Saturday, November 21, 2020

JANE FONDA, WHAT CAN I DO? (About the Climate)

 REVIEW OF JANE FONDA'S WHAT CAN I DO? MY PATH FROM CLIMATE DESPAIR TO ACTION (2020).  The review is in two Parts; scroll down for both.

 OMNI'S VIRTUAL BOOK FORUM DECEMBER 6, 1:30

"Please come visit us for our monthly virtual Climate Change Forum from OMNI Center, Sunday, December 6 at 1:30. We'll meet virtually with the following Go To Meeting link, but we want you to know the topics so you can read ahead and participate. Our thoughts for the December Forum will primarily be the Green New Deal and what we can do individually and as a community on a hopefully more positive political stage. 

 Dick Bennett will present Jane Fonda's activist account in What Can I Do?  My Path from Climate Despair to Action.   (A few days ago B&N had 11 copies of the book.).  Dick has also encouraged reading other GND books: Naomi Klein's On Fire: The (Burning) Case of the Green New Deal; Jeremy Rifkin's The Green New Deal;, Aranoff et.alA Planet to Win, Why We Need a Green New Deal; and Chomsky and Pollin's Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal, The Political Economy of Saving the Planet.

 Lolly will present on Christiana Figueres' The Future We Choose. (On 11-21 two copies were available at B&N.)   She was the UN's past head of the IPCC and gives a very positive wish list to address climate change. 

 And then our final activity for the Forum for the year will be to discuss what Ms. Fonda and Ms. Figueres recommend and our additions.   We might make lists of specific topics, write letters, decide to whom to send, and who will do the writing.  Dick can provide copies of his summaries of her What Can I Do? sections concluding most of the chapters.

 Scroll down for Parts I and II of my review AND  for my comparison of 7 books on the GND (Lolly's request).  The book review and discussion of the GND end with a note on nuclear power.

IT'S EASY TO JOIN THE VIRTUAL MEETING:
Climate Change Book Forum Dec 6 - Green New Deal et al

Sun, Dec 6, 2020 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM (CST)

 Please join our meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.

https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/847722597

 

You can also dial in using your phone.

United States: +1 (669) 224-3412

Access Code: 847-722-597

 

 

JANE FONDA, WHAT CAN I DO? (about the climate)

For a Forum of one and a half hours, we have two books to discuss and an open discussion.  So here I have summarized and commented upon chapters one through 3.  My virtual talk will cover the chapters on the climate issues she discusses (Part II below).

This is one of the best books on political ACTION I have read.  Because it is an account of a four-month action, every page is about WHAT WE CAN DO as we follow Ms. Fonda learning.

In this first part of the review I’ll describe it generally and then zoom in on chapters 1 through 3.

     The importance of Greenpeace to Ms. Fonda’s sustained protest and the book cannot be overstated.  Here’s a quick summary mainly from Acknowledgments: The first person she consulted with her idea of going to DC for a four-month demonstration for the climate was Greenpeace’s president, Annie Leonard.  All of the planning meetings took place in Greenpeace USA headquarters in DC for the four months.  She ‘made certain we had the speakers we did” for the Fire Drill Fridays and Teach-Ins, by assigning a Greenpeace officer—Maddy Carretero—to help organize every Fire Drill Friday and Teach-In.  Ira Arlook “made sure the world knew” about the rallies.   For the book, all profits go to Greenpeace.  At invitation from Fonda, Leonard wrote the appendixes, Appendix A: “An Introduction to Understanding the Climate Emergency,” on “the science of the crisis and the urgent solutions,” and Appendix B: “Civil Disobedience.”  Who was ever praised better?  “She is a true activist leader who lives her values and always exhibits wisdom, compassion, and generosity.”

      Ms. Fonda’s generosity in giving credit is also shown in her Acknowledgments, where dozens of her heroes for the climate are listed and many particularized.  One of her methods in seeking an effective action is her “repeaters,” who disseminate far and wide her messages and those of the speakers at the Fire Drill Fridays and Teach-ins.  Among these are experts and her celebrity friends, who use their platforms to raise awareness: Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Ted Danson, Ben Cohen, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Lily Tomlin, Emma’s Revolution, Sweet Honey in the Rock.

      She’s a pro.   And her book shares her lifetime experience as an organizer for peace and the environment.

     She offers seventeen chapters and the two appendices already mentioned.  The first two chapters and the last describe her foray to D.C. for the climate. The first two describe her decision to move to DC to organize (“The Wake-Up Call”), and her initial actions (Chapter 2: “The Launch”).  (Chapter 17, “Fire Drill Fridays: Going Forward”)  

     Fourteen chapters (3 through 16) discuss fourteen topics.   Chapter 3: The Green New Deal; 4: Oceans and Climate Change; 5: Women and Climate Change; 6 War, the Military, and Climate Change; 7: Environmental Justice; 8: Water and Climate Change; 9: Plastics; 10: Food, Agriculture, and Climate Change; 11: Climate, Migration, and Human Rights; 12: Jobs and a Just Transition; 13: Health and Climate Change; 14: Forests and Climate Change; 15: Holding the Fossil fuel Industry Accountable; 16: Stop the Money Pipeline.

          Each chapter is preceded by a full-page in color of a key person or event at that Fire Drill Friday.

              The opening pages of Chapter 1, “The Wake-Up Call” prepare for the conclusion just now described.  The introductory photo is of the first Fire Drill Friday in the conference room at Greenpeace USA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. with Jane and Annie Leonard, president of Greenpeace, at head of the table.
     Naomi Klein and Greta Thunberg get credit for first awakening her to the climate crisis.  Jane learned about Greta from Naomi’s book.   Because Asperger Greta could not filter out truth, could not compartmentalize the scientific truths she had learned at school, when faced with the inaction of leaders, she became traumatized and mute.  People should be behaving as if their house was on fire, she felt, but instead they acted like business was as usual.  Eventually she rediscovered her voice, and at age 16 started a movement called “Fridays for Future” to inspire school strikes around the world. 

    By the time Jane had read a quarter of Klein’s book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, she was “shaking with intensity.”  Naomi through Greta had enabled her to “take the science into my own body.”  The second thing in Klein’s book that changed her “the clarity with which she conveyed  what the scientists were saying in the [United Nations’] 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” Here’s the reality:  “Virtually unanimously, the scientists make clear that given the worsening disasters we’re already seeing, and the additional warming that is already baked in because we didn’t act forty years ago, we don’t stand a chance at changing course in time without profound, systemic economic and social change, and they say, as of 2020, we have a brief ten years before the tipping point is reached.  Ten years to reduce fossil fuel emissions roughly in half and then reduce to net zero by 2050 to avoid uncontrollable unraveling of the natural life-support system”(3).  The IPCC scientists know this, Naomi knows this, Greta knows this, and Jane knows this. 

