking for a more nuanced breakdown and analysis of specific potential strategies within a global green new deal.
The first third of this book was repetition of arguments why action is needed. Mid part of the book discussed potential solutions and tried to put them into perspective. The discussion got more insightful towards the end. I found Noams thoughts on civil disobedience, systemic change, whether one should consider tactical consequences of civil disobedience and several other topics to be surprisingly pragmatic, given his reputation as a politicsl activist.
I feel most books about climate change these days are too general. Also too much goes into repeating research that human induced climate change is real and that action is needed (wouldn’t think the audience of this book needs convicing, a climate denier isn’t going to pick up a book by Chomsky). I maybe had the wrong expectations for this book going in, as I was looking for a more nuanced breakdown and analysis of specific potential strategies within a global green new deal.
The first third of this book was repetition of arguments why action is needed. Mid part of the book discussed potential solutions and tried to put them into perspective. The discussion got more insightful towards the end. I found Noams thoughts on civil disobedience, systemic change, whether one should consider tactical consequences of civil disobedience and several other topics to be surprisingly pragmatic, given his reputation as a politicsl activist.
January 24, 2021
Criticisms regarding Chomsky's contributions are fair. They aren't particularly substantive. The title of this book promises something else. Luckily, this is the very thing Robert Pollin manages to provide: a concrete and substantive approach to solving the climate crisis. Why 4 stars? Pollin's contributions were extremely clear to this novel climate change reader. On top of that, I (very subjectively) thought Chomsky's political and somewhat populist statements kept the reading engaging not just for analysts but also for activists and (aspiring) politicians. And that kinda matters.
December 13, 2020
I'm not a fan of books written in this semi-interview fashion, but this one had a strong economic argument for the green new deal. It probably isn't all that useful to someone already caught up on the climate crisis, but I did really enjoy the discussion of the environmental impacts of neo-colonialism.
A haiku in summary:
please please please please please
please please please please do something
about climate change
A haiku in summary:
please please please please please
please please please please do something
about climate change
January 24, 2021
Pallin does all the work and diminishes Noam; but chapter 3 in particular is an excellent breakdown of the components of the GND, as well as the logic and finding behind them.
Missing a few citations throughout, which seem largely inconsistent and would like those sources. Additionally, the interview style works as a structure, and points to wider extensive pieces on individual points.
Missing a few citations throughout, which seem largely inconsistent and would like those sources. Additionally, the interview style works as a structure, and points to wider extensive pieces on individual points.
September 13, 2021
This book taught me a lot about the political and socioeconomic roots and consequences of the climate crisis. I cut off one star because its language was too advanced for me. If the book were a bit simplified for a layperson, I would recommend it to everyone. Still, a great resource for the humanity!
March 1, 2022
Easy to read due to the interview-based format. Yet Pollin and Chomsky do a lot of telling but little showing. There are only a few human or first-hand accounts. The most exciting parts discuss policy in plain terms as with carbon taxes or rebates. It would have been interesting to read more about grassroots activists themselves. Overall, I found it insightftul but not cohesive.
October 29, 2020
A must-read book.
January 1, 2021
Forget Stephen King, this is the scariest book I've ever read.
January 21, 2021
No hyperbole or sensationalism, just a thorough discussion on what needs to be done politically and personally to combat climate change.
August 10, 2023
This book wasn't it for me. There are definitely lots of areas that I agree with Chomsky and Pollin, but also lots of areas I disagree.
What justified the low star rating for me was the style of writing. I felt that many subjective opinions and interpretations of data were presented as facts in the book. This took power away from genuine facts, such as the realities of climate change.
Further, I felt that this book had a very very strong narrative that was chosen before the book was written. Data and examples were then chosen to fit around that narrative, sometimes in very conflicting ways (a notable example is the green energy generation target set by the state of New York, which are spurned in an earlier chapter but later used as a success story).
What justified the low star rating for me was the style of writing. I felt that many subjective opinions and interpretations of data were presented as facts in the book. This took power away from genuine facts, such as the realities of climate change.
Further, I felt that this book had a very very strong narrative that was chosen before the book was written. Data and examples were then chosen to fit around that narrative, sometimes in very conflicting ways (a notable example is the green energy generation target set by the state of New York, which are spurned in an earlier chapter but later used as a success story).
October 23, 2020
Very thoughtful and soberminded approach to the massive challenge of saving the world for a decent civilization. The conversation format helped facilitate the flow, but I felt it may have been unnecessary. However most books with Chomsky's name are transcribed interviews on one topic or another - still no less impressive and engaging.
Though Chomsky and Pollin do not shy away from the uncertainty about the threat of climate change, the questions do nothing to reduce the obvious severity. What struck me was how relatively few resources we need to devote to a serious project. From the figures they cited, it all seems trivial, especially next to the sums spent on Military and corporate subsidies already. All of this makes the tension between the needs of the global citizenry and the imperatives of a predatory economic system. Political will is the only thing we need to muster to face the challenges ahead.