     The scientists believe in addition that “we have the technology to make the transition in time to clean, renewable energy,” and they believe “collective actions taken by social movements on an unprecedented scale” can make the needed transition.   And Jane believes social movements make changes.  She and her husband at the time, Tom Hayden, launched the Indo-China Peace Campaign to tell about the Pentagon Papers and challenge President Nixon to stop the war.  A clear strategy and authoritative evidence were the foundation of that effective mobilizing and organizing.   To Jane, “the Pentagon Papers were to the Vietnam War what I think the IPCC 2018 report was to the climate crisis: irrefutable truth of lying and deceit on the part of people in power” (4). 

     The third thing in On Fire that struck Jane was the way Naomi explained the Green New Deal.   At first, Jane thought Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey’s GND Resolution should not have included jobs and environmental and economic justice, because those major subjects would distract us from the climate catastrophe.   But “Naomi’s book made me understand justice is at the heart of solving what led to the climate crisis.”  “The Green New Deal beckons us into a future where everyone can see a place for themselves” (4).  Right then, Jane decided to move to D.C. and camp out at the White House.

     She told two close friends and for several days discussed pros and cons.  Then she took a leap of faith (her “only form of exercise these days”) and  phoned her friend Annie Leonard, the director of Greenpeace USA.   Annie set up a conference call to include Naomi, Bill McKibben, and environmental lawyer Jay Halfon.  They discussed not only possible actions (no camping in D.C.) but actions that might be effective based upon historical examples (TransAfrica v. S. African apartheid).  They agreed on weekly demonstrations followed by civil disobedience.  Jane decided to go D. C. at once, for she had only four months free before filming her last season of Grace and Frankie.

     She flew off September 27.  The initial organizing took ten days, leaving two weeks for the planning.  Annie found a logistics team, who found a digital team.  The sound man with the documentary film company suggested the name Fire Drill Fridays.  About a dozen people attended the first big meeting in D.C. in the Greenpeace office, representing Greenpeace, the Sunrise Movement, Friends of the Earth, Climate Action Network, Hip Hop Caucus, Oil Change International and more (9).  Who were they hoping to mobilize? What would they demand and what calls to action?  They finally settled on three essential demands:

Support the Green New Deal

No New Fossil Fuel Extraction

Phase Out Existing Fossil Fuels with a Just Transition to Renewable Energy.

Their Calls to Action were to be:

VOTE: for the climate in every election and for candidates in favor of the GND.

VOICE: talk to everyone about climate, phone or write candidates, sign and distribute petitions, go to town halls.

USE YOUR FEET—WITH OTHERS!  Show up!

And Jane suggested education, weekly teach-ins focusing on different aspects of the climate crisis featuring experts and activists.  Karen Nussbaum, labor organizer, suggested they be on the night preceding each Rally.

     In the days following Jane met with leading D. C. student climate protesters and strikers.  They agreed to participate in the first FDF.  “Things were coming together….into a team effort, and other organizations were feeling included and heard.  In fact, it felt meant to be.” (12).

     [And the title What Can I Do? had become urgently clear from the beginning.   Every chapter, every sentence offered answers.  –Dick]

 

 

 

        Chapter 2, “The Launch” Oct. 11,  Rally #1. 

     The opening photo shows the capitol in the background, closer a banner for “Fire Drill Fridays,” and front, Jane, dressed in her signature red coat and black and white checkered cap holding high Naomi Klein’s book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.

     On October 11, 2019, the first pre-rally Briefing was held in the United Methodist building near the Capitol.  She was letting her gray hair grow in (“growing gray felt right for my new (and maybe final) turning point” :this book is also autobiography remember).   She hadn’t slept, afraid nobody would show up, afraid Fire Drill Fridys would not “gain traction and make a difference.” 

     The core team was there, two of the speakers, a dozen pledged to civil disobedience (cd) and to risk arrest with her: Karen Nussbaum, Annie Leonard, Steve Kretzmann, and her step-granddaughter, Vasser Turner Seydel.   A photo of Jane and Naomi Klein appears p. 16.  Jane’s logistical head gave the briefing she   would repeat on all subsequent Fridays.

The March.     Then they went outside to march to the first Fire Drill Fridays.  TV cameras  and photographers greeted them,.  They passed the intimidating Supreme Court building.  Their little group seemed “ragtag,” their chants unimpressive.  She saw ahead to the stage only a small audience.

     The Rally.  Jane devoted her first Fire Drill Fridays (FDF) speech to the imperial, genocidal economic ideology (my words) of US history.   Like warming, US imperialism got under her skin during the Vietnam War.  She quotes two of her sentences, and they are worth quoting:  “The same toxic ideology that took this land from people who already lived here, that kidnapped people from Africa, turning them into slaves to work that stolen land, and justified it by saying those kidnapped and displaced people were not human beings, cut down the forests and exhausted the natural world just as it did the people.  This foundational, extractive ideology of commodification is the same one that has brought us the human-driven climate change that we’re facing today.”  There’s never been a better two-sentence critique of  US capitalism.

     Then the first FDF begins with a young indigenous woman.  Jansikwe Medina Tayac, of  the Piscataway Indian Nation, “welcomed us to her people’s land.”  There’s a photo of her p. 18 (all photos in the book in color).  She reminds us that “indigenous people have been fighting for this earth since the early 1600s.”  Jane writes that the young activists who were striking every Friday supporting FDF were crucial to success;  that after all the European colonizers had done to the original people and to the land, it was remarkable to hear her welcome; and that she had learned of “the critical role indigenous peoples play in fighting climate change” (19).

     Since this was the beginning of 14 FDF, Jane spoke again to explain why she was there.  She wanted “to ensure that the climate crisis remains front and center.”  She spoke of Naomi Klein ‘s book, On Fire, the inspiration for Fire Drill Fridays, of and Greta Thunberg and other student strikers (see p. 2).  Jane listed their four demands (p. 20): 1. Pass a New Green Deal, 2. Stop fossil fuel expansion immediately, 3. End fossil fuels within 30 years, 4. A fair deal for workers and communities most impacted by the transition.

    She explained too the second mission of FDF: education—Teach-ins by scientists, experts, representatives from frontline communities, celebrities on aspects of the climate crisis.  She stressed the urgency of the crisis.  From her core team to her expanding audience, the “repeaters” amplify the messages.

     Next she introduced another young person, Jerome Foster, who emphasized our “one planet, and one globally interconnected nation,” exhorted the audience to vote and write their reps, and led a chant.

      Biologist Sandra Steingraber followed to denounce fracking  and to lament “all that we had lost and what we’d be losing the in the near future.”  She spoke to the young people facing that future, relating her own youth with cancer to the present.  And she spoke to Jane, who had not before made the connection of “the bodies of marine animals that died 400 million years ago…being weaponized to destroy the bodies of sea creatures living in our oceans now,”  or the connection of oil companies, the chemical industry, waste, waste disposal, and plastics (23).  

     That ended the Rally/Teach-in and began the March behind the FDF banner while chanting: “Tell me what democracy looks lie.”  The press walked backward in front of them, and past the police along the sides.  Gradually those who intended to risk arrest had moved ahead of the others: her granddaughter, Vasser; Carroll Muffett of the Center for Internatonal Environmental Law; Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Cange International; Media Benjamin co-founder of CODEPINK; Annie Leonard, director of Greenpeace USA, several of the student strikers.   They walked up the Capitol steps, were warned once, and twice, and at the 3rd officers began cuffing the protesters (24).  It evoked the memory of her first arrest in 1970 against the Viet Nam War full of trepidation.  Now she was energized by full awareness and engagement resulting from “putting my body on the line and aligning myself full, body and spirit, with my values.”    And there was another difference, but it too was affirmative:  She was unable to step up unassisted into the police van with her arms tied behind her. 
     Similarly all the arrested seemed empowered.  And the chanting continued until the last were in the van.

     Processing at the police station was familiar, except, because her new red coat was new and the pockets sewn, she had put her money and driver’s license in her bra, and the officers laughed as they freed her hands to retrieve them.  She shared a cell with Vasser, Sandra, Medea, and Wendy, and conversation about climate’s universal influence, when “I got more ideas for upcoming teach-ins.”  And it turned out that both Medea and Sandra had known her ex-husband Tom Hayden from way back, Sandra from the student protests of the Vietnam War at the University of Michigan, including the takeover of a building by Tom (editor of the university’s newspaper) and 3,000 other students.  That event inspired the new concept labeled “teach-in” (instead of a walkout or a sit-in) which swept the country and has stuck.  Tom became a leader of opposition to the war.  These thoughts lead to mixed personal memories of Tom.

     As one of the last to be released, she had time to reflect about the month leading to this moment.   She was learning the rules of protest and arrest in the US capital.  She was proud of what they had accomplished so far and especially of their “respect for the land, for youth, and for science.”  But it was “not nearly enough.”  She had “so much…to learn.”

     About four hours after her arrest she was released to the warm welcome of her team--Debi, Annie, Maddy, and Karen, and others offering claps and chips.       In retrospect, for all the arrests “jail support” was always there.  That day “cemented for me how important it was to work across movements.”  “’If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.’”  “The more  I was learning about the climate crisis, the more I knew that building a community was how we would grow the army that was needed to change the way this country does business—literally, and for the long haul.” (29).

     

     

      

     

    

        Chapter 3, “The Green New Deal,” Rally #2, Teach-In and Arrest #1 

   The opening photo shows smiling actor Sam Waterston cuffed and being led away by a policeman.   Each week’s structure is basically the same; in Chapter 3:   1) Jane’s narrative of the Fire Drill Fridays,  commentary on the problem of warming and the economic system and the response of the Green New Deal, 2) the Rally, 3) the Teach-in, 4) March,  Civil Disobedience, Arrest.  

     Glancing ahead to the Teach-In, we meet actor Sam Waterston and Joanna Zhu of the Sunrise Movement.   Then Jane describes the organizing of the first Teach-In: the posters, documentary crew, the digital team, the iPhone, her notes—and the first Teach-In is launched (p. 32).  Jane spoke first for the Green New Deal.   One of sources of skill is her ability to tell her two stories at once: Her four-month effort to present to the world warming and resistance to it, and her physical and mental struggle to learn both the science and process of reporting.   Her first sentence is a key to understanding the “Green New Deal”:  “’The Green New Deal is not a policy or even a bundle of policies.”  But she lets that sink in by cutting immediately to her uneasiness with the tiny camera on the tripod in front of her that she hope would reach thousands of people, and then she reveals she introduced Sam Waterston as Sol Bergstein (“I was so jacked up”), the name of the character Sam was portraying in a tv drama.    And then she finished her GND statement: “The Green New Deal is a framework…an integrated, systemic response to the multiple crises of climate, of democracy, and of equality.” 

     She was pleased with what Sam, Joanna, and she said, but she pauses to summarize (pp. 33-4) their take on the GND.  (I urge everyone to read it, make a copy and carry it around. )  That doesn’t prevent her from elaborating for two pages on “the crisis as a  chance to create a world of new possibilities for fairness, prosperity, and good health.”   She differentiates potently the “environmentalists,” who would “reduce the demand,” blaming the people, from the present climate resistance, who would “reduce the supply,” blaming the profit-seeking corporations (we will never slow the warming until we end fossil-fuels use and fossil-fuels production)(p. 35).  (This is as clear a single paragraph on that distinction I have read.)  One more comment deserves attention: All of the good ideas being advanced—more local innovations, more bicycles, more heat pumps--, are not enough: “the power and resources of the federal government” are necessary if we are to “scale up” the necessary changes “fast enough.  Hence, it’s too late for moderation” (36).   And then she reports Sam’s live-streamed Teach-In speech on moderation, empathy, resilience and the GND.

     You’ve seen the “sidebars” in magazines—related small essays inserted into a main composition?   At this point (pp. 39-40), the pages colored green, Jane offers us a quick history on “We’ve Done It Before: The New Deal,”  a time of “tremendous social unrest :  drought, hunger, protest, riots.  She has a personal connection you will recall: her father Henry starred in the move The Grapes of Wrath about that crisis. and she has a particular focus.   The public demanded the President make necessary changes, and Roosevelt replied: “’I agree with you.  Now go out and make me do it.’”  And they did, and he did.   And Jane is trying to push our leaders to create a New New Deal. 

 

     Rally.      The second rally enjoyed a big increase in attendance.  Jane opened with her hopeful sketch of the New Deal.: “’…change is coming, by disaster or by design….The Green New Deal provides the design to bring us all into a sustainable future.’”  Followed by young people telling about feeling traumatized by the prospect of a warming future.  She introduces and honors their ogranizations.  Abigail Leedy representing the Sunrise Movement was delaying her college plans to work fulltime for a Green New Deal.  Jasilyn Charger, who ran from Standing rock, ND, to D.C. to deliver a petition to theArmy Corpos of Engineers to stop the Dakota Access pipeline.  Charlie Jiang, a Greenpeace climate campaigner, who dropped plans to study physics in order to support a Green New Deal.  And Jane concluded the rally with a pitch to all to vote, listing a several ways to question politicians votes regarding rising temperature.

    March, Civil Disobedience, Jail.  And then the march to block a major intersection, carrying a “Green New Deal” banner.  There she was surrounded by journalists, some hostile (“Hanoi Jane”!).  Her daughter Vanessa Vadim accompanied her, longtime friend Paula Weinstein of Tribeca Film Festival, actor Katherine LaNasa, and Sam Waterston of course, and some twenty others.  All intended to engage in civil disobedience.  Bringing together the older celebrities (Jane was 82) with the inspiring youth and climate activists, “Fire Drill Fridays was helping to amplify the voices that needed to be heard.”   After three hours of detention with disobedients from all walks of life (a manicurist and her daughter, from Delaware, a  professor from a midwesterm university. a Pakistani woman) they were thumbprinted and paid their fines.

     Sam, a moderate in politics who had never been engaged in civil disobedience, or spent time in jail, seemed particularly affected.   Three weeks later he was arrested for protesting fossil fuel investments at the Harvard-Yale game.  His sidebar, “A Moderate’s View of Civil Disobedience,” appears, again in green, on p.44.