Though Chomsky and Pollin do not shy away from the uncertainty about the threat of climate change, the questions do nothing to reduce the obvious severity. What struck me was how relatively few resources we need to devote to a serious project. From the figures they cited, it all seems trivial, especially next to the sums spent on Military and corporate subsidies already. All of this makes the tension between the needs of the global citizenry and the imperatives of a predatory economic system. Political will is the only thing we need to muster to face the challenges ahead.
April 11, 2021
****A MUST READ FOR EVERY HUMAN****
A fantastic overview of the current environmental crisis and what must actually be done in order to save humanity. There are only four chapters, each one containing invaluable knowledge explained in simple terms. Chapter 1 covers the nature of the climate crises, Chapter 2 examines capitalism x climate crisis, Chapter 3 is solely dedicated to the Green New Deal (the specific steps we must follow and the policies and infrastructure that must change/be developed to reach net zero Global CO2 emission by 2050), and chapter 4 examines the political mobilization that is needed for the Green New Deal to succeed.
Robert Pollin is a world renowned progressive economist and does an EXCELLENT job outlining what the Green New Deal is, and how "climate stabilization is fully consistent with expanding decent work opportunities, raising mass living standards, and fighting poverty in all regions of the world".
A fantastic overview of the current environmental crisis and what must actually be done in order to save humanity. There are only four chapters, each one containing invaluable knowledge explained in simple terms. Chapter 1 covers the nature of the climate crises, Chapter 2 examines capitalism x climate crisis, Chapter 3 is solely dedicated to the Green New Deal (the specific steps we must follow and the policies and infrastructure that must change/be developed to reach net zero Global CO2 emission by 2050), and chapter 4 examines the political mobilization that is needed for the Green New Deal to succeed.
Robert Pollin is a world renowned progressive economist and does an EXCELLENT job outlining what the Green New Deal is, and how "climate stabilization is fully consistent with expanding decent work opportunities, raising mass living standards, and fighting poverty in all regions of the world".
February 5, 2021
3.5. Good, basic analysis for a lay audience. Expounds some of the critical considerations on the current state of affairs and the way forward. Some of its biggest value-adds involve combatting three highly pernicious thoughts: (1) de-growth as a viable solution, (2) systemic energy transition as unaffordable, (3) action is avoidable. Recommend for an essential understanding of the issues.
Unfortunately, as many others have noted before me, Chomsky's contribution is not substantive, and his political critique is almost exclusively rhetorical. In short, not his sharpest.
Unfortunately, as many others have noted before me, Chomsky's contribution is not substantive, and his political critique is almost exclusively rhetorical. In short, not his sharpest.
April 8, 2021
The book provides an overview of the Global Green New Deal and the motivations behind it. It also puts actual numbers to the cost of the program and the feasibility of it, outlining possible funding sources. Unfortunately, there isn’t much guidance given on how to overcome political gridlock and corruption to implement this program. It’s a good reminder that there are intelligent caring people working on coming up with solutions to the climate problem.
“Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.”
“Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.”
May 11, 2021
Obviously an issue of great importance that concerns everyone (well... everyone who'd like the planet to remain habitable, anyway). This short book makes a clear, well argued case for why a Global Green New Deal is needed to tackle the unfolding environmental crisis and its dire consequences. I'm not a big fan of the Q&A format. Chomsky's contributions were disappointingly insubstantial.
September 27, 2020
Something everyone should be reading these days. Incredibly important information and an easy read. You don't have to be an expert on climate change or the economy to understand the arguments presented in the text.
October 4, 2024
i really liked this.
feel a lot more informed on this topic, but i also feel like it lacked a lot of depth (or at least it left me wanting to learn more). ig the depth it lacked were in areas that were kinda irrelevant to the topic, but it would like touch on kinda off topic historical aspects leaving me wanting to learn more about those.
it also left me sad / frustrated / angry a lot. just cuz of the topic.
feel a lot more informed on this topic, but i also feel like it lacked a lot of depth (or at least it left me wanting to learn more). ig the depth it lacked were in areas that were kinda irrelevant to the topic, but it would like touch on kinda off topic historical aspects leaving me wanting to learn more about those.
it also left me sad / frustrated / angry a lot. just cuz of the topic.
June 26, 2023
So many ideas to save ourselves before Earth takes care of us, and takes us out! She’s gonna do it. Read the book and learn somethings then talk to your friends and your politicians. Earth will be fine, but we won’t.
July 31, 2023
Nah bro this is a horror book, because I'm 20 something years old. AND BROKE. So I have to hope that all goes well and the government decides to care about 20 year old me and do something. But until then I can only hope :(
August 31, 2025
at this point you don't get free points for "neolibs are bad" - do better. shockingly incorrect understanding of degrowth
good points on central bank responsibility and the feasibility of GND vs Roosevelt ND
good points on central bank responsibility and the feasibility of GND vs Roosevelt ND
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