     What Can I Do?  Of the seventeen chapters, fourteen end with a call to action.  It’s quite an accumulation of protest ideas and experiences.    At this second Fire Drill Fridays, Jane is enthusiastic over the growing public interest in plans “as ambitious as the science requires.”  But the Green New Deal resolution, introduced by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “is just the start,” and she discusses a few of  “the many ways to get involved” the book offers (46-47, but really the whole chapter, and all the chapters).   In fact, the entire book amounts to a compendium of ideas for changing from a fossil fuels capitalism to a sustainable world.READ AN EXCERPT

 

References

Justin Worland.   “'Civil Disobedience Has to Become the New Norm.' Jane Fonda on the Fight Against Climate Change.”  Jane Fonda interviewed by Time, 9-3-20. https://news.yahoo.com/civil-disobedience-become-norm-jane-110041221.html 

 

Looking Forward:

This is the first part of a two-part review of Fonda’s book.  The second part follows, and part of it will be presented by Dick during the virtual Forum on December 6.   I will summarize main aspects of the 13 chapters (4 through 16, from oceans to the money pipeline) that discuss the topics Ms. Fonda considers most important to understanding warming and how to reduce it.  The most important thing you can do is buy and read the book.  We are up against almost half of the electorate utterly ignorant of the causes and effects of warming; while the other half is only half-awake, when we must be militant and mobilized.  


DICK’S REVIEW OF WHAT CAN I DO? PART ii

 

 Climate Change Book Forum Dec 6 - Green New Deal and United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Sun, Dec 6, 2020 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM (CST)

 

Please join our meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.

https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/847722597

 

You can also dial in using your phone.

United States: +1 (669) 224-3412

Access Code:847-722-597

 

  Dick Bennett will present Jane Fonda's activist recounting of her 4 months for the climate in D.C. in What Can I Do? My Path from Climate Despair to Action.

   Lolly Tindol will present on Christiana Figueres' The Future We Choose.  She was the UN's past head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and gives a very positive wish list to address climate change. 

(A few days ago Barnes and Noble had copies of the books.)

 And then our final activity for the Forum for the year will be to discuss what Ms. Fonda and Ms. Figueres recommend.   

 

 What Can I Do? My Path from Climate Despair to Action.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/11/jane-fonda-what-can-i-do-about-climate.html

      My review of What Can I Do? is in two parts.  The first I mailed online last week.  It covered the first three chapters and the appendices—telling the story of her decision to go the Washington, D.C., for four months to help advance the Green New Deal project.      

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/11/jane-fonda-what-can-i-do-about-climate.html

      This second part discusses the chapters in between which present the most important topics rising from catastrophic warming.  But this is autobiography, narrative, by which the subjects of oceans or environmental justice are presented as part of her education, as she said in an interview, in an all-consuming, life-or-death crisis.   This existential climate crisis has to be dealt with if anything else is going to be achieved. There were issues that mattered to me before, but they weren’t life-or-death—nothing else is going to matter if this isn’t solved—like the climate crisis is.  The stakes couldn’t be higher.  From the opening to the last sentence, she is asking herself, What Can I Do for the climate, and inviting us to share her inquiry and actions.

        Chapter 4: Oceans and Climate Change; 5: Women and Climate Change; 6 War, the Military, and Climate Change; 7: Environmental Justice; 8: Water and Climate Change; 9: Plastics; 10: Food, Agriculture, and Climate Change; 11: Climate, Migration, and Human Rights; 12: Jobs and a Just Transition; 13: Health and Climate Change; 14: Forests and Climate Change; 15: Holding the Fossil fuel Industry Accountable; 16: Stop the Money Pipeline.

 

        Every chapter from 1 to 17 explore her title’s question; these chapters focus the question on a dozen problems arising from the rising temperature.  Each chapter from beginning to end, usually in this order—Teach-In, Rally, March and Arrest—explores the title’s question.

 

  (The first 3 chapters were discussed in Part I of the review.)     

Chapter 1 “The Wake-Up Call “(decision to campaign in DC)

The organizing committee meeting in Greenpeace’s conference room settled on three essential demands:

Support the Green New Deal

No New Fossil Fuel Extraction

Phase Out Existing Fossil Fuels with a Just Transition to Renewable Energy.

Their Calls to Action were to be:

VOTE: for the climate in every election and for candidates in favor of the GND.

VOICE: talk to everyone about climate, phone or write candidates, sign and distribute petitions, go to town halls.

USE YOUR FEET—WITH OTHERS!  Show up!

And Jane suggested education, weekly teach-ins focusing on different aspects of the climate crisis featuring experts and activists [this was done].  Karen Nussbaum, labor organizer, suggested they be on the night preceding each Rally.

     In the days following Jane met with leading D. C. student climate protesters and strikers.  They agreed to participate in the first FDF.  “Things were coming together….into a team effort, and other organizations were feeling included and heard.  In fact, it felt meant to be.” (12).

 

Chapter 2, “The Launch,”  Fire Drill Fridays Rally #1

    After this first Rally Jane wrote no What Can I Do? summary, but “That day cemented for me how important it was to work across movements.”  “’If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.’”  “The more  I was learning about the climate crisis, the more I knew that building a community was how we would grow the army that was needed to change the way this country does business—literally, and for the long haul.” (29).

     

Chapter 3, Green New Deal, FDF Rally #2, Teach-In #1

What Can I Do?  Of the seventeen chapters, fourteen end with a call to action.  It’s quite an accumulation of protest ideas and experiences.    At this second Fire Drill Fridays, Jane is enthusiastic over the growing public interest in plans “as ambitious as the science requires.”  But the Green New Deal resolution, introduced by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “is just the start,” and she discusses a few of  “the many ways to get involved” the book offers (46-47).   But really the whole chapter, and all the chapters, in fact, the entire book provides a collection of ideas for changing from a fossil fuels capitalism to a sustainable world.  Those of you who have read the 7 books reviewed a few days ago, however, know much more can said regarding what we can and must do.  The Green New Deal Resolutions establish an inspiring if not comprehensive sketch of rallying utopian goals, as Naomi Klein says.

 

Chapter 4, “Oceans and Climate Change,” FDF Rally #3, Teach-In #2, Arrest #1.

What Can I Do? (61-63).

Eat less fish!  Eat smaller in the food chain.  Hook into seafoodwatch.org.  Query your markets and restaurants; if enough people persistently ask, it’ll reach corporate headquarters.  Take pictures  of plastic waste and publicize the company.  “While changing our individual consumption habitys can help, the greatest change comes from collective and political action.”  Talk to city and schoo officials.  Push for organic landscapes.  Join Greenpeace, Surfrider,Oceana, or other ocean conservation groups.  Healthy oceans and climate are inseparable.

Chap. 5, “Women and Climate Change,” FDF #4,

What Can I Do? (79-81).

Climate change harms poor women and women of color.

So be political, put women in leadership positions, especially for climate change, educate and empower women.   Join women’s organizations: SisterSong, Forward Together, National Domestic Workers Alliance, One Billion Rising, the several excellent reproductive health groups, population growth opponents (contraception) like Population Connection, women’s rights groups like La Via Campesina and Food First, indigenous women like Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, young women-led organizations like Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate, elect more women to public office (etc. pp. 80-81).

Chap. 6, “War, the Military, and Climate Change,” FDF #5,

What Can I Do? Section Q&A by Jane Fonda (with some sprinkling of DB, 92-95)

Talking points for reducing military spending.

Three best arguments: 1) stay out of unnecessary, illegal, civilian-slaughtering wars (i.e. US wars); 2) join the conversion movement of diverting War Dept. funds to human needs, esp. for the climate catastrophe, 3) these policies best protect and honor our soldiers and our nation.

To be safe, we must have the largest military budget in the world to have the strongest military.

Cutting 2 or 3 billion would not make us less safe but just the opposite, would be a significant contribution to resisting the climate emergency.  (As usual Jane cites her authority: Phyllis Bennis.)  And she lists other benefits.

·     Cutting the military budget will cut the jobs provided by military and the military-industrial complex.

Every job preparing for war can be replaced by better jobs n education, public infrastructure, health services, etc.  And most military job incomes require food stamps, and contrast to the average CEO’s $20 million a year. 

What about national security?

(See my note on language at the end.)  Real security is not derived from 10 carrier battle groups or 800 bases but from high quality support of the people in a living wage for all, first-rate schools and infrastructure, adequate safety nets, healthy air and water, rich soil (reduced population DB), etc.

How does militarism relate to climate?

     Let me quote JF: “The climate crisis has everything to do with the military.   Every single war fought in the past eighty years, if not longer, has been about oil.”  Future wars will be over FF profits but in addition over scarce resources such as water and food.  And add refugees from war.  And the Pentagon the biggest institutional user of ff. “The climate movement and the peace movement are one movement” (94).

     Check out the Natonal Priorities Project (www.nationalpriorities.org and www.nationalpriorities.org/interactive-data/trade-offs ).  Ask your friends to join you in talking to your representatives about military budget reduction and conversion, and about increasing the State Department budget to foreground diplomacy, not armed force.  Find ways to push for divestment of the military-industrial complex.  Examine your financial connections to the war machine.  Never stop demanding conversion of war funds and ff expenditures to the programs urgently needed for the transition.

 

(My recommendations are linguistic:  Join me in never using the words defense or national security in regard to our foreign policy.  The most harmful linguistic coup ever perpetrated against the world was changing the name of the War Department to the “Defense” Department.  Combining that illusion with that of US “exceptionalism,” the US kills around the world with impunity because the goals are “good.”  And put this sticker on your bumper next to your OMNI sticker:  “Goin’ Broke Payin’ for War.”)

 

Chap. 7, Environmental Justice

Chap. 8, Water

 

Chap. 9, Plastics” 137-144

Plastics was not one of the harms protested at the Fire Drill Fridays, but it is “integrally connected to fossil fuels,” and it was discussed in several Teach-Ins.  Jane felt such an “immense and climate-related problem” should not be omitted from her book.

     She discusses the history of how a universal convenience became monstrous.  Then she quotes at length Filipinos Von Hernandez and Denise Patel of Break Free from Plastic, who made the comments--offering familiar Earth Day solutions—at other FDF.  BFP studies how the climate crisis contributes plastic proliferation, as single stream plastic becomes big oil companies’ second profit stream.  It is part of a global network fighting plastic pollution from its sources, including fracking sites, to the end point of incineration and landfills.   Hernandez and Patel name the big plastic polluters—Coca-cola, Nestlé, Pepsi, Unilever--, and all should receive public rebuke.  They have many ideas for stopping plastic waste; e.g., make companies use refillable or reusable containers; mobilize towns to adopt goals of Zero Waste, elect candidates who have a record of success against pollution.

     Like Jane herself, they praise citizen commitment to reducing footprints, but governments and corporations should be compelled to increase their solutions, such as total bans on plastic bags, plastic straws, plastic food ware.  Over 400 US cities have banned plastic bags.  “We need systematic change here,” Denise said.  Each of us must reduce our carbon footprint, but we must also join the larger political battle “because the ff industry is not going down without a fight.”

      A concluding What Can I Do ? is repeated; more examples of reducing individual footprints, but also the reduction and removal of ff from industries and institutions that we can accomplish locally: brand audits of the most harmful companies, pressuring your grocery store (chain) to stop using plastic.  Eventually it must be a political battle, for  ”. . .the most effective way to reduce plastic. . .is through government restrictions, taxes, fees, or bans.”  Surfrider and Greenpeace have tool kits for working with corporations.   But ultimately, we must “reduce the availability of fossil fuels,” quickly because the ff corporations  were “planning a massive build-out of hundreds of new plastic production facilities”(!).

Chapter 10, Food, Agriculture

 Chapter 11, Migration, Human Rights

Chapter 12, Jobs and a Just Transition

Chapter 13, Health

Chapter 14, Forests

 Chapter 15, Holding the Fossil Fuel Industry Accountable

     In chapters 2-14, the 12 Fire Drill Fridays “focused largely on the effects of fossil fuels on our climate, on our environments, and on the communities at the epicenter [of the fossil fuel industry’s] toxic plundering.”  Now they confront “head-on the need to hold the fossil fuel companies accountable and the ways to do it.”

    I observed several times in Part I her sustained attention to the title of the book; this chapter illustrates that concentration well.  And by now she has honed the structure of her chapters --Introduction, Teach-In, Rally, March and Arrest—to maintain the focus.

     In her Introduction (257-60), she reminds us how many people world-wide have disregarded the urgent need to reduce fossil fuels at the source.  The dismal fact has been pointed out by many of the books we have discussed in Climate Book Forums.  “Never in twenty-five years of international climate negotiations was there a meaningful discussion about stopping fossil fuel extraction,” despite the 50 years of research showing its harms, most notably by the UNIPCC   (Jane cites a report from Stanford Research Institute as far back as 1968 warning that rising C02 would raise temperatures and cause serious environmental damage worldwide.)   She gives several reasons for this general avoidance of  fossil fuel realities, but the chief one is the massive deception and cover-up paid for and organized by the corrupt and corrupting fossil fuel industry, whose CEO’s were fully cognizant of the truth by the 1980s (259-60).    

     Jane notes an important harm she understands better by the Fire Drill Fridays.  The fossil fuel industry is “anathema to democracy.”  She gives this example:  Most citizens want a bindng climate treaty, but in one year, 2013, the ff industry spent326 million to persuade congressional Reublicans and some Democrats to vote aganst such a treaty.  All levels  of government hve been bribed not to limit drilling and fracking and to allow maximum extraction and profit.  Also, our neoliberal government subsidizes and provides tax breaks for the ff industry—oil company stockholders and execs, funding bankers, and investment firms-- in billions of dollars.  All to enable a few to become very wealthy.  Jane calls this ff capitalism, crimes (260).

     The Teach-In (261-71) “to hold the culprits accountable” occurred again the night before the rally, with four young women speaking—a human rights advocate, a director of 350.org, a human rights lawyer, and a Diné (Navajo) activist.  Jane reports the Navajo, Janine Yazzie, speaking eloquently for justice.  And the 350.org representative, TamaraO’Laughlin, advocated the prosecution of ff criminals and the monetary fines redistributed  to the Green New Deal.

     Sam Waterston returned for his second FDF Rally, and introduced the first speaker, Ms. Yazzie.  The next speaker was also Native American, a Lumbee of North Carolina, Donna Chavis, who described the Native American opposition to oil pipelines.  And Tamara spoke about “10 Steps for the Next Administration’s First 10 Days” (ClimatePresident.org) .  You see what I meant when I said the entire book, every chapter, and every section was about the title?

      What Can I Do? (284-285). Move your money to companies supporting climate solutions.  See Fossil Free funds (fossilfreefunds.org).   Examine the organizations and institutions you are associated with (your university, church, local government, insurance companies), and call them to divest from ff (divestinvest.org, Green Faith). Ask your politiciams to take a #NoFossilFuelMoneyPledge.  Also: Stop Funding Fossils.org

 

 

 

 

Chapter 16, Stop the Money Pipeline

     The Final FDF in the Education of 82-year-old Jane Fonda begins as usual with her Introduction (Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020), this one making plans for her departure for California and the continuation of FDF (288).  Annie arranged a Skype meeting with California activists, and they discussed the next six months of FDF in California, to be followed by a national Get Out the Climate Vote tour until post-election (17,000 people had already signed up).  They would organize around the “10 Steps for the Next Administration’s First 10 Days,” seeking “to build the army that would make the [GND] a reality.”

     And her lawyer had managed, despite Jane’s 4 arrests, to enable her to avoid jail.

     For that Thursday Teach-In she had 3 guests: Bill McKibben, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, and Annie Leonard.  Bill is the renowned author and founder of 350.org.   He spoke mainly about divestment from ff, the new website, StopTheMoneyPipeline.com for people globally to sign up, especially to pressure banks, especially JPMorgan Chase (289-292, speech 292-6).   Eriel worked by nonviolent civil disobedience for divestment around the world, and at the present in northern Alberta she was trying to stop the “largest tar sands mine ever proposed” (and funded by Chase).   The proposal was withdrawn! (292-4).  Annie thanked all the “Fire Drillers,” reported on the millions of people they had reached and the hundreds who had been arrested (500 with 300 more promised for Friday), and plans for the continuation of FDF across the nation (297-8).

     The Rally followed later in the day. Eight speakers boosted this final rally for divestment from ff.  The first, Naomi Klein, author of the book On Fire had been a chief presence behind FDF beginning in chapter one.  Of her Jane writes: “the woman who had lit the fire and gotten me going.”  She spoke of the GND and her hopes “to build the most united and powerful movement that we have ever seen.”The other speakers were Bill McKibben, Ta’Sina Sapa Win Smith, Tara Houska, Kat Taylor, Martin Sheen, Rebecca Adamson, and Eriel Tchekwie Deranger.  As usual the presence of young women and of young Native American women is dominant

     Bill and his occupier spoke from the lobby of the occupied local JP Morgan Chase bank, the police outside.  They chose Chase because it is the “single biggest funder of fossil fuels on planet earth.”  Bill spoke of the growing unity among climate defenders, such as with Greta Thunberg’s Youth Climate Movement (300, 303).  Smith, Black Shawl Woman, from the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, called on the audience to rise up with indigenous people against ff addiction and resource extraction.  Tara Houska, attorney for the Bear Clan from Couchiching First Nation, in one sentence names 7 actions we can DO.  Kat Taylor spoke against banking in our heartless economic system.  Banks could be crowdfunding to help all life in need, but instead, “just since the Paris Agreement in 2016.., Chase bank alone has financed nearly $200 billion of fossil fuel development,” that was from our deposits!  The other speakers were equally on fire for a different world.

      As always, those who wished joined to March to the Capitol for civil disobedience and Arrest.  But Jane and others broke off briefly to support Bill McKibben at the Chase bank.  Back at the Capitol the police were arresting and processing on the spot.  Jane stayed until the last of the arrested were released, such as Naomi, Joaquin Phoenix, and Martin Sheen, and others too numerous to name.   

     And then back to the hotel to finish packing for her return to California and “the next phase of Fire Drill Fridays.”

     What Can I Do?  (315-17).   As I have commented, a reader learns what we can do on every page—by Jane, by Annie Leonard, by all of her many Teach-In and Rally speakers, by all of the books and articles referred to by Jane and the speakers.  But to drive home the thesis of her book’s title, she adds a final section on DOING to each of her 14 FDF.  In chap. 16, she first explains “how you can make sure your money is fossil-free” and then joining with others to persuade the institutions you are associated with to divest, as was done successfully in S. Africa in the 1980s.  The second has been the subject of chapter 16, but I will take some moments to sketch what we can do with our own money.

     Check out your bank by searching the latest Banking on Climate Change report by the Rainforest Action Network for their lists of banks most wrecking the climate.  To change banks go to DivestInvestguide.org, or Green America’s  “Get a Better Bank.”

     Similarly examine your credit cards, insurance companies, retirement accounts, and investments (316-17).

     

    

Chapter 17, “Fire Drill Fridays: Going Forward” by Annie Leonard (319-23)

     This is Annie’s own what we can do agenda.

1.  Speak and write about climate change, climate catastrophe, climate emergency, climate crisis.   See skepticalscience.com; livingroomconversations.org

2.  Vote.  Find out about your representatives.  Have they signed the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge at NoFossilFuelMoney.org?  Type in their address at votesmart.org to find federal and state voting records, issue positions, and campaign finances.  Call their office for their position on the GND.  More.

3.  Act.  Scan the What Can I Do? sections for actions that match your skills and interest.  Connect with an organization of people who share your concerns; this is one of the greatest pleasures of working for change.  Sign up at FireDrillFridays.com to join one of Jane’s.  Or Hold your own Fire Drill Friday! 

 

 THE 14 WHAT CAN I DO? SECTIONS BROUGHT TOGETHER

Chapter 1 “The Wake-Up Call “(decision to campaign in DC, move to DC, planning for the weeks of actions)

The organizing committee meeting in Greenpeace’s conference room settled on three essential demands:  Support the Green New Deal, No New Fossil Fuel Extraction, Phase Out Existing Fossil Fuels with a Just Transition to Renewable Energy.
Their Calls to Action were to be:
VOTE: for the climate ;VOICE: talk to everyone; USE YOUR FEET—WITH OTHERS!  Show up!

And Jane suggested education, weekly teach-ins focusing on different aspects of the climate crisis featuring experts and activists [this was done]. 

Chapter 2, “The Launch,”  Fire Drill Fridays Rally #1

    After this first Rally Jane wrote no separate What Can I Do? call for action, but “That day cemented for me how important it was to work across movements. . . . building a community was how we would grow the army that was needed to change the way this country does business. . . .” (29).

Chapter 3, “Green New Deal,” FDF Rally #2, Teach-In #1

What Can I Do?  (46-47).       Of the seventeen chapters, fourteen end with a call to action titled What Can I Do?  But every chapter from beginning to end foregrounds protest ideas and experiences.    At this second Fire Drill Fridays, Jane is enthusiastic over the growing public interest in plans “as ambitious as the science requires.”  But the Green New Deal resolutions, introduced by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are “just the start,” and she discusses a few of  “the many ways to get involved” (46-47, really the whole chapter, and all the chapters).   

What Can I Do? (61-63).

Eat less fish!  Eat smaller in the food chain.  Hook into seafoodwatch.org.  Query your markets and restaurants; if enough people persistently ask, it’ll reach corporate headquarters.  Take pictures  of plastic waste and publicize the company.  “While changing our individual consumption habitys can help, the greatest change comes from collective and political action.”  Talk to city and schoo officials.  Push for organic landscapes.  Join Greenpeace, Surfrider,Oceana, or other ocean conservation groups.  Healthy oceans and climate are inseparable.

Chap. 5, “Women and Climate Change,” FDF #4,

What Can I Do? (79-81).

Climate change harms poor women and women of color.

So be political, put women in leadership positions, especially for climate change, educate and empower women.   Join women’s organizations: SisterSong, Forward Together, National Domestic Workers Alliance, One Billion Rising, the several excellent reproductive health groups, population growth opponents (contraception) like Population Connection, women’s rights groups like La Via Campesina and Food First, indigenous women like Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, young women-led organizations like Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate, elect more women to public office (etc. ! pp. 80-81).

 

Chap. 6, War, the Military What Can I Do? Section Q&A by Jane Fonda (with some sprinkling of DB, 92-95)

Talking points for reducing military spending.

Three best arguments: 1) stay out of unnecessary, illegal, civilian-slaughtering wars (i.e. US wars); 2) join the conversion movement of diverting War Dept. funds to human needs, esp. for the climate catastrophe, 3) these policies best protect and honor our soldiers and our nation.

To be safe, we must have the largest military budget in the world to have the strongest military.

Cutting 2 or 3 billion would not make us less safe but just the opposite, would be a significant contribution to resisting the climate emergency.  (As usual Jane cites her authority: Phyllis Bennis.)  And she lists other benefits.

Cutting the military budget will cut the jobs provided by military and the military-industrial complex.

Every job preparing for war can be replaced by better jobs n education, public infrastructure, health services, etc.  And most military job incomes require food stamps, and contrast to the average CEO’s $20 million a year. 

What about national security?

(See my note on language at the end.)  Real security is not derived from 10 carrier battle groups or 800 bases but from high quality support of the people in a living wage for all, first-rate schools and infrastructure, adequate safety nets, healthy air and water, rich soil (reduced population DB), etc.

How does militarism relate to climate?

     Let me quote JF: “The climate crisis has everything to do with the military.   Every single war fought in the past eighty years, if not longer, has been about oil.”  Future wars will be over FF profits but in addition over scarce resources such as water and food.  And add refugees from war.  And the Pentagon is the biggest institutional user of ff. “The climate movement and the peace movement are one movement” (94).

     More specific actions:

     Check out the National Priorities Project (www.nationalpriorities.org and www.nationalpriorities.org/interactive-data/trade-offs ).  Ask your friends to join you in talking to your representatives about military budget reduction and conversion, and about increasing the State Department budget to foreground diplomacy, not armed force.  Find ways to push for divestment of the military-industrial complex.  Examine your own financial connections to the war machine.  Never stop demanding conversion of war funds and ff expenditures to the programs urgently needed for the transition.

 

Chapter 9, “Plastics”  (137-144).      A concluding What Can I Do ? offers more examples of reducing individual footprints, and the reduction and removal of ff from industries and institutions that we can accomplish locally: brand audits of the most harmful companies, pressuring your grocery store (chain) to stop using plastic.  Eventually it must be a political battle, for  ”. . .the most effective way to reduce plastic. . .is through government restrictions, taxes, fees, or bans.”  Surfrider and Greenpeace have tool kits for working with corporations.   But ultimately, we must “reduce the availability of fossil fuels,” quickly because the ff corporations  were “planning a massive build-out of hundreds of new plastic production facilities”(!).

READ AN EXCERPT

  

Chapter 15, What Can I Do? (284-285). Move your money to companies supporting climate solutions.  See Fossil Free funds (fossilfreefunds.org).   Examine the organizations and institutions you are associated with (your university, church, local government, insurance companies), and call them to divest from ff (divestinvest.org, Green Faith). Ask your politiciams to take a #NoFossilFuelMoneyPledge.  Also: Stop Funding Fossils.org

 

 Chapter 16, What Can I Do?  (315-17).   As I have commented, a reader learns what we can do on every page—by Jane, by Annie Leonard, by all of her many Teach-In and Rally speakers, by all of the books and articles referred to by Jane and the speakers.  But to drive home the thesis of her book’s title, she adds a final section on DOING to each of her 14 FDF.  In chap. 16, she first explains “how you can make sure your money is fossil-free” and then joining with others to persuade the institutions you are associated with to divest, as was done successfully in S. Africa in the 1980s.  The second has been the subject of chapter 16, but I will take some moments to summarize what we can do with our own money.

     Check out your bank by searching the latest Banking on Climate Change report by the Rainforest Action Network for their lists of banks most wrecking the climate.  To change banks go to DivestInvestguide.org, or Green America’s  “Get a Better Bank.”

     Similarly examine your credit cards, insurance companies, retirement accounts, and investments (316-17).

 

Chapter 17, Fire Drill Fridays: Going Forward by Annie Leonard.  This short chapter is all about action, Annie’s suggestions to the general reader:  Speak, Vote, Act. (see Chapter 1).

 

  INDEX to Chapter Six: War, the Military, and Climate Change, pp. 83-95

Indexes are in alphabetical order, but the following by page order suggests how Ms. Fonda deploys her knowledge to exhibit the links between war and climate.  This is an important chapter in the integration of the study of the two greatest dangers.  

Climate Crisis/Catastrophe 83, 84

War and climate activism and movements 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91

Degradation of environment 83,

Fire Drill Fridays 83, 84

Green New Deal 83

War, Military & Climate Crisis Interconnections 84, 94

Phyllis Bennis 84, 89, 91, 92

Tom Hayden 84, 85

Vietnam War 84, 85

Climate, Drought, Unemployment, and Conflict 84

Military Exemption from Environmental Regulations/Treaties 84

Military pollution of toxic chemicals, burning, Superfund Sites 84, 93

Depleted Uranium and Cancer 84

Oil and War Connection 84

War and Racism/Islamophobia 84

War and economic impacts, domestic and international 84, 85

Teach-ins 85, 86, 87

Bloated Military Budget and cutting It 85, 86, 87, 89, 92

Taxes and Military Budget 86

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield 85, 86, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94

Real National Security spending on human needs 86, 87, 92, 93, 94

Pandemic 87

Healthcare, Education, Infrastructure, Homelessness 87, 93, 94

Military Bases 87

Martin Luther King Jr. 87

Krystal Two Bulls 87, 88

Veterans, Veterans for Peace, About Face 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93

Kuwait/Iraq War 87

Pipelines and Fracking 87

Indigenous resistance 87

Native American genocide 87

Imperialism 88

Conversion from militarism to human needs and peaceful jobs 85, 86, 87, 92, 93, 94, 95

Meaning in life and healing via activism 88

Standing Rock, Water Protectors 88

Militarized Police and Police Brutality 88

Organizing logistics and tactics 88

Bringing movements together, solidarity 88, 89, 91, 94

Direct Action and Civil Disobedience 89, 92

Women and impacted communities, Voices 89

“Supporting the Troops” 89, 92

Poor Peoples Campaign 89, 91

Military Industrial Complex 89, 90, 95

Democracy and elections 90, 95

War, bombing, and killing 90

Fossil fuel corporations and lobbyists 90

Code Pink 91

Institute for Policy Studies 91

Trump impeachment 91

Paris Agreement 91

DACA and Immigration Activism 91

Invisible War, a 2012 film on military sexual assault 93

Wars for resources, oil, water and food 94

Climate refugees 94

Pentagon is top oil consumer 94

National Priorities Project 94

Iraq and Afghanistan War Costs 94

Military and climate divestment 95

Largest suppliers of military: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics 95


GND REVIEW from the Resolutions to 4 Books to 7 Books, and at the very end a note on Nuclear power and the GND

First 2 GND Newsletters with Links

Brief Comparisons of 7 Books

Nuclear Power


THE GREEN NEW DEAL NEWSLETTER #1, Books and Essays, October 24, 2019

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2019/10/omni-green-new-deal-study-guide.html

THE GREEN NEW DEAL NEWSLETTER #2,

BEGINNING OF COVID-19, CLIMATE CATASTROPHE WORSENING.

April 10, 2020

4 Books and 2 Essays,

Pettifor, The Case for the GND

Aronoff, et alA Planet to Win.  Why We Need a GND

Klein, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a GND

Rifkin, Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth

2 Essays

Billy Fleming, “Design and the GND”

“On Fire This Time” by John Bellamy Foster

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/04/omnis-green-new-deal-newsletter-2-april.html

 

 

WHAT IS THE GND?  THREE GOALS

SEVEN BOOKS

KLEIN

ARONOFF ET AL.

PETTIFOR

RIFKIN

COX

CHOMSKY AND POLLIN

FONDA

 

 

 

SEVEN GREEN NEW DEAL BOOKS ON THE  CLIMATE EMERGENCY AND THE NEED TO CHANGE OUR ENERGY AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS

The Two House Resolutions

Text - H.Res.109 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): Recognizing ...

www.congress.gov › bill › house-resolution › 109 › text Feb 7, 2019 — 109 - Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.116th Congress (2019-2020)

H.Con.Res.52 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): Expressing the ...

www.congress.gov › bill › house-concurrent-resolution

Introduced in House (07/09/2019). This concurrent resolution expresses the sense of Congress that global warming has resulted in a climate emergency ...

 

 

THREE Ideas Linking the Transition

1.  We must face the crisis, and move to zero net greenhouse gas emissions quickly, as the 2018 IPCC report explained; short title, Climate Reality. 

2.  We must also break with the social, racial, environmental, and especially economic inequities of US capitalism; short title, Climate Justice.

 3.  We must engage in unremitting action to pass legislation; short title, Climate Politics.

 

Naomi Klein in On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a GND.  This is the key book: the earliest of the seven by her earlier, similar book, This Changes Everything, and her books have inspired countless others, including the latest, Fonda’s What Can I Do?    I recommend Naomi’s book above all

A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal  by Kate AronoffAlyssa BattistoniDaniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos.   Foreword by Naomi Klein.   A Green New Deal must and can tackle the climate emergency and rampant inequality at the same time. Cutting carbon emissions while winning immediate gains for the many is the only way to build a movement strong enough to defeat big oil, big business, and the super-rich—starting right now.

 

In The Case for the Green New Deal, Ann Pettifor explains how we can afford to change from a fossil fueled economics system for individual profit to a totally decarbonized sustainable, fair, cooperative system.  She proposes a radical understanding of the international monetary system and provides a roadmap for retrieving the economy from the 1%.

Jeremy Rifkin, in Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth" urges us to seize the moment of the new infrastructures that must be built after the immense assets of the carbon industries become “stranded.”   We can choose catastrophe and chaos, engendered by the present economic system, or a more just, equitable, and resilient world.  Of all the authors I have read, he is the most authoritative, for he is a principal architect of the European Union’s long-term economic vision, Smart Europe, and a key advisor to China's Third Industrial Revolution vision...

 

Stan Cox’s The Green New Deal and Beyond explains why a radical change on all fronts is needed and how to make that change, including a critique of the Green New Deal.  Moving to carbon zero quickly is his central goal, but we must not return to the old injustices

 

Robert Pollin and Noam Chomsky with C. J. Polychroniou, Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal.   The GND must include rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency and expansion of renewable energy, protection of workers from economic inequities, raising global living standards.   Their book shows how, despite “capitalists’ werewolf hunger for profits,” these goals are achievable.  This is a strong critique of capitalism and a clear critical explanation of an array of major questions.  I recommend this book, along with Klein’s, to the general reader.  Chap. 2 “Capitalism and the Climate Crisis” includes discussion of why political action has thus far failed.  Chap. 3 fleshes out the Resolutions, including what will enable a successful transition, how the GND can be financed, and how it can reverse the inequalities produced by neoliberal capitalism..

 

Jane Fonda in What Can I Do? makes the case that we will rise to the challenge of climate change only if we are willing to transform the systems that produced this crisis: follow the science, replace fossil fuels with sustainable energy within a decade, do it equitably for the most vulnerable, send your voice with others to Congress.  On pp. 2-3 Ms. Fonda gives Naomi Klein unparalleled praise: “…a quarter of a way through [On Fire] I was shaking with intensity,” over the way she described Greta Thunberg, the clarity with which she conveyed what the scientists were reporting, how strikingly she explained the GND Resolutions, how persuasively she beckoned her readers and the planet to change course.  Fonda decided to go live in D.C. for 4 months to see what she could do while learning along the way: What Can I Do!

 

Additional GNDers:

Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

 

Note on Nuclear Power.

     All of these books express or imply the conviction that renewable energy will continue to become cheaper and nuclear energy increasingly expensive, and one is safe and the other possesses the risk of meltdown and the risks of spent fuel storage, and therefore renewables will be the future.   All also recognize the obvious that we must have reliable energy during the transition from fossil fuels to solar and wind (depending upon location), so we must keep those working until their replacements are ready, though we should not start any new nuclear power plants.

    The one book to devote a few pages to the issue is Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal, 86-91.  For Pollin nuclear power facilitates the transition, but the many safety dangers, on top of the increasingly high costs, should discourage building more nuclear power stations.  We should keep our focus on a clean, safe, renewable future, though Chomsky would “not foreclose” the nuclear option.  See also Rifkin p. 70 where he concludes that a new nuclear power plants is a poor business decision.

Dick 12-4-20

 

 

 

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